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💡 Assignment: Preliminary Research related to the ideas/topics/themes you're interested in exploring for your Thesis.
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Making a mindmap was nice! It was helpful to have my peers take a look at the mindmap and jot down their thoughts and notes – it allow me to see what makes sense and what needs more clarification (thank you lovely Sara Ro for her input <3)
Brainstorm:
my main keyword is REPETITION, since it's a common theme in my work and life
- repetition as a coping mechanism/ soothing behaviour
- repetition as desensitization or nonsense
- when you repeat something frequently enough, it starts losing its meaning
- depiction of sentiment in mass production: thank-you plastic bags or "get well soon"
- repetition as a ritual
- Adjacent's next issue is dedicated to the idea of rituals and how rituals can be the act of closing tabs on a browser or turning off the lights 5 times
- repetition as an obsession
- repetition as insanity, because insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results
- repetition in pop culture
- repetition as pollution
- repetition as reinvention
- repetition as normalisation. I often think about how weirdly normalised certain behaviours or beliefs are, and how easy it is to feel comfortable living within the norm.
- repetition as propaganda
- I grew up in a shit ton of propaganda, and now I'm residing in another country that has a shit load of propaganda against my home country. pretty much a very black or white, us versus them, colonizer versus colonized mentality. the tension is fun!
- because of Vietnam's long history of conflict with many countries, it's practically impossible to enjoy anything, i.e, I'm often told that I cannot listen to Korean music because Korean soldiers used to rape Vietnamese women during the Vietnam war, etc.
- loving him was Red is a streaming exercise I did for Streaming Against the Current with Molly Soda. It was made to mimic the popular toploader decoration videos on Tiktok, which are known for their aesthetic and ASMR quality. I find these videos fascinating for the creative, financial and emotional labour invested into these para-social objects; it's endearing but also concerning. I chose to recreate it using my desktop, decorating the window frame with the photo of Ho Chi Minh, a beloved Vietnamese leader, to the tune of Red by Taylor Swift (released on the same day of the stream), which is a song about passionate, blinding love. Red is also frequently associated with communism. In a way, by doing this stream, I am performing the propaganda/nationalist love that was imposed onto me for most of my life.
- repetition as capitalism/consumerism
- repetition as belongings/attachments
- repetition as mass production
- repetition as truth or memory.
- if you repeat something frequently enough, it becomes real to you.
- repetition as simplicity.
- repeating is one of the simpler/easier/earliest things that I learned to do from a young age. I have learned and grown by repeating and mimicking behaviours around me.
- repetition as a tradition
- repetition as consistency
- repetition as reinforcement
- repetition as surveillance.
- what's the line between people-watching and surveillance? how often do you have to watch someone before it becomes harmful?
- how many smart technologies are too many? when does your own smart tech start watching you?
- repetition as the passage or the suspension of time
- repetition as cliché
- repetition as shame
- repetition as a closed-loop
- repetition as an algorithm
- repetition as trauma. unresolved trauma continues to come back around and around
- repetition as karma, and how what you have done in the past will come back to you
- many Vietnamese was overjoyed by the burning of the Notre Dame in 2019; they think it was karma retribution for the French's colonisation of Vietnam. during this period, the French destroyed many invaluable artifacts, including an 800-year-old Buddhist statue. since Notre Dame was around 800 years old when it was burned down, it led many Vietnamese to believe that this is a part of the karmic cycle: "it's the price the French have to pay for what they did to the Vietnamese"
Things that stay in my mind rent-free (TBD)