Learning to Understand the Universal Particulars of Intercultural Collaboration
At the beginning of this semester, I have to admit the idea of collaborating with someone from another culture seemed daunting. Even before the semester when we were given the options for which studios we could complete I found this idea of contacting someone from another country somewhat challenging and yet also exciting. Here I am, a 21 year old from Melbourne, Australia and I was getting the opportunity to conduct a mysterious interview with subject from another country. I don't even think I could imagine how that would go down, all of my predictions were hidden by self-questioning of my own habitus.
What will my Hong Kong partner think of me?
Will they like me?
Will they think I am too laid back?
Will we be able to understand each other?
I say "understand each other", with a pretense of how we both live our lives and what shapes each of our own habitus. What is normal for them may, in fact, be something new to me and vice versa. I didn't know it at the time but I was approaching the task expecting something of a culture shock and instead I got cultural familiarity. My preconceived notions of Charlie were shocked by just how alike we are and this only furthered my understanding of this person. Pop culture has created a knowledge bridge between us and allowed us to connect of over something we both know.
Since the interview with Charlie, I've noticed a lot of my recent writing projects have centered on protagonists who are seeking to find new places to grow. Places where they are strangers, but where they can grow familiar without people in the space knowing anything about them unless they choose to interact. I think this idea has to lead me to take more risks with the pieces I have written and explore places I’ve been less inclined to write about as it allows me the entry into a setting unfamiliar to me space by proxy of someone who is new to the setting.
In the first of the blog posts I have selected I tentatively tried to explore the studio’s theme and to some extent, I think I was on the right track though I think my piece was afraid to really give the piece any real soul. Even the title of the piece, aptly called ‘Draft Very Drafty’ really doesn’t allow the piece any real at fully connecting to a reader because it feels like the writer aka me was unsure of how to embrace the prompt while taking Appiah’s cosmopolitanism quote into account. I wish to redraft this piece and include more of a sense of self-discovery and allow the voice in the piece to become a person, not just any person but a specific person who sees the world a specific way. I think this piece speaks to my own lack understanding of other cultures because I still feel like there is an element of my own that I am yet to grasp.
The second blog post I choose is another poetry piece I wrote for the ekphrasis poetry activity. I found this piece was cathartic in that it allowed me to channel my feelings and experiences through someone else’s eyes so to speak. I was drawn to the image I used because it instantly took me to place it was taken. I was standing under a tree covered in blossoms in the midst of late spring. I regret not channeling this in the piece though I am proud of what I wrote as I think it is more of a comment about my own habitus and how that can skew when a relationship goes bad. When I imagined this photo in other seasons it was easy to see the story forming through the image. In the future, I think it would be interesting to write more pieces but to test the bounds of that haunting phrase ‘write what you know’ and use images of places overseas such as coffee shops and houses and to seek understanding of how these settings reflect those who live there.
The third piece I choose to include in this folio is my debrief of the Initial Contact Discussion I wrote around 3 days after I made contact with my HKBU partner. Charlie surprised me so much, instantly we were able to relate over the TV shows and music we enjoy which really eased my own tension prior to the interview after I made the post. It felt like I was calling a friend of a friend. On the blog post I included an image of a quote from Greys Anatomy that is as follows:
“ The ties that bind us are sometimes impossible to explain. They connect us even after it seems like the ties should be broken. Some bonds defy distance and time and logic. Because some ties are simply… meant to be.”
Meredith Grey - Greys Anatomy
I’d love to be able to say I picked this quote specifically but the show itself is heavily based on relationships of the characters so there is a lot of quotes that feature a similar message. Referring to Meredith’s quote the ‘tie’ between me and my partner in Hong Kong defies distance. Hong Kong is so far away and yet out of all the people apart of this intercultural collaboration we were given the chance to work together and because of these similarities, we have had the advantage of being able to work together easily. All of my fears before the contact were really only a result of fear that I might do or say something wrong and I believe Charlie would’ve felt similar. I can now officially say I know someone who lives in Hong Kong, which is something, many of my family members can’t say because they simply haven’t been overseas or in contact with anyone from Hong Kong.
To summarise my blog, It’s been about me exploring literature and creative form so as to understand how I can interact with the culture all around me whilst being respectful. Someone who is new to a culture is always going to make mistakes, but someone who outright refuses to negotiate an understanding of a culture based off the fact that they are scared to get something wrong is someone who is never going to be given the chance to be corrected. I’ve found clarity in the discussions I’ve had with Charlie as it’s given me a bridge to their culture and essentially their own habitus. I'd even go as far as to say that given my knowledge of Charlie's habitus that I could write a tentative piece of fiction set in Hong Kong though I think it would be obvious that it was written by someone not familiar with the city.
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