taspublications
#FOTM - Barite Jahaj
by Tseng Kar Leong Tiffanie & Marsha Alwani Binte Ismail
Studio Thomas Kong
Y4S2 Options Studio 2022
Studio Foreword:
As a research project, the studio embarked on a journey of social dreaming, a term coined by interaction designers Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, and adopt Bruce Sterling's notion of “diegetic prototypes”. Social dreaming offers novel scenarios to provoke and unsettle conventional thinking, values, and to awaken us to new, emergent sociocultural and technological phenomena. Borrowing from film and theatre, the setting, props, and characters that make up the story help to draw a cognitive response from the viewer by activating the complex range of emotive and psychological responses. For Dunne, Raby and Sterling, design goes beyond the material world, and acts upon people's imaginations through critical design. In the spirit of their challenge, the studio is constructing a series of speculative, short films supported by diegetic prototypes and drawings staged to narrate the story of the studio's interpretation of the LAST HOME.
Barite Jahaj is set in the future of 2077 in Chittagong, Bangladesh. A large corporation using the latest ship-breaking and salvaging technologies have taken over the industry in this future world. Small dwelling units intermixed with shops and services are stacked vertically with the ship-breaking infrastructure to form a megastructure housing thousands of inhabitants, many who depend on the corporation for work and survival. The story follows the journey of a Bangladeshi shipbreaker who struggles to be accepted socially after being fitted with a prosthesis arm. The town is now opportunistic, tacky, money making, torn between cultural values. Despite his sense of isolation, he continues to work and spend time making kites for curious children. As Aarish questions his reality, the relationship between technology, culture and the sacred body surfaces. He decides to take matters into his own hands, exploring the meaning of cultural prosthetics.
Barite Jahaja is the “last home” in our minds, one that depicts a speculative urbanism, an exaggerated version of the present. It is a world where environmental, political and economic forces collide and clash, yet creates a space in which we can project new cultural trends of how technology and culture transcend together. The narrative slips between the real and the imagined, between the documentary and the visionary, where our speculative fictions become a way of exploring a world that the everyday struggles to grasp.
Watch the full short film here:
Short Film Credits
Short film by: Tseng Kar Leong Tiffanie & Marsha Alwani Binte Ismail
Film Narration: Professor Farooq Shamsuzzaman
Script Translation: Shazneen Hasan
Music:
Shanti (Peace Out) by Mc Yogi
Nectar Drop by DJ Drez
Morning Side by Four Tet
Ship Breaking Context:
House, L. (2019, May 1). Ship Breaking. https://vimeo.com/333624971
KRDK. (2020, March 16). The Furnance | Blade Runner 2049 [Open Matte]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp60igdtlzk
Mrbrynnorth. (2019, May 23). Bangladesh | Raw Beauty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdydeq3jw_e
National Geographic. (2014, April 16). Where Ships Go to Die, Workers Risk Everything | National Geographic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=womtfn1bfz8
The Best Episode Films. (2017, June 27). The Secret Life of Walter Mitty 2013. HD Clip - Jump into the icy water of the ocean with a shark.
Vice. (2015, February 10). The Ship Breakers of Bangladesh: Vice Intl. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju0dxdahdsa
Youtube. (2015, January 13). When you lose everything - Life of Pi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fba-8vovt0
The Lost Daughter - Netflix. (n.d.). https://www.netflix.com/search?q=lost%20daughter&jbv=81478910
Zu, S. (2019, April 11). Standard Chartered Bank; Ship Breaking. https://vimeo.com/329735114
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