This group project was for me a great experience in many different ways. First of all I’m personally used to work mostly alone not in a group. A tremendous challenge was the difference between Chinas and our culture. We worked with pictures and films Swiss students took in China and Chinese student took in Switzerland. The interesting points were the different picture language and the objects for shots. (The objects we chose in China were not ant all what the Chinese would have chosen and vice versa.) Furthermore we had to work with an interpreter which made the workflow slower and less spontaneous then I’m used.

But as we worked with visual material I could find out a lot about daily life, cultural and traditional rules as well as aesthetics in China. I also had a close view of their working mentality which is very different from the working method I know from Switzerland. This was one of the greatest difficulties for our joint work. Unfortunately I realized this only near the end when the project was already finished. I have learned, next time I will be more attentive from the start when I work with a group from another culture. In my view there should be one person in a group who is responsible for the organization, for example in our case to manage all the material from everybody in the group.

Anyway it was a positive challenge to be part of the common stage group, to be one of the group instead of working on my own. The only point that was sometimes slightly irritating me, was the fact that I was about ten year older then the rest of the group and wherefore felt very responsible for everything, the students, the project and communication. So I got nervous when there were difficulties of any kind. On the other hand I enjoyed the young, fresh and flexible attitude of our group.

Another aspect I found positiv and a special challenge was the fact that all the members of the group didn’t work in the discipline which they are normally studying. For myself I can say, I felt more open and confident that we would be doing a good creative work. Also because I had a much less fixed idea of what should be the outcome in the end, and I observed that the others had a similar feeling. As everybody had different subjects for his personal studies our meetings were mostly productive and it was very interesting to hear the different points of view. On the other hand it was sometimes a real challenge to find a common solution.

A further point is the time factor. Of course one wishes more time for every project. But in our case it was a great pity that the time went much too fast. I feel that the end product was just the starting point to go deeper into the topic of urban life and the method we represented it.

Concluding my field report I would like to say that I am very grateful that I could be part of the common stage project and thank everyone who made this possible. It was an enriching and interesting work which I would start again any time. It gave me a lot of motivation and desire to start other projects with a group of people from different cultural backgrounds or to go to foreign countries to work there for a project.