My Dear Students of Hum 243--Summer 2022,
In creating our syllabus for this year, I was pretty confident that we would produce another edition of our anthology, Heads & Tales. The inaugural edition came out of the fall 2019 class and in summer 2021, we created the second edition. While the fall seemed ideal–more time for creation and revision, and the Thanksgiving break–summer 2021 proved what our students’ famed brilliance, diligence, and drive could create in 5 weeks. So, I stated our objective to create Heads & Tales 2022 boldly in our course description.
As I write, we are still writing, editing, and curating our tales, and creating our website. This, however, is not because of procrastination or indifference. Far from it: it speaks to your creative restlessness, ingenuity, and professionalism, to your determination to invest all of your selves into perfecting, as far as possible, a project to which you are committed. I am amazed at your resilience and tenacity: you have joined class from your bedrooms and workplaces, from Germany and Mexico, and even while commuting. We also all shared and witnessed our feelings of fatigue, guilt, anxiety, and depression–whether in waves or like a weighted blanket. I do not, and have never taken for granted the struggles, labor and dedication that go into your genius.
As in years past, you volunteered for the boards and appointed their heads. You were perhaps the most collaborative team so far, as many of you served on multiple boards as contributors and liaisons, and you pitched in to help wherever it was needed. You wrote such amazing stories drawing from your experiences and cultural influences, designed multiple original artworks in consultation with the tales’ authors, and performed editorial functions. You secured the host for our site, coordinated all the efforts required, and designed the digital text. And you did this all remotely in a semester when some of us would have benefitted from the immediacy of in-person teaching.
I created this course back in 2014 in response to various needs I saw in the HSS curriculum: for greater interdisciplinarity, for more creative-based offerings and projects, for more inclusive pedagogy, and for greater recognition of student labor and effort over a semester. So, it was wonderful to see HUM 243: The Fairy Tale cited for innovative pedagogy in the report of recommendations from the Visiting Committee for Humanities and Social Sciences, 2022. Whether or not I will teach this course again, I hope that it continues to be offered, that future classes continue reading and analyzing the tales of the world’s traditions and continue them with new editions of Heads & Tales.
Now, to you, individually, my deep thanks and admiration:
Our digital text production team of Orchid Sylvester, Simon Yoon, Amanda Blanca, Eugene Jeong and Chris George, with invaluable assistance from Richard Yurewitch III.
Our editorial team of Jiah Jin, Gautaman Asirwatham, Matthew Leach, Anahita Sukhija.
Our art team of Natalia Salas Porras, Ananya Malagi, Fruie Athena Macris, Nyiesha Mallett, Ruiqi Ma, and Nico Chiat, headed by Cesar Rodriguez.
Our project management team of Amanda Blanca, Nico Chiat, and Gautaman Asirwatham, who created timelines, kept us on track, liaised among all boards, and created the invitation and flier for our unveiling.
Keep each other close, if possible. You are why we are here. You have my undying gratitude, admiration, and respect.
I hope you had fun and felt some joy this semester. And if you’re ever in doubt about your magic, read through our little book and see that you really did spin straw into gold.
Monday 27th June, 2022.
Sincerely,
Ramdass
"I wanted to write about something lighthearted and funny, something I’ve never done before. There had to be a big emphasis on the setting and the bright and colorful nature of a town. My grandmothers’ roots are in Spain, and she’d always talk about the cobblestone streets and sweet smells of the countryside, so I thought that was a perfect place to land. Sadly, I was cursed with being lactose intolerant and if you know anything about Spanish people you know that cheese is not an if but a when. The idea of designing a kingdom that reflects myself and what inevitably happens when my body is no longer able to protect me. I mean how weak really, I’m down because of a slice of pizza?! Having the kingdom crumble to its knees because of this cunning intruder and knowing very well that it will suffer for about 4 to 5 hours but will forget about the next day was hilarious to me. I mean no one really talks about how embarrassing but humorous it is to be lactose intolerant so why not me." - Amanda
Amanda Blanca is a Cuban American Designer with a central focus on product development. Her work explores sustainability and human-centered design through material development and accessibility discourse aided by design. Her interest in design as a form of activism pushes her to explore and develop a language in design that creates bridges, not boundaries. Her background as a graphic designer has provided her with the tools to create a visual language that is both engaging and technically rich.
