in general

This project is about to discover and understand a foreign culture, to value the differentness as well as to get inspired for the individual working process.

how to do?

As often it is very simple, but difficult in the same way: Have a close look on the workaday life. That´s all! Forget your prejudice, forget everything you know about the foreign culture, be open minded, no self fullfilling prophecy, dont look for patterns you know, it´s all strange but nice...

in detail

we care about

- things that get lost
- professions that disappear
- approach of action or customs, that impend to get more and more lost

This is going to be researched,  to be interpreted in a new way and to be recompiled into the here-and-now.

examples from China

- The traditional glassy drinking vessel for green tea was meanwhile adapted by companies like Nike,  Bodum and Fissler

- The principle: „cluster instead of traffic lights“ gets a new meaning in terms of a roundabout in Europe

- Meals with 36 components were unknown by now - could happen, that we will all eat from every plate

examples from Germany

- waste seperation at home: how long do Germans keep on seperating waste in their flats? - no one knows. The Chinese are suspicious about that.

- drinking beer: the missing enzyme let Chinese get in trouble.

- small cities: every Chinese County Seat has got 2 Mio. inhabitants; Chinese people are often astonished at that, little amount of people out on the street in Germany

To start the project, we will have visits in Germany and China, two weeks each in October 2009. There will be a workshops at the universities in the first week , second week are vists in different cities near by Tianjin and Halle.