Inlak’esh Alaken [I am you, you are me] The Practice of Intercultural Engagement

As a designer, I have been identified as problem-solver, and rarely as prob­lem-identifier. Designers have the opportunity to make a significant differ­ence in society, and help in the development of conscious citizens from a wide range of cultures and languages. Intercultural interaction has increased within this globalized community, and it has become part of our lives. As a foreign communication designer, I have identified the importance of intercultural understanding, so we don’t alienate each other, and help develop shared experiences and collaborative projects when the same language, time and/or space may not be shared. This research study promotes the exploration of the process of a designer becoming a researcher and a thinker who collaborates within a multicultur­al community. It is an extended exploration of my previous experience col­laborating for Mátika Magazine within an international group of designers, visual artists and writers. Therefore, it explores the different possibilities that hybrid design brings to a stream of creative disciplines, and how this diversity can be used as a tool to expand the relationship between space, culture and creativity. Within this paper, I describe the process and outcomes of developing the project Inlak’esh Alaken. This project took form with an event hosted at the same time in three different cities: Vancouver, Guadalajara and Los Angeles. By pushing further the possibilities of online network services, a live video of each event was streamed online and projected in each place. Within this project, I practice the research of different technologies to create urban art as an exploration of new ways to communicate between different cultures. Therefore, every participant in each city shared the same performance with the use of Graffiti Wall and Laser Tag. With the use of these tools of non-verbal communication, the participants were asked to interact with the others and communicate at the same time in different places. Within this research and the process of my work, I aim to push the bound­aries of traditional communication design, and share a body of knowledge that might help other communication designers in the process of becoming researchers and agents of social change. I share the process of becom­ing a visual journalist, and how we as designers can develop a method of documentation that accounts for the moods and concerns of our society, bridging different environments and translating the outcomes into seduc­tive graphics of information.