Brashnar Creative Project
During my month-long residency at Brashnar Creative Project in Skopje, I created several text-and-image artifacts that were showcased at an open studios event. My aim was to introduce Macedonians to aspects of my identity as well as findings from during my month there. The items included:
A book featuring 15 observational drawings of radios in Skopje. As a designer who also installs internet, I enjoy noticing these structures of communication. The drawings were fun conversation starters.
A second book focused on the Macedonian language. In a country where English is uncommon, I learned the Cyrillic alphabet and compiled frequently used words for quick reference.
A T-shirt featuring the Detroit "D" which overlaps "ти добро?" meaning "you good?" in Macedonian. Accompanying the tee was a story of an experience I had in Skopje when someone was upset at me for unknown reasons. "You good?" is a phrase you hear often in Detroit. Saying "Tи добро?" was all I could think to say with my limited vocabulary, but its meaning to me did not come across the same to him. The tee is inspired by the misunderstanding.
Simple interactive games, called role-playing games, where participants plotted themselves on a graph representing diametrically opposed cultural references. One visitor wrote in his own reference. Maybe he didn't like the options.
