Jingya Hu
Funeral Package
Class of: 2024
Major: Fashion Design BFA
Medium: Combination of multiple media
Faculty: Bryan Melillo
Prompt: Create a new LP post. Title it: IS2: Final Project Proposal Write a very brief introduction statement explaining what you have been investigating in Studio: include the topic you have been researching and the materials you have been exploring, include images of relevant materials [keep this short]. Create TWO Final Project Proposals, follow the instructions below Write a brief statement about each project proposal for your final project - make sure to include the following: what is each idea (narrative/story/content) and how do you want to explore it (medium/materials). Make a prototype (primary resource) for each of your ideas with the materials/object/sound/space, etc. you are planning on using Include at least two artists that you are looking at who are inspiring you (secondary resource).
In my final project, I want to illustrate modern society’s influences on traditional rituals which reflect the extremely packaged life is keeping us away from our own life. Living in such a consumerist century nowadays, we are used to, and become more and more dependent on the “packaged life”. In other words, people can’t even picture life without semi-finished spaghetti, a chair that only takes three steps to be assembled, and direct to home, washed up, cut into segments vegetable. Indeed, technology makes our life much more convincing, while when it reaches a point, it will also take away our opportunities to be part of it.
I want to remind people about it, so in my final project, I depict a potential product that might appear in future supermarkets. Its name is “Funeral Package”. It includes everything that people might need in a Chinese traditional funeral if their relative dies, while in a modern version. For instance, in a traditional Chinese funeral, these are the most common custom.
The essence of a funeral is for us to memorize our loved ones. It supposed to be sacred and solemn. While the “Funeral Package” commercialized this ritual. I will use a lot of reproduction methods such as printing and artificial material to replace handmade processes to show the influence of commercialism. It seems disrespectful and even absurd in today’s view, while what is scary is that it might actually come true in the future considering the current favor of packaged life.