"My story was inspired by thoughts about what it was that made trees able to grow in theinteresting ways that they do, what that can tell about the way we can use our own intellect todo what it is that we will do. A tree that is able to live so long could not be living a painfulexistence, otherwise it would find ways to make its life easier to live, which is something onlyhumans do. Then I started thinking about if trees know what it is like to be a human and all ofthe impatiences and interesting ways that we go about thinking and doing things. Then I startedto consider what would happen if a really impressive tree that lived its life in a normal way gotturned into a human, realized all of these stress points, and began to think like a human, andthen got turned back into a tree. And what I imagined would happen is that it would becomeself-conscious, and start to grow in a sort of unnatural way, like looking first at the other treesand trying to make the branches look like them, and then looking at the different things around itto try and understand itself by looking at everything else, and it would be possibly unhappybecause it would have to live a tree’s lifespan with a human’s patience.It is about a girl who turns a tree into a person for company, and takes him to into a town withdifferent people who introduce him to human ways of thinking. After some time of being with thepeople, he loses the way of thinking when he was a tree and when he is eventually turned backinto a tree, he has lost his form and must live as a tree while thinking like a person." - Anahita
My name is Anahita and I am a junior in the School of Art. I work primarily in, painting, video,and performance. My work is about answering questions I have about people and the differenttypes of values people carry in their lives. I also like to capture experiences or things thathappen throughout the day.
"Lately I’ve been interested in the pop-culture phenomenon of Vampires, and why out of all fairy tale legends and monsters, vampires have been regurgitated so many times in so many ways. I also love how stupid or camp a lot of vampire re-boots are. I started with the idea of a vampire, and ended up with writing something in a more serious tone. To me, the main element of being a vampire is immortality at the cost of having a cursed life - there’s always a lesson in how morality is what makes life worth living. I wondered if a Vampire could represent traditions that have gone on too long, or states of decay. In my story, I have a vampire help save a family from the old Hindu tradition of Sati, or widow burning, by passing on the curse to the daughter of the family. There is a long and controversial history of Sati, in pre and post colonial India, that holds a lot of nuances I wanted to try and point to. Mainly, my character is a young woman like me, having to reckon with the new and old, traditions that are violent, and the space between being a dutiful daughter vs, ultimately, a lawless vampiric “monster”. " - Ananya
My name is Ananya Malagi and I will be a Senior in the School of Art. I work using mostly photography, video, and sculpture. I’m interested in performance and documentary, and think of my work as a way to connect to the people and things I care about. I like combining this with fantasy and imaginary elements as well. I’m really excited to be taking a course in set and costume design at Central Saint Martins this summer, and I can’t wait to combine all the things I enjoy into a potential career. Big love to everyone in the class and Ramdass who made this project so cool!
"In my tale, I wanted the ladybugs to have agency as a collective to bring interest and perspective to the way they maneuvered themselves. A ladybug can be meaningful by itself, but what would it mean to see thousands at once congregating in a space. I wanted a spectacle that is just as beautiful as it is imperceivable and abstract. I focused on creating an arbitrary scene that didn't really reveal why the ladybugs were there to begin with, but would show that their existence is justified just by the sheer magnitude of their presence in this form. I tried to craft a story that revolved around solitude, faith, and patience. For me, this was about the character learning to make something of what is there in the present moment and not needing a reason or explanation to trust herself and feel joy." - Cesar
My name is Cesar Rodriguez and I’m a rising senior in the School of Art. I work through several mediums like photography and painting but I have always been focused on drawing primarily. Organizing information and contextualizing research is of interest to me, so I use design often to tie my ideas together. Recently I’ve been looking at transportation and topography of different landscapes in my work to visualize stories and sensations, like sound and texture. In the future I want to be working with others to discover new patterns and ideas about the areas we inhabit and continue to create both expressive and designed work that can be offered back into the world with care. Big shoutout to my high school English teacher Ms.Rodriguez for having the passion for her work that I hope to continue striving for with my own endeavors.
