JIAYI ZHU
Unit 1 extension
In Unit 1, I focused on the study of father-daughter relationships within the family. The influence of opposite-sex parents on their children differs from that of same-sex parents. This difference is not only based on the distinct roles that parents play in a patriarchal society due to their gender but also on the varying needs of children of different genders in social life. The cognitive differences that arise between opposite-sex parents and their children bring about some common phenomena in these relationships, such as discipline in father-daughter relationships. These phenomena reflect broader socio-cultural contexts and power structures, revealing how gender roles and social expectations shape and reshape relationships within the family.
Archive project
My group members and I conducted research on the theme of family in the archive course. We have divided the topic into three parts based on what everyone is interested in and what is relevant. I mainly studied Freud's philosophy, we went to the Freud Museum for research, and also collected a lot of information through online archives. This gave me a lot of data support.
this is the triangular structure. In short, while one parent is the object of desire, the other is the « prohibitor », and therefore a good representation of the « bar ». when the child is born, that is to say when we go from One to two, a third entity must be taken into consideration.
Freud’s personality theory (1923) saw the psyche structured into three parts (i.e., tripartite), the id, ego, and superego, all developing at different stages in our lives.
According to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, the id is the primitive and instinctual part of the mind that contains sexual and aggressive drives and hidden memories, the super-ego operates as a moral conscience, and the ego is the realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego.
The basic dilemma of all human existence is that each element of the psychic apparatus makes demands upon us incompatible with the other two. Inner conflict is inevitable. For example, the superego can make a person feel guilty if rules are not followed. When there is a conflict between the goals of the id and superego, the ego must act as a referee and mediate this conflict. The ego can deploy various defense mechanisms to prevent it from becoming overwhelmed by anxiety.
And he mentioned in psychoanalysis that human behaviour is determined by unconscious motivations that stem from childhood experiences, as well as complex emotional attitudes to parents and siblings.
Further research
I read Chizuko Ueno's "The Formation and End of the Modern Family." Although the author primarily discusses the history of changes in the modern Japanese family, the influence of Confucian culture on Japanese culture means that the understanding and structure of the family in Japan can, to some extent, also be used to generalize the family patterns in Asia.
The Formation and End of the Modern Family
By Chizuko Ueno
Even among Freudian psychologists, there were early doubts about the applicability of the Oedipus complex to the Japanese. Applying Freud's developed theories mechanically, it would naturally lead to viewing the Japanese as a people lacking a superego.As early as the 1930s, a Japanese student of Freud, Heisaku Kosawa, developed the concept of the "Ajase complex" to replace the Oedipus complex. He believed that the protagonist Ajase from a Buddhist story, who suffered greatly after killing his father and imprisoning his mother upon being admonished, better explained the Japanese psyche. In the "Ajase complex," the "suffering mother" rather than the "punished father" becomes the trigger for the formation of the Japanese superego. The internalized "little god" or "voice of conscience" (also "the voice of the parents"), which monitors personal actions, for the Japanese, is formed not through the punishment of evil deeds but through the self-reproach and suffering of the mother.
Freud's theory is neither universal nor historically applicable. Once "the story of the son becoming the father" and "structural detachment" inherent in the modern Western European family are removed, the universality of the Oedipus complex is also negated.These discussions have heightened interest in the position of "mother" within the Japanese family.
Previously, I had been studying Freudian theories such as the Oedipus complex. After reading this book, I realized that due to the differences in cultural and social structures between the East and the West, we cannot simply apply the same theories to Asian societies. The patriarchal culture of family structures influenced by Confucianism, including relationships between spouses, fathers and sons, and mothers and sons, clearly needs to be re-examined. During this process, I also realized the significant role of the wife, or mother, within a family. As the central figure and a bridge within the family, the mother's role evidently has a profound impact. Additionally, in my literature review, I found that the mother-daughter relationship is often an overlooked aspect.
The Journal of Neuroscience, 2016
As I further researched the relationship and impact of same-sex and opposite-sex parents in the family on their children, I found that : Research indicates that mothers and daughters tend to communicate more frequently and with greater emotional intimacy compared to fathers and daughters. Mothers are often more inclined to discuss emotions, relationships, and personal experiences with their daughters, fostering a strong emotional bond. Gender dynamics within the family can also affect the parent-child relationship. The shared gender identity between mothers and daughters can create a sense of shared experiences and mutual understanding.
According to a 2016 study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the mother-daughter bond is the strongest of all parent-child relationships when it comes to the common way the brain processes emotions.
Byond the myths :
Mother-daughter relationships in psychology, history, literature and everyday life
By Shelley Phillips
Fathers bear only intermittent conflict. Mothers, because of domesti responsibilities and their special intimacies with daughters, carry the bur den of most of it. They are often at sea. When faced with their daughter' moodiness or unhappiness, they feel helpless, perhaps emotionaly exhausted if it goes on too long.
mothers are seen as nurturers more so than their fathers and this creates ambivalence towards the mother in infancy and childhood.' In the early years, nurturance is closely linked with depen-dence. In adolescence, dependence becomes an obstacle to autonomy and independence. Overcoming dependence requires a great deal of energy.
Then one day in a flash of insight, Mavis, who was born in the early 1900s, recalled a common teaching about raising girl babies:
"We were advised not to cuddle our female children too much as it might make them overly affectionate and hence promiscuous and turn them into fallen women."
Here we have in a nutshell the sadness of cultural prescriptions that disregard the basic needs of female children to satisfy a one-sided stereotype.
This passage explores the complexities of mother-daughter relationships, particularly the emotional burden a mother carries due to her family responsibilities and close bond with her daughter. It highlights that these responsibilities are often overwhelming, which can leave mothers feeling helpless and emotionally exhausted when dealing with their daughters' moodiness or unhappiness. This dynamic emphasizes the unique and deep nurturing role played by mothers compared to fathers, which in turn creates ambivalence in daughters during their early years.
Traditionally, mothers have been viewed as the primary caregiver, a role closely associated with dependence in infancy and childhood. As children enter adolescence, this dependence becomes an obstacle to their pursuit of autonomy and independence. The struggle to overcome dependence requires a great deal of emotional energy from both mother and daughter, which often leads to conflict and tension.
This profoundly illustrates the lasting impact of cultural and social expectations on mother-daughter relationships. It reveals how ingrained gender roles and stereotypes shape parenting and impact the emotional well-being of mothers and daughters, ignoring children's basic needs for love and safety.
Mindmap
When sorting out the logical relationship of the family, I focused on the competition, continuity and dependence in the mother-daughter relationship. I think this sums up the complexity of a mother-daughter relationship pretty well. As the second sex in society, the same-sex parent-child relationship is obviously more profoundly affected by society. For families with stronger patriarchy, a daughter's emotions towards her mother include love, contempt, dependence, competition, escape, understanding and other complex components.
As well as the above-mentioned "We were advised not to cuddle our female children too much as it might make them overly affectionate and hence promiscuous and turn them into fallen women." Based on my personal experience and understanding of Asian culture, as well as my collection of Interviews with Asian daughter groups, I think this situation was very common in Asia in the 90s and 00s. The father rarely expresses and supports the mother emotionally, which also leads to the rare emotional communication between the mother and the daughter. The manifestation can be reflected in collective contact such as hugging and kissing, etc. Of course, it is also influenced by Confucian culture. The concrete expression of emotions in Asian culture is more restrained.
I extracted hug as a keyword for visualization. Based on my personal experience I have almost no memory of hugging from my mother. At the same time, in Asian cultures, hugging is obviously a more appropriate way of physical contact to bring intimacy closer. At the same time, I think hugging is the simplest and most direct way to express affection and love and to build a relationship. At the same time, in the mother-daughter relationship, hugging can also represent love, comfort, understanding, acceptance, reconciliation, etc. I wanted to express my understanding of the mother-daughter relationship by recording a hug. And to make up for my missing memory of hugs.
Artist reference
I searched for the artist’s works using the keywords of hugging and mother-daughter relationship.
In this video, letters from her mother in Beirut, written in Arabic, move across the screen. They are read aloud,
in English, by the artist. Hatoum's mother is also heard, speaking openly about her feelings and sexuality, accompanied by images of her in the shower.
Hatoum's video suggests exile and displacement. She has said it also challenges 'the stereotype of Arab women as passive, mother as
non-sexual being'.
In this work, the author breaks down the barriers through physical nudity, and also breaks down the mother's psychological barriers, allowing mother and daughter to have real spiritual communication. I think some simple actions have a strong power in themselves to create emotional connections between people.
Measures of Distance, 1988
Mona Hatoum
Sacha and Mum depicts a mother and daughter locked in an emotional and physical struggle. Their exchange alternates between tenderness and aggression. Wearing amplified the audio and edited her footage so that picture and sound play backwards, forwards and reverse. The work might reflect how love and hostility are often hard to separate in family relationships.
The background music of this video was played backwards to give the entire video a stronger emotional impact. I realized that sound can also be a channel through which a video delivers key information
Sacha and Mum, 1996
Gillian Wearing CBE
In this work, Xing examines the complexity of power struggle and connection between people and the relation of “love”.
On one screen are the aged hands of the mother, insistently knitting a dress with love and care, and on the other, the daughter wears the dress as it unravels with her movement. A feeling of liberation is evoked as the daughter’s body slowly becomes exposed but also fragile, and vulnerable. The daughter is trapped in the thread, but she moves forward with an uncontrolled drive. Although the two actions are separate and seem contradictory, the viewer senses a complicity between mother and daughter, as if they share an unspoken, secret understanding.
Thread
Danwen Xin
I decided to record a hug in the form of a video. The video can show the whole process of the hug, including the beginning, duration and end. This temporal continuity can convey emotional layers and changes more profoundly. The audience can see the tiny movements and reactions during the embrace, and these details can enhance the realism and resonance of the work. Long-term hug videos can capture emotional fluctuations and changes, such as tension at the beginning, gradual relaxation during the process, etc.
