Hey Y’all, Max here.
My previous experience with PLP exhibitions have generally been quite hit-or-miss. Sometimes my grade will get a great project that’s supposed to be presented in an interesting way, and sometimes my grade will be left opening doors for guests ( that hasn’t happened yet but I imagine it will ). My Experience with this years Winter Exhibition was somewhere in between but nonetheless it as an interesting night.
PLP 10 was going into this exhibition with the Ology of Apology project, which I think might be an annual project for PLP 10 (?). The project was about how wrongdoings in the past have influenced the world today, with a central focus on Canada’s history of exclusion towards Asian-Canadians, Asian-Immigrants, or anyone of Asian lineage. Another important part of this project was the change in management. Ms. Madsen was replaced by Ms. Pitches, who would be heading this project. The project officially started on Halloween, but nothing really got done until November.
The three main events we were studying were the Komagatamaru, Chinese head tax, and japanese Internment. Everyone started out studying broader examples of ‘exclusion’ around the world, and eventually everyone was sorted into one of the three main groups. I was placed in the Japanese Internment group. PLP Projects that deal with famous wars or political events throughout history are typically my forte, so I was glad to be sorted into this group. One of the first orders of business was to make a spreadsheet about various pieces of Anti-Japanese propaganda used during the Second World War, and see how historically relevant or significant it is/was. The term ‘ethical judgement’ was used heavily throughout this project, and we spent a great deal of time learning how to identify ethical judgement, which eventually was turned into a keynote presentation which I eventually used during the Exhibition.
Learning about one demographic was interesting, but the next part of this project allowed people form different parts of this project to come together and collaborate in groups about an aspect of the movie Avatar. It seemed pretty random to me, but Avatar does have a lot of themes about humanity, racism, oppression, etc. My new group consisted of Sylas, and Noah
( In other words, the dream team ).
In this new group we were tasked with creating something to put on display at the exhibition, that demonstrates the central theme of racism. Almost right away we decided that it would be cool if we could 3D print something. It was then decided we should print a mountain or a steep incline after we saw some promotional art for the movie World War Z. You can see our train of thought in the image below. We originally had the people on the top of the mountain represent the immigrants and minorities struggling to survive, but then we ultimately changed it so the people on top represented the racists, and the people climbing the mountain are the Asian immigrants or Asian-Canadians.
This isn’t entirely relevant, but we did also get inspiration from watching footage and reading about the Rooftop Koreans during the 1992 LA Riots. It’s a really interesting story about how Korean immigrants defended themselves in one of the worst modern riots in America, so if you haven’t heard of it I recommend reading about it.
^
We did make some slight changes from our original planning, but the final result looked great.
According to Sylas the mountain took 22 hours to 3D print, while the base took 8 hours to print. Noah made the people out of copper wire, which apparently took almost as long to finish as the 3D prints.
The driving question for the Ology of Apology project is: “How can we keep apologies for past wrongs alive so they are remembered and not repeated today?” We’ve talked about this a lot recently, not just in this project but also in different projects in the past. There is a saying that says “history is written by the victors”. It basically means that the people who have instigated/committed and won will usually record what they’ve done as a good act, something to be remembered positively, even when it ultimately isn’t. To remember history accurately means to be able to consider every perspective, to be able to justify what has happened, and to be able to make the future generation understand what happened, so as either to repeat or to change the future.
THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition itself was, from my experience with exhibitions, pretty good. I feel that compared to the spring exhibition everything went smoothly, everyone knew their place, and nothing went seriously wrong.
My group was assigned to the library, which was called the white room ( Im assuming because there was white decor everywhere ). The library was fairly empty compared to other parts of the school. I don’t think there was enough signs that showed there was another room in the back of the library. But aside from that it was great. As people walked by we ( me ) would explain our sculpture, the messaging, and how we had put everything together. By the end of the night I had probably said the same 3 lines 3 dozen times.
Of course there was the pre-exhibition stress with everyone running around like headless chickens, which is accompanied by post-Exhibition stress to clean everything up before the school day tomorrow. PLP Exhibitions are usually hectic from end to beginning and this one had no shortage of that. And finally to answer the Driving Question, “What does James Camerons fantasy world of Avatar reveal about our own society?”. Avatar is a movie that inadvertently shows the negative aspects of humanity such as corporate greed, discrimination, and colonialism. Events like Japanese Internment are great examples of human discrimination and racism. Avatar simply shows the natural dark sides of humanity; racism, greed, etc. Just through a lense that’s fictional and entertaining.
The last opinion I’ll give about this project is that from the beginning to the end i feel like it took too long to prepare for the exhibition. This felt like a long project because it began a month and a half ago but we only started making a final product towards the last 1/4th of the project, which felt severely rushed. I don’t think the pressure to prepare for the exhibition was anywhere near D.I, but it did feel like everyone in PLP forgot it was happening until the last second. Thats all I’ll say for now so this post doesn’t go on too long.
Overall, the Winter Exhibition was a success. 7.5/10