"I originally wanted my story to be set in northern Italy in a small principality/fiefdom with a plot that would center around the plot device of a hereditary mark that appears on the chosen heir of a family. I was also going to make the protagonist more cunning than he ended up being in the end. I mean like he was meant to be machiavellian, never showing his hand until the last moment.I wanted to draw inspiration from the Italian fairy tales we read in class like “Costanza/Constanzo” and “Cat Cinderella.” Instead, through the course of writing everything, that idea eventually was kind of dropped. The aspect of the mark remained in the story and was expanded upon to specifically center around the conflict between a younger, illegitimate son and his elder brother. The general gist of the plot became: The elder brother is slated to inherit the family’s things due to his legitimacy while the more competent son is looked over, how will the younger son prove himself? The idea to make the two duke it out in a competition to prove the protagonist’s worth came from a lot of the multiple stories that we read in class, but I was also kind of inspired by remembering Penelope and the suitors from the Odyssey who tried to resolve a domestic dispute using by a somewhat militaristic method, bowmanship, which is pretty arbitrary in determining how good these men would be as husbands. The whole thing ends up as a blood bath anyways. In lieu of a blood bath, my tale instead concludes with a sword fight. Since all the two sons are fighting over is a commercial contract for selling goods in the city, my story also follows the classical classical tradition of using violence to solve things that don’t really require it. Over time the setting was eventually moved to somewhere generally in southern India long ago, but I eventually settled specifically in Kerala circa 14th-15th century because that is a place I have the most personal experience since my family is from there. This state in southwestern India was the site of a lot of trade that occurred over the years across the Indian Ocean from the shores of Madagascar to the Strait of Malacca. Various peoples and groups came to interact from these routes, like there was a community of Jews in the large port cities, Christianity made its way to India in the 1st century, and there’s a legend that a local king traveled to Arabia to meet the Prophet Mohammad during his lifetime. The global connections of the pre-UN world are rarely discussed unless they grew into something that’s relevant to modern geopolitics. Plenty of books have diverse casts of people that come from places that are called by a different name today or may not exist in any form today, and though it may be simply a minor detail in the greater scheme of the story, I personally relish in finding archaic words used for peoples and places in the past. When reading Moby Dick and My Name is Red, I was exposed to so many new words that I don’t think I would have ever come to know any other way. These books gave me an interesting perspective that many history textbooks cannot, they allow you to see through the eyes of people who lived on a whaling ship from Nantucket or in the medieval Ottoman Empire. If I had the time I would have put more effort into trying to incorporate that all encompassing kind of atmosphere along with trying to fit a more machiavellian plot into the whole thing." - Chris
I’m Chris George, a soon to be 4th year chemical engineering student at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. I have experience in both process design and supplier management, and I’m trying to bridge the gap, so to speak, between the two by learning about procurement for large scale processing plants. Outside of school I enjoy reading about history and learning how it affects modern societies (particularly America’s) and global geopolitics more generally. I would like to thank Professor Ramdass for all he has done for me. Though I have faltered often in this class, he was always able to reach out and give me the motivation I needed to work, alongside some very relevant life advice. Thank you.
"The writing of my story “perceptive potato” came from personal experiences. The personal experience that inspired my story's themes was how society perceived knowledge and intellect. Growing up, especially in an Asian household, there exists so many standards which children are held upon until they reach college. The stereotypical grade A student who would then become a doctor or lawyer was something I experienced. However after becoming more educated about the possibilities that exist for so many people who didnt attend college, it really shook my world. I was always taught that there is a standard and if it isn't met, you would be valued as lower. This was all I knew growing up. I was told to get the best grades, and the best job because it would make the most money in the end, and although they aren’t entirely wrong, they aren't entirely right either. I wanted to touch on the fact that these standards, these tests, and all we are striving to learn, at its core aren’t important even though society places so much value on them. It's the only standard that people rely on which makes it so important. So, the themes I wanted to pin point were selflessness, inner value and intelligence, and lastly expressing differences. I tried to implement a blind man who knew a lot as a way to give duality in what knowledge entails because he would only be an auditorial learner. This limits his comprehensibility but in the end it was revealed that he was also able to obtain the book. My main character had a difference which wasn’t welcomed as much as it should be, and in consequence showed how much people are afraid of change. This was one of my only creative writings since elementary school. It was very interesting because in the beginning I had nothing creative to write about. I didn’t know what problems and themes I wanted to highlight, where the story would take place, or even the fairy-tale aspect of my story. Getting past all of this, I let my mind wander and I really enjoyed piecing together a story that I found interesting. I listed a bunch of ideas, plots, themes, and qualities that I wanted included in my story and tried to align them best as possible to make the story as logical as it can. My story would be about a boy that although viewed as less, is worth so much more but society finds it hard to see that. His genetic anomaly would pin on the fact that everyone is kind of the same but he’s different, willing to take a new path to the same-ish goal. The inspiration for the class names came from my love for potato variations and character name from shows/animes I have been loving. Shinra is the main character of an anime called Fire Force and he has a genetic anomaly, this causes society to view him as a devil but he's trying to prove to everyone he can be a hero (very similar for a reason). The Arsenals are like the grimoires from an anime called Black Clover (a wizard anime where the grimoires are personal spell books). Lastly the trials were generated from my love for puzzles and characters who are really smart and can think outside the