Then I started thinking about how to record a hug. Based on my understanding of clothing during my undergraduate study of fashion design. I think clothing can not only record the shape of a hug but also its temperature. For clothing, choose the simplest white suspender skirt, which is like a nightgown that every girl has. Close-fitting clothing can also represent intimacy.
So I thought about using the cyanotype technique to turn clothing into photographic paper. Cyanotypes can take up to half an hour or more to achieve the desired exposure, which is exactly what I wanted. Unlike a brief, polite hug, I believe a long hug can build intimacy between two individuals.
In this video performance, I invite strangers on the street to give me a kiss, while recording their responses with a concealed video and sound camera. Employing the kiss as a metaphor for intimate exchange, the work is situated at the intersection of public space and private activity. It aims to ask, whether moments of intimacy can occur between strangers in public, whether the anonymity and phobia of urban space can be interrupted. Set up as a staged documentary, the work operates as both observation and performative scenario, perpetuated like an endless ritual. The work consist of two distinct edits - Version A, longer and more narrative/Version B, shorter and more formal in its endless loop of short clips of people leaning forward to kiss or receding in denial.
Melanie has chosen kiss as the medium to establish an intimate relationship. Kiss is a shorter but more intense act. For hugs, however, longer time is needed to build a connection.
These are fake family photos. Trish would contact groups camping on the beach and ask if she could be part of their family temporarily. She would take over the role of a woman in that group, usually a mother, and wear a piece of clothing as a talisman. Then, under my guidance, she would take photos of us while she, a stranger, snuggled up with the woman's loved ones.
Front
By Trish Morrissey
Trish explores the sense of boundaries by taking on the role of mother in a strange family. This inspired me to define the role of hugging. Do I need to invite a "mother" to hug me? After thinking about the starting point of this project, I chose myself as the "mother" and invited a girl of similar age to be the "daughter". I wanted to see myself through a mother’s perspective and embrace my “daughter” in the way that I longed for.
Cyanotype experiment & material testing
After determining the material and form, I did some experiments on cyanotype, mainly simulating the folding and folding effect during a hug and the cyanotype effect of fabrics in various states.
binding&folding testing
folded and exposed multiple times
Partially overlapping exposure on the same piece of fabric
Repeated exposures are darker than single exposures
Expose directly without drying after applying cyanotype
The shape is blurry and the color is lighter than after blow drying
After applying cyanotype, blow dry, wash with water or acidic liquid, and then expose.
After cleaning, the exposure effect is basically lost, and the cleaning effect of acidic liquid is better.
water acidic liquid
Cyanotype processing
The exposure problems were encountered during the experiment. Clothes coated with cyanochrome solution are normally yellow-green after being made, but no matter how they are stored in the dark (tested under various light-proof conditions) they will turn blue-gray after one day. This means that I have to create the costumes immediately before I decide to shoot them rather than having them prepared in advance. It also depends on the weather that day and when it's made. This caused a lot of trouble for my video shooting. After testing, I found that the blue-gray skirt was not in a state of being exposed, and could still be washed away with water. However, this made it impossible to clearly record the process of forming a hug in the video. So I did some AB solution ratio tests.
In this test, I changed the ratio of the cyanotype solution and applied the same 15 minutes of ultraviolet irradiation. There was no obvious difference in the actual finished product. However, since this laboratory was conducted in a UV box, changes during the process could not be observed. A test in daylight is also needed to determine whether the ratio will affect imaging time and effects.
Behind the scenes
I chose the forest as the setting for this embrace because, to me, my relationship with my mother is like that of a tree and the sun. Sunlight is essential to the tree; the tree yearns for the sun and strives to grow towards it, attempting to get closer. The sun's rays nurture and warm the tree, but there remains a vast distance between them.
At the same time, I invited my mother to record a nursery rhyme for me as background music. Her mother sang it to her when she was a child. She also sang it to me when I was a child. This is a continuation of maternal love. The way my mother loves me comes from how her mother loved her. The most intimate moment I remember was when my mother put me to sleep when I was a child. This is why I chose a white dress that looked like a nightgown. I tried to restore our most intimate moment and then record the hug that impressed me most.
LYRICS
月儿明，风儿轻，
The moon is bright and the wind is quiet,
树叶儿遮窗棂。
The leaves cover the window lattice.
小宝宝，睡梦中，
Baby, sleeping,
啦啦啦啦啦啦啦。
lalalalalalala.
Final work
The first two groups were the finished products of a double hug, which were finally displayed. The third group is my double exposure on the same dress, recording two overlapping hugs. Although this part is not exhibited, it will be a content that I will continue to develop in the future.
The final product is not what I expected, because of the uncertainty under sunlight, the imaging effect is not as clear as that produced in a UV box, but it was still unexpectedly good visual effect. I will continue to experiment and find better ways to get better imaging results