9/10/04
(Friday) Air Zone - Art Installation and Cultural Dialogues (1:30
p.m.- 8:30 p.m.)
Artist
Director: Dr. Elijah Mirochink (George Mason University, Initiatives in
Educational Transformation Program)
Performers: Meiji Gakuin University and University
of Maryland students
In the Air Zone project,
Japanese and American students worked together for about a week to learn
about each others cultures and about their professions. At the end of their
week with each other the students worked together to build the Air Zone, a
plastic air-inflated art gallery that exhibited “windows” that they created
collaboratively. In the process of building the Air Zone as a cross-cultural
team, students got to know each other by sharing ideas, sharing meals,
chatting, strolling, making friends with those from the foreign culture,
laughing together, crying together. The experience helped them realize that
working on a real project with someone from a foreign culture lends more
insight to the other’s culture than one could get by reading about it, or by
theorizing about it.
