Juliet Wang
Dream Undream Dream
Prompt: The structures or systems indoctrinate and normalize perception and stereotypes in a way that enables what is referred to as “othering”. You begin this research in Seminar. In Studio you develop your research further through art + design research methods. The final outcome is the development of a project that critiques and transforms your chosen and researched oppression by unveiling, educating and ultimately empowering self, others, and possibly the greater community we are enmeshed in.
If thinking and questioning are evidence of existence, then we are unreal if we can’t question it in our dreams. And the moment we wonder if it’s a dream, we wake up and become real. In everyday life, we rarely question our existence as we do when we are about to wake from a dream. The original intention of this project is to invite everyone to think with me, question together, and resolve the existential crisis that does not exist or is in subconscious together.
At the beginning I created this tree by editing and distorting it. Through the contemplation of everyday scenes such as the disordered tree, I aim to prompt viewers to raise questions related to reality.
Drawing inspiration from philosopher Roland Barthes and his elucidation of structuralism as an active mental process, I embrace the idea of the simulacrum—the fusion of intellect with the object. Structuralism involves a dual operation of dissection, breaking down a whole to comprehend its meaning, and articulation, establishing rules of association within the fragments.
The object of structuralism is not man endowed with meanings, but man fabricating meanings. And in this tree puzzle I created, I wanted people to engage and create orders and meanings on their own. It manifests a new category of the object, which is neither the real nor the rational, but the functional.