Week 21 – 28 April

This week, I worked on:

  • Shamelessly message people for a shout out or participation
  • More drawings
  • Questions – write about why I started this project and why this project is important to me and my audience
  • Workshop plan to pitch to others

Here are some thoughts from tutorials, chats and production surgeries.

QUESTIONS

  • Why do people need to participate?
  • Why do you think it is important?
  • How is empathy circulated in this project?
  • Why hand drawn mail?
  • Does it have similarities with art therapy? In offering comfort? Seeking comfort?
  • What is the communication in offering help? Am I helping? Am I just a communication/visualization tool? Am I going to give visual form to people’s stories?
  • Why is it important to share through intimacy?
  • How is it helping to others in bringing the community together?
  • What is meaningful to me in this project/in my practice?

So far, I only have some answers to:

  • What is meaningful to me in this project/in my practice?

In my practice, I enjoy making the regular normal things look different. 

In this project, I enjoy building the conversation/engagement meaningful for both me and strangers. Sometimes I receive feedback from strangers on Instagram about one of my recent work and we will chat about it. The act of chatting and approaching each other made my day. It made me feel happier. I think there is a nice effect from talking about everything. The act of sharing thoughts is meaningful to both of us.

  • Why hand drawn mail/sending a drawing back to the participant?

There are a few reasons. First, this project started as a passion project – I wanted inspirations and inputs that help my own creative process. So in order to get as much input as possible, “sending a drawing back” will act as an incentive for others to participate. Second, personally, drawings and stories that live in digital space feels very distant. Since the stories are intimate, I would like to add the intimacy to the circulation/exchange in the experience, from the audience point of view. Receiving something physical and hand drawn/hand written feels more intimate. Audience are able to touch it and look at it closely instead of scrolling down the screen.

  • Why do people need to participate?

There is not a definitive answer to why people need to be part of it. But some of the responses from participants may explain a bit better. “Thank you, for this project, for making me think about my triggers of loneliness and for letting me know that I am not alone. I hope you are doing well in this time and find this to be a creative outlet, hopefully carrying you through all the challenges we all face on a daily basis.”

  • Why do you think it is important?

Right now, this project is meaningful to both me and my audience. To me, it fuels my creative process. To (some of) my audience, it acts as a outlet for their emotions/stories and a platform for social interactions.

  • How is it helping to others in bringing the community together?

I don’t think the “community” bit is coming through yet. Maybe the design of this project doesn’t include a space for community yet.

DRAWING WISE

  1. Text placement
  • How to incorporate text with drawing?
  • What if text invades into the drawing? So the text act like drawings?
  1. Use all the space of the postcard
  • How can I fully expand to the edges of the postcard?
  • Angles?

Now the drawings are black and white, drawing in a sketch. It is naive, approachable. Since the content is mostly heavy and sometimes dark, I approach it in a light way –> so as how humour is formed.

Updated drawings here –> https://lilykong.co.uk/Archive-of-past-drawings

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