Self-Zine project: 3 chapters about me.
This is the place. The coordinate shifts, everything swifts, but what remains inside is still the same.
For my self-zine, I exploited some of the elements that are important to me. The three chapters in the zine are Biogenic Nature, Sociogenic Nature, Idiosyncratic. I labeled each with a latitude and longitude of places. The first one is the coordination of my hometown, Kunming, Yunnan, China. This is the place I was born and spent my childhood. The second chapter's name is the coordination of Boston, the city I study abroad. The third chapter's coordination is an imaginary space, indicating the inside of my mind, which means something unique for me.
The first image is the book cover, and the rest pages are the inside content.
24.8801° N, 102.8329° E is the longitude and latitude of my hometown, Kunming. The province has complex geographic features, and one of the famous attractions is the "Stone forest." My family often went hiking in this maze made with groups of giant uplifting stones, and the road became hard to navigate sometimes. Although the city is known as very peaceful, I've always felt not fit in the place. There are so many things going on outside the world, but this place is rather shut-in. I chose the colored drawings on top of black-white on top of black-white photos to illustrate the contrast.
The second chapter begins with a new longitude and latitude. I came to Boston to study abroad, and this is where my life had a new turn and where I met many new people. Although prepared for living in a new place, I was overwhelmed by how different I was and how hard to maintain friendships or get along with people. People usually describe me as not straightforward, because my fear of being judged often got me. However, they helped me to overcome my difficulties, and it was not an easy route. The uneasy route is shown in the wavy lines from the topographic map. This chapter has more colored illustrations and a personalized Boston map of my memories with friends.
70° N, 180° E doesn't exist on the map. I use this coordination to indicate the position of my mind. I believe the mind is what makes each person unique. My mind is filled with lots of stuff, and I often think a lot. There are lots of windows and I put different things in each of them. There are my happiness and sadness, my confusions and clarities, etc. They are complex, just like the topographic maps. Maybe hard to navigate, but once you get the method, I'm easy to read.
