Brussels - Cross Cultural Communication

Floortje Meijer | 0860862 | Designfull innovation for one billion people

Cross Cultural Communication Brussels

01

The first part, part 1, contains questions about the life of Margritte. Who is Magritte? And why is he an inspiration for reframing?

After that I will explain some principles according to the work of Magritte.

Which you see on the following pages.

Margritte René François Ghislain Magritte was born on 21 November 1898 and passed away in August 1967. Magritte was a Belgian surrealist painter artist. Surrealism is a cultural movement, which began developing in the early 1920’s. This movement aimed to “resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality, to challenge observers’ preconditioned perceptions of reality. Magritte works frequently with ordinary objects in an unusual context, which gives new meanings to familiar things.

Magritte is an inspiration for “reframing”, because of the preconditioned perceptions of reality. When you take a look at Magritte’s work you will often see ordinary objects in an unusual context, which gives new meanings to the familiar things. So, you have to think differently while looking to the paintings. It’s just not what it used to be.

As an example the world-known painting from the pipe. The painting shows a painted pipe with a French text underneath: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”. Which is true, the painting is not a pipe; it is an image of a pipe. As Magritte once replied: ‘Of course, you can’t fill it with tobacco’.

SCALE

La réproduction interdite 1937

This piece, named ‘not to be reproduced’, shows a man who is looking in the mirror. In the mirror you can see the reflection of the book in the right way. The man who is looking in the mirror can’t see his reflection. He looks to the backside of his body. This unnatural of a reflection fascinated me and I were wondering about the deeper meaning of this artwork. The novel that’s reflected in the mirror is about the various ways of reality, reflexivity and self-reflexivity. The meaning of this artwork emphasizes that Pym is the author of the book and not ‘Mr. Poe’, as some people seem to think.

CLASH

Les vacances de Hegel 1958

In this artwork, Magritte shows a hovering umbrella in front of a red background. Most of the time an umbrella has a top, but here a filled glass replaces it. These things are seemingly utterly unrelated to each other. There is a strong contradiction within this artwork. An umbrella is to protect you from water and pushes it off and the glass is meant to be filled with water and to hold it. Magritte told a friend that the artwork was a result of an image experiment.

According to Magritte, this was the best way to image a glass of water.

REPEAT

Golconda 1953

This piece, the Golconda, is one of the most famous works of Magritte. The artwork shows men falling from a blue sky with a building in the background. The difference in the similar can be found in the falling men. The men is repeated a lot of times, but the direction they’re facing is different. Besides that, the men all have a different sizes. They’re also spaced in a hexagonal grid. In my opinion they look like rain drops falling from the blue sky.

EMOTIONS

L’invention de la vie 1928

The invention of life is a painting about life and death. The artwork shows two female figures in a sober landscape. The right woman is shrouded in a gray fabric. The other woman stares out at the viewer. Magritte evokes the fragility of human life. Magritte once said that the right female figure represents his mother. She committed suicide when Magritte was young. This artwork probably shows that Magritte has struggles with the death of his mother.

VARIATIONS

Les amants 2 1928

This painting, the lovers 2, has lot aspects that could evoke different variations. This artwork shows two lovers that are embraced by gray fabric, while kissing each other. The walls are painted blue and red. The woman is dressed in a red dress and the men in a black suit. When we look at the two figures, we could also think about the position of their bodies. The man is in a dominant position relative to the woman.

The woman is leaning back while tilling her head.

The first variation could be in the colour of the walls. The left of the walls is blue that can be described as calm or water. This could be associated with life. The other half of the wall is red and can be described as anger, lust and love. The both figures are positioned in front of the blue wall, but we can see the red wall. It could tell that the couple is calm and that they are just living their lives. That it isn’t about love.

The walls have a gradient from light blue to a darker blue colour. This could refer to heaven.

When we take a look at the clothing of the couple. The man is dressed in black, which is commonly associated with death. The woman is dressed in red, which can be referred to love.

From this view we could think about an unreal love. When the man is dead, the woman wants to share their passion, but she can’t.

At last we can also see the body of the woman.

The arm of the woman is shown, while the man is totally dressed in a suit. This could refer to the real woman and the unknown body of the men. Because of the dominant position of the men we could say that the women is impacted by the death of the man, because she is leaning back and blindsided by emotions.

TRANSFORMATION

Le Pelerin 1966

This painting shows a men dressed with a bowl hat and a suit. What’s irregular about this image is the hovering head of the men, which is spaced more to the left. It shows a paradox.

The image is beautiful in his simplicity, but also provokes weird thoughts. It’s very clear what you see, but yet it’s very strange. In my opinion this work could be related to the view that people have when you wear certain clothes.

The man looks reputable, which gives an implication of the way the man could behave.

When you see the man without the clothes, you could think of the men without being affected by his clothes.

02

The second part is about the group statement we had to make while walking in Experience Brussels.

Besides that, we also had to do an energizer.

Statement & Energizer When walking around at Experience Brussels our group was colouring plates. Even at that time we were thinking about our group statement. Why shouldn’t we think about being a child in this big world? We came up with the statement: ‘The city is everybody’s playground’. At times everybody lives a quite serious life with a lot of hurry, everyone needs the time to be a child once in a while. You could build experience for elder people within cities. In these experiences everybody can be a child at a certain time. For instance in Utrecht overvecht station: there is a slide and stairs to go to the station. A lot of times elder people go by slide. I think that’s a perfect example of being a child in this big world. In my opinion this is the experience our group was thinking about during our group statement.