box. Originally my story was going to be about greed and selflessness entirely because those stories make me feel good when the humble being gets rewarded while the greedy get jealous. But I wanted something more meaningful deep down like all the stories we have read so far. So as previously stated, I jotted down themes and problems to address and this is where all my problems arose. It was like working my story backwards because there were ideas that would be written but wouldn’t align with the story so I had to pick and choose what would work and what would make my story too confusing. Working with my classmates of HUM 243 has been such a good experience. Being surrounded by such talented students who have the ability to write amazing stories and illustrate them has been really eye-opening. I love the way they have been so cooperative with their groups and how they are so versatile with their roles. I have such a skilled group for the book production and such a talented artist who helped better visualize my story (Natalia Salas Porras). If given more time I would detail my story more so it can be read more easily and have the themes more easily attained. I feel as if my story only dabbles in the themes for short amounts of time thus not making it an essential theme. With more time I can better bridge the themes and plot together. However, with the time being, I am glad I was able to give Professor Ramdass a good read, because he claimed that he really enjoyed it. " - Eugene
Eugene Jeong, Rising senior Mechanical Engineering major, Class of 2023. Currently, I am working on summer research with Professor Baglione and some other students trying to make our school more energy efficient. Besides my major, I am very interested in the entertainment industry and would like to put myself out there to give people laughs through social media and other entertainment software. Currently, I find myself trying to pursue a career in either energy efficiency, control systems, or product development. If I manage to get a job early after graduating I would like to pursue a Masters while working. However, this is all very up in the air because the future is too hard to predict.
“‘Angry Men’ is a fairytale of a girl on her journey to become a woman in an imaginary city where she encounters different dangerous and angry men. She confronts them and learns to protect herself, while also learning a lesson of friendship along the way…………. …In the end this fairytale led me to find new lessons within my experiences that I didn’t see in them before.” - Fruie
Fruie is an artist and writer from NYC. Her visual artwork portrays the intimate dialogue between her internal experience and her relationship to the external world. Her work so far as a writer draws from experiences growing up in New York. Her Fairy Tale for ‘Heads and Tales’ edition 2022 is a story about the challenges young girls and women face, in the face of angry men.
"When I had the chance to take an English elective this summer, Fairy Tales stood out to me because I don’t have much experience with the genre despite loving fiction books. I remember reading the Cinderella stories and discussing them as a class. The stories were more complex and intentional than I realized in my first reading. I underestimated the depth of fairy tales at first but after class I was inspired to read more closely and think more deeply. Soon after, we did “Ode to Mulan” which became one of my favorite stories ever. The writing was so beautiful. Repetition was used often but it never dragged the story, instead it was concise and elegant. The story felt so timeless, grounded in both the setting of past China and in the fundamental experience of gender. The message was provocative but mature and respectful of all perspectives. The character had little dialogue or direct characterization but felt so real and layered. It surprised me that such a great story had no author accredited, but that only added to the intrigue for me. When we had to make our own fairy tale, I wanted to write one like Ode to Mulan. To write something good, I would need a solid understanding of whatever subject matter I wrote about. I decided to model my character and story about my own life and the struggles I had and lessons I learned. It always feels too personal to write about my life but fairy tales allow me to use symbolism and story telling to give myself some anonymity. The main themes I decided to tackle are physical and sexual violence, lack of identity, and the search for meaning. These are pretty broad themes so I decided that I needed more than one character. This led me to my first plot point, the main character who represented me would split into 4 characters who would each allow me to demonstrate some part of my life. Each character represents different parts of my life, the youngest being childhood and each character afterwards being a maturation of the last. I decided at the end the characters would reform into one being. Mirroring my process of reflection on my life and the reintegration of old memories. I am proud of how the plot worked out. I feel pre-planning my structure helped me a lot. When I read the finished story, the pacing is one aspect I feel happy about. My story is 1879 words long which is not too long for having 4 main characters and multiple settings and mini-plots. My structure led me to have an abrupt and unresolved ending. I like this too because it aligns with where I am regarding understanding my own life right now. If I offered any clear stance or solutions to the dilemmas faced by my character, they would be premature and not well thought out. If I could do this over, I would make each character more unique from each other. I struggled with characterization because I wanted to plot to move quickly. In Ode to Mulan, most of the characterization was indirect and was worked masterfully so as to not delay the plot. I am not skilled enough yet to pull that off. Also, I would make more time for writing. Finally, I would discuss my story with my classmates more to make my story way better. I also enjoyed the process of doing editorials. If the class was longer, I would love to do another round. My classmates' stories are really good. I'm glad we are sharing them with each other so I can read everyone's final copies. I also liked the professor a lot. He was very understanding and cared a lot about teaching us and getting us to think for ourselves. I am really grateful for my classmates who did most of the readings, participated a lot,supported each other, and are so incredibly interesting to talk to and listen to in discussions. Moving forward, I might try writing a story for fun this summer while I have time. " - Gaudtaman
My name is Gautaman Asirwatham. I study mechanical engineering at Cooper Union and am currently a rising junior. In school, I learn about math and science. Outside of school, I like to learn about everything. I like to cook, to read, and to spend time with friends and family. My dream for the future is to learn a lot and become a strong person that people can rely on. When I am old, I want to be a teacher. Shout out to this class for supporting each other and making class interesting.
"The Witch is the first fairy tale and the first creative writing piece I have written, which provided a great challenge for me. Since this would be my first time writing this genre, I wanted a topic that I am familiar with. For this reason, this fairy tale is inspired by my personal experience in middle school, where I witnessed one of my close friends being physically and verbally bullied, and I was tremendously impacted by being friends with her. At times, the experience vividly relives itself, and the scene of bullying, as well as the overwhelming helplessness, still impacts me. In order to accurately convey this feeling, I wrote the fairy tale the same way I experienced it–in the first person, and I formatted it as a diary: I wanted this to be authentic. I hope that the tragic end to the diary’s keeper strikes a chord and stimulates some reflection. When deciding on the setting, I based it on my middle school but also added elements of magic, ghosts, and witchcraft. The fantastic elements were added to blur the boundary between reality and imagination. It also allows the inquisition about whether the main character is hallucinating. One particular challenge for me in writing this fairy tale is that I have never written a diary in English before. My writing encountered a few issues such as being too formal and not matching the casual tone expected of a diary. However, after some suggestions and editing, I was able to overcome this issue. The feedback from the professor and my editor helped a lot with my writing by providing different perspectives and making my prose match a middle schooler. Overall, I enjoyed writing this fairy tale since it enabled me to express my creativity. I am especially proud of how I added depth to the story by creating a plot twist: the reveal of a double diary and the doctor’s note. This subverts the reader’s expectations and makes it more interesting to read since the reader gets to slowly piece together details before the reveal. " - Jiah
My name is Jiah Jin. I am a junior majoring in mechanical engineering and currently pursuing a math minor. Within my major, I am interested in control systems. Most of the time I enjoy staying home, doing nothing on my bed, and playing the bass guitar. I also enjoy taking walks in random parks and feeding squirrels or coloring my coloring book. I envision a math major in graduate school, and hopefully, a stable job in mathematics to feed myself and my family.
"Since I was a child, I’ve always enjoyed fairytales. As early as I can remember, I would stay up well past my bedtime and read old fairy tales by lamplight. There was something about the gritty illustrations and the strange twists which really drew me in. A few years back, I was perusing the shelves in a dusty bookstore in Lake Placid, way north in the Adirondacks, and a particular book caught my eye. It was a beautifully illustrated book of Scandinavian folk tales, translated into English. That book got me interested in fairytales again; to me, there was a sense of childlike wonder about them. For me, fairytales aren’t necessarily governed by rules, random things can just happen with no rhyme or reason, and that’s why I like them so much. And because the rules are so loose and free the format allows for ample exploration of that which is absurd and uncanny. For some reason, I keep remembering this short story called “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The setting is not a fairytale world, with witches and kingdoms; it’s just a fishing village. But absurd things happen, and Marquez adds in fairy tale elements to dig at how humans are cruel or compassionate to those who are dependent or different. He juxtaposes the characters’ compassion to their child with the callousness to the old man, whom they decide to cast away until they realize they can profit off of him. In the end, it’s a fairy tale which mocks the catholic church and human nature. And I think that’s where fairytales fall short. They idealize the main character, who is the fairest or purest or kindest or bravest, and they’re clever, so they outsmart the bad guy. Those stories are perfectly fine and alright, but I feel like the fairytale format can explore far more than teaching children good morals. For instance, the classic film Howl’s Moving Castle from Studio Ghibli is one of my favorite films, and I think that it is a wonderful example of a modern fairytale. Each of the characters have their own agendas; in the end, there aren’t any heroes or villains, they’re just people. Each character has some sort of curse or flaw, and the beauty of it all is that the viewer sees the physical and emotional transformations of each character, and the fairytale as a medium of conveying the story works perfectly. Reflecting on my own story, I wanted to build a world around this valley, where each of the characters lived in a sort of ecosystem and acted off of each other. For instance, I created the Magnolia tree as an object of beauty; I must be careful as to how I say this, but I wanted to mock how I saw classic fairy tales that Disney butchered. For instance, the Willow is incredibly jealous of the Magnolia tree, who people admire for its beauty more than the Willow’s beauty. People often say ‘weeping willow’ or ‘widowed willow’, and personify the willow as an elderly person, while the magnolia flower is associated with purity, beauty, and youth. Because of that interpretation, I’m not too happy with the symbolic implications of the end of the story, but I think the beginning is wonderful. I tried to keep a satirical tone with a kafkaesque atmosphere throughout the story. The absurdity of the premise of the story, that nostalgic feeling of turning back the clock, of going back from Summer to Spring, was a pretty fun concept to explore. All the characters all kind of lack any agency; most of the side characters are governed by something else, whether they’re a victim of a parasitic heart or magical powers which they had no choice over. I do wish that I had more time, though. I read a lot of stories in this class, and I recently read “The Little Prince” on my own time. I think these stories would have inspired me to write my stories differently. I didn’t have to make my story all that melancholic; I was just feeling more melancholic when I started writing it. Now, I think my story doesn’t quite convey the meaning I wanted. I was really disappointed with how I ended it. I wanted the ending to be more bittersweet, to express that the world wasn’t necessarily better or changed in some way, except that Morgan had completed his goal, that the Magnolia bloomed, but it was overshadowed by its tragic ending. Nyiesha did an amazing job with her artistic interpretations of the story. I am both delighted and humbled to see how someone else saw my story. I especially loved how she drew the Willow tree. I cannot remember how I got the idea for it, but I wondered what an old Willow with a large heart would be like, if it would be wise, or generous. But then, how can a willow be wise if it doesn’t even have a brain? The brain is the center of thought, the heart is more the center of emotion. So, what does a willow tree have to be emotional about? " - Matthew
I was born in Rural New York as one of six children. I grew up in awe of nature, and I spent a lot of time there, whether it was hiking through the woods or biking over the hills that stretched way into the horizon. I plan to pursue Aerospace Engineering and piloting professionally. I do not believe that those preceding details are all merely coincidental. I dedicate my story to my own ambiguous friend, and the area where I grew up in Upstate New York. Both were my inspiration .
"My story was inspired by the memories my grandpa would recall to me about the United States' invasion of Italy in an attempt to dismantle the Axis powers during WW2. His stories are often fragmented, he would sit there on the couch and focus for some time on specificities of his memories that I thought to be not that important in the greater scheme of the story, which I only later came to realize have had a huge impact on his life and the way he sees things. Like bubblegum, he could spend hours talking about the first time an American troop gave him bubblegum, how strange of a substance it was for a child who had never had any, and how good and cool it made him feel when he would chew it. He glamorizes these various American symbols throughout his stories. I see the facade he puts up in order to make sense of his history and it makes me think of all of the structures people must build around themselves. structures that are impossible to dismantle that we constantly distort in order to function. " - Nico
My name is Nico Chiat and I am a rising senior in the School of Art. While at Cooper I have primarily worked with Printmaking, Painting, and Sound. It has been really important for me to have sound and music be mediums that can inform me within my visual practice. I am interested in the way that vision and audition work together when it comes to representing an idea and the different ways in which we use our senses in order to place ourselves in the world. After graduating I would love to travel as much as I can through music, whether it be touring with a band or working in artist management. Concurrently, I want to also be a teacher, whether it be printmaking, sound, or even a combination of the two.
