Pacific Mall, hm...
I am truly happy that our class is one that is courageous enough to stir shit up. To do anything in public is absolutely exhausting but wonderful because you can almost make yourself an actor- fulfilling desires, but you HAD to, right? -It's for your art project. Its almost as if you can justify yourself for being someone you may have always wanted to be without feeling silly publicly. I enjoyed feeling as though I didn't belong, but at the same time I really struggle with it. I have such a hard time creating artworks that are involved in other racial spaces or concepts because I feel as though things are still so touchy it is awkward to try to find a place, even though we may have total positive intentions. I struggled with the setting of Pacific Mall because I felt as though almost every artwork I did HAD to became relative to the cultural environment I was in. I know that was the point, but i mean.. a bunch of predominantly Caucasian people walking into a mall, which is known for its Asian identity, with the intentions of stirring things up simply by being "strange", is still sort of awkward. I to was apart of this, but I am wondering how all of you feel about it? How do you feel about making an artwork in a place that is centered around a culture different than yours? I am not sure there is a right or wrong answer but i feel it is necessary question. I have wanted to explore other cultures with my artworks but I feel almost as if it I am imposing. Do i limit my artistic queries because of politics, or should politics always be considered as relevant?
I became aware of the fact that I was a minority in the mall. The shop keepers almost expected me to walk in and not buy anything, and judging by the "no photograph" signs everywhere they see a lot of tourists. I found the inability to photograph an annoyance, but really, who the hell wants flashes going off in their store every five seconds when it becomes a tourist location? Is it our Canadian right for Pacific Mall to be treated like a tourist location in the first place? Im not so sure.
I legitimately struggle with finding my boundaries in a racial context. Public places or not, I don't know how to explore some ideas and be completely appropriate at once, because everything is seemingly inappropriate one way or another. 
My partner and I decided to leave a subtle trace of ourselves by purchasing ten 'lucky charms' that cost fifty cents a piece from a man in the mall. We placed them in jean pockets of other clothing stores, so that someone who tried a lucky pair of jeans on may find one. It almost felt like we were stealing, by placing our hands into the jean's pockets, but we were really just redistributing bought goods from the mall into another setting of the mall. In some cases the shops would be so tight my six foot 170 frame would have to pretend to try jeans on in the change room in order to achieve the proper placement of the charms. I'm sure this seems absolutely obvious and ridiculous to anyone reading the blog, no explanation necessary. I could tell the store keepers would wonder why I was bringing a size six into their change rooms but they were USUALLY too polite to say anything. My collection consists of the noise of specific places in the mall to comment on the hybrid of cultural background- American music and Asian voices, etc etc. My independent piece is me starting from one end of the mall and walking to the other complimenting almost everyone I saw on something they were wearing. I loooooooove your shoes, I LOOOOOOVE that vest. How else do you communicate with a complete stranger in a consumer environment where you come from two different cultures? - this doesn't even work as most people didn't pay any attention to me, not thinking I was talking to them, I am ASSUMING because of our cultural differences.(These three dots haunted me, what do they mean)??
