unscripted + indescribable

In modern society, globalisation prevailed. Boundaries between cultures, countries and continents have dissolved and exist only on a physical level. Offering the opportunity for people from around the world to interact, share ideas and collaborate in an instant. Education and culture exchange have become more accessible, and with this, international students from around the world coming to the UK have become more common, allowing students from different cultures and backgrounds to engage with each other.

The group consists of five international students of Chinese background, we all faced the issue surrounding languages. Learning and living as an alienated foreigner abroad become harder with the need to use language that is not our mother tongue.

The project has two aims, first is to rediscover these intangible emotions we face as international students; and second to introduce these intangibles to the public through objects or exhibits. Hence why the name “Unscripted and Indescribable”.

The final outcome consists of 4 distinct satellite projects ranging from board games to video installation, posters playing with Latin characters to magazines of food recipes. It has therefore become evident that the setting for our final curated exhibition should be within a daily setting, forming a clear storyline to tell the concept behind these projects. Set within a daily kitchen, the collections are staged as if they were happening, viewed from an outsider’s perspective. The story imagines a group of students, some would start cooking using the recipe magazines, with the rest engaging with the posters. The whole group then congregate at the end of the meal to participate in the board game while being immersed in the video installation in the backdrop.

With globalisation, boundaries between people have blurred. It is now easier than ever to learn about other cultures, characters, and people. The world in theory should have become more inclusive, yet that is not the case. Byung-Chul Han wrote in The Disappearance of Ritual, “The revival of nationalism today has in part to do with an urge for a kind of closure that involves the exclusion of the other, of the stranger.” The world is scared of this fading of threshold and perforation of boundaries. We, not only as creative practitioners but also as global citizens should fight to unite the world or to re-unite the ones who have distanced.