"Ive always been a fan of fairytales, but I never imagined myself writing one. When I think about a fairytales or magical stories I always thought that the creators had a level of imagination I just didnt have. Growing up as a Disney kid, ive allowed the creators to have the imagination for me and never embraced that child like nature as I began to mature . So when I was tasked to create my own fairytale I had to push myself out of my comfort zone. I came to the conclusion that I needed to write about what I know. As a result I've chose to create a fairytale centered around personal struggle of mine, following a gifted character name Zarya who constantly overextends herself. The protagonist has had a lot of obligations from an early age, such as working, taking care of family members, keeping the peace, and so on. Zarya and the Ocean of Vision covers multiple different themes such as self reflection, family, spiritual practices, etc. She reaches a turning point where she has to choose between sustaining the peace of others or her own peace. Zarya also has a gift of seeing visions gifted to her by the ocean. Being that the story is based on myself, writing it was a form of reflection and release for me. Because Zarya situation is not exactly my own and less stressful it was easy to get into a witing space without me feeling as if im spilling my business. On the other hand being able to write and think through the mind of the character I was able to place myself outside of Zarya, as if I was an outsider looking while still having a conversion with my self. It felt like therapy or a very reveiling journaling session. Writing this was far from easy. Because this story was coming straight from my head it was hard to find a oranizing writing strategy. Outlines didnt work because I had to think ahead, and I had no idea where the story was going. So I ended up just freewriting when the spirit hit. I am very proud of my tale because its not something I would just willingly write. I’ve always doubted my sense of imagination, so being able to tap into it during this stage of my life may have impacted me more than I know. Being able to write a tale base on my experience, cultural background, and pratices feels very important right now giving the state of the world. I would like to give a hug shout out my family. I have such a dynamic relationship with my family. They are very supportive of my journey and really believe in me and my dream. My sibilings pushed me to explore my spritul nature and are big on upholding spiritual pratice and wellbeing. We have a very strong bond and it extends past those in the home with me, which I’m very grateful for because many people don't have that support system. Although my family is not the real root of my personal conflict, they are the ones supporting me through process and ultimately I have to make my own choice. Lastly shout out to Professor Harold Ramdass, for creating a space for our class to not only learn a rich history of storytelling, but allowing us to tell our own storys. What a great class to have during the summer. His support, and amazing personality made this experience memorable and transforming. " - Nyiesha
Nyiesha Grethel Mallett is a fourth year Art Major at The Cooper Union. Born and raised in Brooklyn NY is a 21-year-old artist and Climate Justice Youth Leader/Organizer at UPROSE Brooklyn where she at the age of 14 in 2015. Nyiesha solidified her love for social, political and Climate/environmental justice by exercising her voice and through her art practice. Her artwork speaks to her Grenadian and African American background and experience of growing up in Brooklyn, New York. She focuses mainly on the shared cultural links and experiences between Caribbean, African and African American cultures, while trying to point out the disadvantages black and brown bodies face against climate change and a system that was built to oppress those very bodies.
"Part of Brownstone and Cement was with giving a view of gentrification, but through a non anthropocentric and varied perspective, provides an account of gentrification to those who may not be able to work and last towards sustainable protection of their community. To have multiple perspectives, while making those voices overtly tangible in the human space of communicating, it runs the process of gentrifying a city into something humans and creatures alike can’t retaliate against. It becomes cosmic, inevitable. Binarizing the city as man and creature/gargoyle in contrast to the unnamed yet omnipresent threat references the polarizing yet unified subcultures and demographics who banded together under the same class struggles. Additionally, because the gargoyles anthropomorphize the buildings and architecture they inhabit, or are in proximity too, it allows the buildings, which are the longest residents of a city, to also have a voice. Because the gargoyle observes, it will communicate through narration, not dialogue, and will only be a recipient in communication through being a character in space who overhears. Gentrification has affected me when I lived in Crown Heights, Newark, and is something that is affecting the land ownership in Grenada and Trinidad (where my family is from). It has made it harder to trace what community means and the relevance of it geographically, and this awareness of the transforming landscape has made it harder for me to feel as if I could belong anywhere. Working with an artist and editor I feel adds to the theme of the story, as a group working together to improve and strengthen it requires different skills and capabilities one person can't demonstrate alone. The capabilities to look outside in, through different perspectives, is good. It means that we can't do anything truly alone, and that's a good thing. If I were to do this whole process of making the story again, I would like to delce more with the website creation process. Even though it's intensive and technical, it was a good opportunity to improve my comprehension of basic web programming, even if I didn't directly build the design, but in building the interface. Through this project, I've gotten more efficient in formatting code, which will allow me to be more confident and experimental with new projects and new interests" - Orchid
Orchid Sylvester goes to Cooper Union School of Art (Class of 2024). She is interested in print, film/video, and design media. In her spare time she enjoys working on her comic, Atlas' Odyssey, which is about an alien who finds solitude among an inner city group of friends. Recently, she’s been enjoying film photography as a hobby, and is enjoying Everywhere at the End of Time, a sound project exploring the totality and devastation of dementia.
