Olympics ’08: Don’t Forget Tibet

Posted inThe Daily Heller

RememberTibet.org is an initiative started by Jonathan Barnbrook and Pedro Inoue designed to engage people during (and after) the Beijing Olympics Games through art and design to help raise awarness of China’s policies towards Tibet. I asked Barnbrook to explain his goals:

What is your long term plan?Our long term plan is, in some small way, to add to the weight of opinion that will change the situation. It’s important, though, to not see this as only a design project even though we are asking for creative pieces; it is these pieces that can be used as tools but without getting hung up on whether they are legitimate design or not.

Do you think this will make a difference? We will never know. Things aren’t as simple as someone putting up a poster and the world will change. But I do believe that things change because of people forcing an issue onto the agenda.

What is the inspiration for the animated sequences (shown below)?The animation is the first part of the project. It is there to publicise the web site and encourage people to contribute their own work.The main point of doing this animation is to remind people very simply and clearly about this situation in a balanced way. That is why it is just two people [in the narration] discussing the situation; there is no heroic ranting and we are trying to tackle the grey areas that Chinese government constantly tries to bring to this argument.