At the end of our Brussels trip with our minor group, we came together to do an energizer on the grand place in Brussels. Unfortunately we came 5 minutes too late, so Yvo, Robin and I had to do another energizer. Somebody came up with the idea of giving people we don’t know a high five. We had to give as many high fives as we could in 1-minute time. I think it was a fun energizer, because you would never do that if you were on a regular trip.

03

Concept & take aways

My first idea for my concept was letting people feel more happiness in their busy lives. After quite some time I felt that I get stuck in my research. I was a very interesting subject, but a little too vague for me. I wanted to focus too much on the psychology instead of the innovation.

A week later when I walked home alone from work, I came up with another idea. At night I do not feel that save on the streets, because of the men walking around and hanging with each other. Sometimes they whistle or talk to me like I am some kind of a sex object. This is for me a really uncomfortable situation, which I can’t get rid of, because I have to go home after work. After that I did some research by a probe.

Was I the only one who felt uncomfortable on the streets at night? The answer is: no. It was so shocking to read all the answers from my respondents. They all had a story about an uncomfortable situation at night.

During this minor I will focus on an innovation product that can help girls to feel less uncomfortable on the streets at night.

At Brussels I spoke with some people about my concept. It came clear to me that women from all ages are confronted with this problem.

A 52-year old women told me that she never go out with her dog without her phone or anything sharp like a key. I was shocked again about these answers. After some research I know now that it doesn’t matter if you live in a large or a small city. In a large city will probably

have more people who can stand up for you in some kind of situation. In smaller cities it is less busy on the streets and there is a chance that no one can help you out.

When reframing I thought about the real reason of being scared on the streets. Of course it’s uncomfortable when someone is talking or whistling to you in an inappropriate way. But it’s more about the situation afterwards.

What will the men do after talking to you? Will they follow you until you’re home? Do they want more than only talking? Most of the time I don’t get the reason why are they talking to me. Is there a difference between men in groups and men alone? I have to do research about that.

Experience Brussels

04

The second part is about the group statement we had to make while walking in Experience Brussels.

Besides that, we also had to do an energizer.

Design research As I told before it came clear to me that women from all ages confronted with this problem.

My own experiences in Brussels are not very helpful because of the fact that men from class surrounded me all the time. Women in Brussels told me that It’s good to know that there a people who can stand up for you in hard times. In the streets were we walk during our trip a lot of stores are open until midnight.

This gives women a saver feeling in the night.

In this city women are also afraid of the bums on the streets. They are always drunk and want money from you. This is another way of feeling uncomfortable on the streets. Men who will talk to you like you’re a sex object are a different category. From them you don’t know why are they talking to you. Women in larger cities most of the time are more confident and walk straight up. This is less attractive for men because they will think you can’t care about them talking to you.

05

Saint Jean Molenbeek

While walking through Molenbeek we saw a lot of different cultures. For example Arabic, French, students, homeless and artistic people. They all live together in a quite small environment. In these environments I saw a lot of old houses, rusty objects (La Fonderie), little places where you can sit down and wall arts. It’s good to see that artistic people are free to express on the streets. Most of the paintings on the walls are beautiful and have a lot in common with comic strips.

According to my subject for this minor, I earlier did some research on the internet. It came clear to me that Molenbeek is an enviroment with a high criminality rate. While walking through Molenbeek by daylight I didn’t saw any uncomfortable things. In the night there were some people argueing while smoking some weed. For women this would be uncomfortable to walk by this places.

After walking through Molenbeek, we walked towards the city and all of the sudden we where in the middle of a protest. Here we saw a high grade of collectivism, according to the Hofstede model. They had a unrestained body language by walking in the protest and wearing green and red jackets. We could also see that they are multi-active, according to the model of Lewis. Being in the city of Brussels, while there is a protest going on isn’t the most comfortable way. There was a lot of police on the streets with big guns and there were helicopters flying around. I felt pretty unsave for me at this time.

I was scared by the fireworks an the screams.

What’s interesting to mention is the way of feeling save isn’t always about having police, people or camera’s around you.

During the protest there were a lot of camera’s, police and of course people. At this time I felt more unsave than save.

I often think about the reason why there that much camera’s around. Is it because of the high criminality rate? So, sometimes preventive activities can make you feel more unsave. I have to take that into account while concepting for this minor.

06

The second part is about the group statement we had to make while walking in Experience Brussels.

Besides that, we also had to do an energizer.

Kees Dorst By abduction 2 of Kees Dorst we only know the end value of our concept. For instance I know that I want to create something why women can walk more comfortable on the street at night. This can be described as the value in Kees Dorst abduction-2. This open form has a lot to do with the conceptual design we have to work on in this minor. I have to decide ‘what’ thing I can create without knowing the working principle. This is quite different than regular problem solving. We have to seek for new approaches and ways of design research.

I have to find the matching pair who will lead me to the value. At first I have to make clear what my frame actually is. What is the real problem? This frame can help me to reach the value. I have to work backwards. I know the value I am striving for. How can I reach it? I can do this by research and reframing the problem of my target group.