Intervention Showcase Reflection & How It Iterates My Current Question
I had the chance to showcase my intervention, which is the Indonesian Kitsch Culture platform in one of Monday classes to let tutors and the rest of the cohorts to give feedbacks that will help me on reflecting and evaluating my current project progress.
Overall, I am really satisfied by how my current intervention (Indonesian Kitsch Culture) is evolving from confusion into something that I can actually process into a tangible artifact, which was something I really enjoyed making and a good starting point of something bigger later in my project. I start to actually be engaged and be really immersed in my research and overall, my journey.
However, there are some aspects that my tutor, Diana, pointed out during the intervention showcase that I really need to consider for iterating my question and the next interventions testing. These aspects are:
INTERVENTION VS. ACTION RESEARCH
I failed to make a distinction between an intervention and an action research. Another thing that I failed to attempt during the intervention testing is to ask the CHANGE that my intervention testing subject/ audience feel/experience when they were doing the intervention. I personally feel it was really hard to actually be engaged with the potential stakeholders/experts/collaborators regarding of testing my intervention. Contacting people online requires many attempts and it’ll take long durations (as I test my intervention to my target audiences in Jakarta, Indonesia), and I didn’t utilise my time properly during the intervention testing period. As I’m coming back to my country for one month during the Independent Study Period I can use this as an opportunity to do rigorous testings as I’m going to be working really close to my target audiences.
REEVALUATING MY QUESTION
Another thing that I missed after the intervention testing is to go back to my question and asking myself "what's the greater issue that I want to change?" and "How does my current intervention change my current question?". However, writing descriptions/summary of my question helps me a lot with composing a better question and I can start from that point. Since that was the point that I missed during the intervention showcase. Here are some reflections to re-evaluate the main issue and purpose of my project:
What I'm lacking all of this time is to be sure which is the specific issue that's important to be my project and how to be realistic with the project (regarding of the project duration for the purpose of the MA course) but at the same time how sustainable this project will be.
Asking "why?" in every aspects of my question helps me with defining the main purpose of the project, and how it helps me iterate my WWHI proposal. I asked myself why I chose youths as my target audiences, why archival spaces as the tool for my project, and why Jakarta as the specific area of my project.
My last intervention gave me clarity of which specific area of interests I will be researching for and who are the experts I will be contacting, which are curators and archive experts. At this moment, I've been planning to contact Hanny Kardinata, the founder of ADGI (Indonesian Graphic Design Association) whose also an expert in archiving and the author of "Desain Grafis Indonesia di dalam Pusaran Desain Grafis Dunia", an attempt to categorize and curate Indonesian graphic design; which can be a potential stakeholder for my project.
I also contacted several graphic design students both studying in UK and Indonesia and most of them show interests of my current intervention. This helps me clarify which specific age group of target audiences for my project, which is youths, specifically design students (age group: 18-25 years old).
The tagline "Scrutinising everyday visuals and its juncture to history and culture" from the Indonesian Kitsch Culture website helps me defining my new question and the description for my question.
My current question:
HOW CAN ARCHIVAL SPACE BE USED AS A TOOL TO IMPROVE THE SIGNIFICANCE OF GRAPHIC DESIGN AMONG YOUTHS IN JAKARTA?
WHAT'S NEXT?
Action research on the target audiences:
Lifestyle
Values (especially on Indonesian/ cultural values)
In which way they communicate with each other
Pop culture (trend, media, humour, etc)
Regarding archival space: Are there any existing archival space in Indonesia?
Methods to analyse a visual. Research from the experts and gatekeepers.
Proposing the next interventions.