"Writing fairytales and creative writing is something I've never done before. The girl of the lady allows me to see myself in a new light. Some elements and ideas just appeared unconsciously, but when I traced them back, they all existed somewhere. The main source of inspiration is a comic called Minotaurus's Plate by Fujiko F. Fujio. It tells the story about a man who crashes lands on an underdeveloped planet ruled by "cow-men" who eat humans, and how he tries to "save" a girl from them. The method of switching perspectives and the ironic setting appeal to me. I've been thinking about the role of eating and being eaten, but I haven't reached a conclusion yet. So I attempted to reflect on the question the author has been raising. The story is gradually coming together verbally as I walk with my friend. After my first draft, I was suggested to “show more” yet had trouble processing it in language. So, as a visual-prone person, I made sketches of the room, collected pictures, and then described them(sometimes through acting). While revising it, I was switching between two languages: telling the story in Chinese and writing it in English. It helped me to clarify what I’m going to write. It's a pleasure to collaborate with the editor, artist, and clients, with people I know and people I don’t know. Throughout the process, we get to know each other better, experiencing surprise, passion (along with stress), and friendship. If we had more time, I would like to see and make more organic elements, decorations, and cute features on the website. For my part, I will probably expand the story with dramatic scenarios, more about this delicate family, girl's personality, and her mindset. I‘m planning to turn the writing into a script and film it this summer. " - Ruiqi
Ruiqi Ma is a rising junior studying Art at Cooper Union, focusing on graphic design and video. Most of her works are relating to food, nightmare, and daily life.
" I always wanted to create a world that maintained relative complexity in its mechanisms and physical laws while also displaying a level of grace and beauty. That sounds a bit pretentious, but it was so that events are less predictable and the story actually left you feeling some type of way, respectively. Fleshing out those elements of complexity and grace are very preliminary to the actual details because once a stage of magic is set, you can fiddle with it uncountably. However, finding a harmonious median for these two was a difficult exercise for someone relatively untrained in creative prose. Perhaps it’s cliché, but I chose to make my story revolve around the human condition, revealing a prospect of our behavior if an element so fundamental to our being is violently stripped from us. The tale details a people withdrawn from an impending apocalypse for but a blip in hopes that sacrificing form will remedy the illnesses in the human condition and revitalize the world. Form becomes a lost luxury that once was something everyone simultaneously enjoyed, committed evils on the basis of, and served as an inherent aspect to the human experience. I wanted the story to encapsulate many aspects synonymous with the human experience in all its grace and disgust. A child’s curiosity, will, independence, greed, ego, self-destruction, unity… Writing the Harbinger of Nothing was a strenuous process which at times rendered me incapable of putting more than a sentence down every hour. The root cause of the difficulty was also the motivation for writing this fairy tale. I decided to play around with the phenomenology, but it got very tricky fast and logical reservations followed. Had I given this more time, I would’ve worked through the story with less “tell” as I broke style and reverted to a more familiar, unbefitting prose because I lacked the command of the language to express descriptive scenes poetically. And these breaks in style combined with overthinking while proof-reading disturbed the flow and ambience building. Some of the creatives who informed and inspired my writing: Tetsuya Kinoshita and Yasuko Kobayashi are contributors to Attack on Titan, an animated show that is filled with raw emotion, blurs the lines between monster and human, pleasure and loss, salvation and impotence, etc. I follow many of the logical plot devices in retrospect and they inspired the play on phenomenology primarily. Ralph Emerson informed the invisibility mechanism in the formless which I often looked at for inspiration on how to execute descriptions. Ocean Vuong just writes insanely well. " - Simon
I’m Simon Yoon, an electrical engineer at the Cooper Union Class of 2023. I enjoy all kinds of media, especially tales of all forms. I took this course to exercise the creativity that dwells in me for story-building and to hone my general command of language. I always wanted to be able to use writing to invoke emotion and convey complex, dynamic emotional processes. Misunderstandings happen way too often; I’d like to think with every one of these classes I take, I’m getting better at avoiding them.