Where should I start? This project is really special for me, because the inspiration came from a funny story over the weekend. Well not exactly funny, but definitely inspiring! So, here’s a little story of my weekend before I start.
For this weekend, I actually planned to go down to Oregon with my friends to attend to a business convention for 3 days. So I decided to take lots of photos of different parts of Granville Island and work on the sign on my spare time in Oregon.
Friday night, met up with the crew, and started our 6 hours road trip! About an hour later we arrived at the US border. As Usual, we talked to those F*$&ing rude and arrogant US officers and eventually we were sent inside because I was using a foreign passport. After a while, an officer approached me and told me that my international student VISA cannot be used for visiting purpose. Long story short, I was refused entry!
I told my friends to go ahead and called my brother to pick me up at the border. Then I did the “walk of shame” back to the Canadian border. As I was overwhelmed by rage and disappointment, I thought of the DIVA project and had a sudden inspiration when I was standing in front of the Peace Arc.
“I’m gonna make a sign that would piss off the Americans!”
As you can see here, this is a sign consists of the hammer and sickle from the Communism flag and the “Swastika” from the Nazi flag. I choose the Communism symbol because it is the arch-rival of American Capitalism. The Swastika symbol expresses a sense of heaviness and often reminds people of the German Nazi.
However, I rearranged them in a way that the viewers are less likely to identify the symbols immediately. Visually, it is a somewhat cool sign alone by itself, if you don’t apply the political meaning behind it.
The idea is that we can never cease to associate with these symbols through the meanings behind them because that’s how they were created. Now that they are arranged in a different way, why can’t we interpret them without the connotations that they used to have? It is possible that one person can perceive the sign as simply a logo that looks cool?How many people will find the sign offending because all they can see is the hammer, sickle, and the Swastika sign?
At least one thing for sure is that if I make the mockup shown in the last picture come true, i’d probably get shot from the other side of the arc!
