TO ME,
SISTERHOOD IS
Summary
To me, Sisterhood is. 2024.
30seconds mixed media animation.
Full video in 1080p HD here!
Please use headphones for best experience
“To me, Sisterhood is” is a 30 seconds pilot episode for a short format series that aims to celebrate sisterhood by offering a collection of multiple empowering interpretations of sisterhood through bite-sized short mixed media animations for a Gen Z women audience. These short videos would be shared in occasion of Women’s history month on multiple platforms, in hopes to spark conversation and cultivate a strong sense of belonging to this broad community.
Each episode starts with the same premiss “To me, Sisterhood is” and focuses on 1 interpretation symbolised as 1 key bonding activity presented as a whimsical ritual and ends with a final sentence that summarises the message of that episode. In this pilot episode, it is “To me, Sisterhood is Wealth” which is illustrated by a group of girls (the “pearls glistening”) going on a “hot girl walk” which becomes sacralised as a dance full of life.
Details
Photos, collages and sound design by me.
Customised version of font “Aphrosine” (customisation by me)
Original soundtrack is Just give me one more day by Alej
and sound effects from BBC sound library.
Special thanks to Han na Ji, Sashka Jones and Tracy Zeng for the voice over and participation to the workshop!
Full description
“To me, Sisterhood is” is a 30 seconds pilot episode for a short format series that aims to celebrate sisterhood by offering a collection of multiple positive interpretations of what sisterhood can be through bite-sized short mixed media animations for a Gen Z women audience that would be shared in occasion of International Women’s day or even Women’s history month on multiple platforms as Youtube and Tiktok.
The starting point of this project was two observations. First is this quote “Femininity is still seen as silly and frivolous,” (Marlowe, 2021) that appeared on an article about the use of “girl” and its associated trends by Gen Z on the Internet (Solis, 2023), which reveals how much anything essentially feminine, sisterhood included is perceived as shallow by our society. Second observation stems from a quote of a medical article that states “[…], findings indicate that having strong female friendships helps give women an edge in many categories, from health and longevity [...]” (Page, 2023) Long term friendships between women is scientifically proven to be highly beneficial, however, in the context of our patriarchal society, these friendships take a back seat in women’s lives as they become adults.
These observations led me to wanting to address the current generation of women coming into adulthood (Gen Z) and offer them a refreshing and rich representation of sisterhood they can look up to. By celebrating sisterhood in an accessible way for my audience, I am challenging the traditional sexist framework and empowering the young generation to invest in relationships with other women for their best interest.
The making of this project started with investigating different sides of sisterhood through weekly outcomes. In my investigations I have found there was hundreds of interpretations possible, but one communal element to all of them was quality time shared between women is central to the bond of sisterhood. Thtat is why I developed a workshop as one of my weekly outcomes l, which became central to the narrative of the videos. Its format was inspired by methodologies that surrealists used to explore and reveal new aspects of a theme together: exquisite corpses. (Tate, no date) This put collaboration at the center of designing the video sotryline and helped bringing a fresh and playful tone to the animation. The workshop and historical research I have made highlighted how precious and widely shared bonding moments like walking together, eating together, chit chatting together (“hot girl walk”, “girl dinner”, … (Jennings, 2023)) and so on are – these almost become rituals for sisters. I wanted to emphasise it by depicting these bonding experiences with a ceremonial tone by putting it into relation with historical depictation of the same activity, while keeping elements of that GenZ “girls” relate to and most importantly their words. To make my audience feel included I used binaural audio which situate the sound spatially when listening, to trick the viewers brain into feeling surrounded, a part of the conversation. In addition to that, the mixed media element references the creative process of making together that is typical of sisterhood.
Each episode starts with the same premiss “To me, Sisterhood is” and focuses on 1 interpretation symbolised as 1 key bonding activity presented as a whimsical ritual and ends with a final sentence that summarises the message of that episode. In this pilot episode, it is “To me, Sisterhood is Wealth” which is illustrated by a group of girls (the “pearls glistening”) going on a “hot girl walk” (Jennings, 2023) which becomes sacralised as a dance full of life.
Page, D. (2023) ‘The Importance Of Female Friendships | The Well by Northwell’. Available at: https://thewell.northwell.edu/womens-health/importance-of-female-friendships (Accessed: 3 December 2023).
Solis, M. (2023) ‘Why “Girls” Rule the Internet’, The New York Times, 10 September. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/10/style/girls-internet-gender.html (Accessed: 6 November 2023).
Tate (no date) Cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse), Tate. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/c/cadavre-exquis-exquisite-corpse (Accessed: 21 January 2024).