East ↔ West

Rethinking Cultural Hegemony
Connecting East and West through Medicinal Packaging Aesthetics

Initial re-exploration of Unit 1 Brief 3 Methods of Translating Project

In Indonesia, we pride ourselves with a glass of Jamu, a traditional herbal elixir tailor made by mainly women to suit each person’s bodily needs. The elixir rejuvenates the body and heals various ailments. This traditional drink has been drunk since the 9th century in our archipelago, as seen on reliefs of the kingdom’s walls of old. This is still practiced today, and a version even manifested in a mass produced sachet to heal Masuk Angin, a folk belief illness of wind entering the body and creating flu-like symptoms. With the presence of western medicine, dominating the medicinal world, Jamu seems to lose credibility. This domination by western standard medicine could be seen as a form of cultural hegemony, according to Gramsci. This implies the constant power struggle between eastern and western medicine in my country, that there can be no peace and coexistence between them. This violates our national ideology and principles, Pancasila, of harmony and pluralism. So combining adhocism and a method inspired from the conditional design manifesto, I attempted to create a system that could create a connection or communication, at least formally, between eastern and western packaging aesthetics, representing Indonesia’s principle of unity in diversity.

To show this gradation, I continued using the accordion publication binding method to show every iteration as one final output together.

The result of the experiment is a set of conditions that gradually modifies and takes apart the existing elements and then recombining them bit by bit according to the each conditions set. The process with follow each condition with room for play.