My topic for my studio art foundation research project is human rights and the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Last semester I studied abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark and had the unique opportunity to travel around China for two weeks. I spent roughly one week in Beijing and noticed a lot of controversy surrounding their upcoming summer Olympics. Although the Olympic Games represent peace, brotherhood, and good friendly competition, China as a whole has an abysmal human rights record. For example, the "Bird's Nest" or the main Olympic Stadium that was just completed last year, is now standing on top of previous Chinese homes. The government paid these families to leave their homes and more to other parts of the city. Now Beijing's population is up to 14 million, and is still rapidly increasing. Where would these people go? Even in the occasion where the government did find a fitting area to relocate these people, most of the time the families could not afford to continue living on unsuitable farmland, or so far away from the city where they could not commute to work.
I was hoping to base my project around the theme of perspective. I want to collect images from other journalists and photographers, and base a collage of pictures off of their perspective. Then, if possible, I would like to construct a collage of pictures off of the photographs I managed to take in Beijing. This would give a student perspective to the project. I'd then like to add pictures to make a collage with the camera here at Denison, but I have not come up with an idea of how to take pictures at Denison in relation to Beijing and the Olympics. I like this idea, but I think it still needs to be tweaked before I finalize it.
Here are some pictures that I've collected so far:
