Creative Block

Picture source: Pinterest

Dear, fellas.

How's your day going anyway? Yeah, it's been a month I don't write anything right here. Actually I have so many things to write about in my head but unfortunately, I don't really have time to pour them down. I'm in the middle of working my final thesis of this final semester, it's currently my first priority of everything since it will determine whether I will get a bachelor degree later. I only have four months left to finish the project and it's kinda stressing me out. Yeah I know I should let everything flow like a river but talk is cheap, right?

What stressing me out lately is I'm stuck in a creative block. I've been scrolling down through the design websites or anything that could give some kind of inspiration, and I've been scribbling the paper but it gives me nothing. My head is really empty and every week my lecturer requires me to show them some progress but I can't give my best. I've tried to take some break, go to some places while bringing my sketchbook with me, do almost everything that on the list of 'How to Overcome Creative Block' but you know what? I still got nothing. I kept asking myself why could this happen to me. Time flies so fast, the clock is ticking, but my progress still ends up nowhere.

So, what my final project is to design a Textile Museum in Jakarta through narrative methods. This museum collection is focused on Indonesian traditional textiles so that it has a rich cultural value and the craftsmanship is totally priceless. What makes it priceless is it's all made with hand-made technique and colorized with natural sources. It takes days and even months to finish a single fabric. Not only the techniques, for some people traditional textiles usually used for some rituals to worship the ancestor, or have a philosophy in the hope to give a better life. Some people used it for fulfilling their financial needs so that what makes them alive. Some fabrics were used by some kingdom to show a wealthiness and prosperity. So, basically, every single traditional textile has its own value, story, and wholeheartedly made. The purpose I'm using a narrative method to design this museum is to make the visitors easily comprehend the value of every collection and to make visitors not seeing them only as an object. Well, I don't want to elaborate every detail of my project here because I'm pretty sure it would take a hundred pages to explain.

So, what makes me frustrated lately is I cannot interpret the value of the traditional textiles into interior space. The designing interior is not about making a super fascinating space and the museum collection just put it right there. The museum collection needs to get along with the space and the space is required to be able to show the value and how priceless the Indonesian traditional textile is. I've made some alternatives design and showed them to my lecturer, but he said that I was too focused on the object. I mean, literally the object, not the story behind it or what makes it so valuable and the visitors have to easily comprehend it. Yeah I admit it that lately, I've been more focused on how this museum would look aesthetically pleasing so that the visitors would overwhelm everytime they went there, yet I'm really missing the point: to be able to communicate with the visitors, showing the mean of expression of traditional textiles, and to tell a story how traditional textiles mean to people especially as one of the identities of Indonesian culture.

When I understand the mission of the museum, the value of the collections, the design concept, but I still have no idea how to translate them into an interior space.

Oh, God.

My head is really stuck, my brain is empty, I kinda feel like I forget how to design. How could this happen to me in a such situation like this.

Yeah I guess I need to figure it out myself. I need to go back to my thesis. Wish me luck!


LR