I must say that at the start of the day at the Pacific Mall I was skeptical about the whole idea. We got to this overwhelming and strange mall and I found myself looking around wondering what the heck I would do. As the day went on though, my attitude changed. Instead of letting the feeling of being a tourist work against me I decided to work with it and explore the area and the culture. I started thinking about ideas of tourism and relating it to my own past experience and my feelings being there. I also wanted to consider the items being sold and their significance as there seemed to be so many repeats. Lastly, I thought it was important to consider the space and the unique way in which it was organized.

Collection:
For the collection portion of the project I decided that I would take pictures of the signage on the storefronts. This proved to be somewhat difficult because of the issues with taking pictures but I was able to come up with an interesting collection. In my travels I have always found it funny how the English language is used in non-English speaking countries. For example I always found it funny when I was living in France how they used English words in a lot of the store names and advertisements. It seems that whenever they wanted to give the ‘cool’ image or appeal to the younger generation they would throw in English words. Often they would not be used in the proper way and would sound awkward. I have also found it interesting in my travels to be reminded of the power of the English language. I think that we often forget what this means being in a country where most people speak English. What has amazed me (for the most part) is how bombarded other countries are with the English language. It is often not hard to find someone close by in a non-English speaking country who either knows English or knows enough to get by. Living in France the thing that struck me the most was music and movies. Almost all of the popular music on the radio was English. It also wasn’t censored because as anyone who speaks another language may have found (hopefully not the hard way) swearwords just don’t have the same impact in a second language. I also found it interesting that the bulk of the movies hadn’t been dubbed, they were often still in English with subtitles. These are all things that I hadn’t considered and I imagine most might not consider being an English speaking person from a largely English speaking country. I find it fascinating how other cultures speaking different languages handle the English language.


Walking against the plan:

By now I had spent a few hours in the mall and began seeing many items that were repeated frequently around the mall in different stores. I wonder if they must be culturally significant in some way or if it is somehow a reflection of the Canadian culture as well as far as what is in demand. I decided to choose several different objects and wander until I found them in the storefront window. Some of the objects that I chose were a glittery cell phone cover, anything with Hello Kitty on it and a waving cat figurine. I chose to represent the walks with a simple line drawing showing the route that I took until I found that item. It seems that in almost all of the cases, that item was never far.

Larger gesture with a partner:

For our last walk Laura and I collaborated. As we wandered around the mall we found some little coloured trinkets that were supposedly lucky charms. They didn’t seem to have any other use than as a charm. We decided to purchase 10 of them and we walked around to different clothing stores putting them in the pockets of pants for others to find. It proved to be a very interesting experience for the both of us. By this time our group had caused enough of a scene that we were being watched very closely. We had to try the pants on (which of course had no chance of fitting us – I even had a girl tell me this) and in the change room we would put the charm in the pocket and take a picture. It seems strange that Laura and I were so nervous about doing this. In reality we were giving a gift to the store or to whoever was going to find the charm, but in practice it felt like we were doing something wrong.