Installation

Three screens, each displaying two different videos, were distributed along the main hallway in the 4th floor - the floor where all design departments are located. We wanted locals to recognise familiar faces - a sense of "familiar strangers" - and be curious about exploring their stories. In addition, each screen included one foreign language that is not commonly used within the ZHdK - such as English or German are. With this decision we hoped to catch the curiosity of passersby.  

We decided to not include the interviewees' names in our videos as we felt that these experiences, although personal, can happen to any international. It also supported our goal of "familiar strangers" where locals might be inclined to actually approach these faces and to start a conversation with them. This actually happened throughout the morning of our exhibition - both Emma and Ju had been approached by locals who inquired about their stories.

For each screen we placed a descriptive text, in English and in German, that gave a description of our project Hollow.

During our exhibition we were happy to observe that our portrayals of the international students did gain attention - people did stop and spend time to take in their stories and listen to their voices. We had managed to invite people to approach these internationals.

Our exhibition, however, does have room for improvements. Our descriptive text was definitely too small to read and therefore failed in its function to inform. 

We also received comments from our mentor Joëlle: she felt that the context was missing outside of the video.

This may be something to consider for in future, but we didn't want to portray these internationals as if they were in a zoo. People should be lured into their stories based on their expressions, voices and stories - short their personalities. We wanted to portray them humanly and didn't want to objectify them.