Cross-Cultural Forum
Panel 1: Wellness in the Digital Era
While a plurality of experts say digital life will continue to expand people's boundaries and opportunities, more are concerned that digital life will primarily harm people's health, mental fitness and happiness.
We can all first-hand experience the personal and societal impacts of technology. It shortens the distance, connecting our loved ones from thousands of miles away; it also offers the most exciting sensual experiences, occupying our lives with endless entertainment sources. In contrast, the irresistible anonymity and addictive algorithms highlight the worst of humanity: loneliness, vanity, and jealousy. Technology invades our privacy, and we find ourselves trapped in the Internet spotlight, exhausted from a restless online competition.
In light of these mounting concerns, the panelists discussed the primary topic: how will changes in digital life impact poople's overall well-being physically and mentally? Ultimately, technology is not the agent of change, and we were here to explore the possibilities of a holistic approach to defeating the vice of technology.
Featured panelists:
Sherry Kelly:
Sherry Kelly, PhD, is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Neuropsychologist with more than 30 years experience in the field of child development. Dr. Kelly began her career as an educational researcher in 1977 at the University of Minnesota Center for Youth Development and Research. Dr. Kelly completed her undergraduate degree in Social Education at Boston University. During the 1980's, Dr. Kelly worked with several non-profit organizations and education-focused companies. Her graduate work experience included clinical research with Dr. Lee Salk and a faculty appointment to Cornell Medical School.
Surabhi Saraf:
Surabhi Saraf is a media artist, composer and founder of Centre for Emotional Materiality. Her practice explores our complex relationship with technology using embodiment as a tool and the body as a site for transformation. Surabhi is the recipient of the Eureka Fellowship Award by the Fleishhacker Foundation (2015), the Djerassi Resident Artist Award (2012) and the Artist + Process + Ideas Residency at Mills College Art Museum (2016). She was a 2019 Technology Resident at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, and 2020 resident at HarvestWorks, NY.
Harold Offeh:
Harold Offeh is an artist working in a range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. Offeh is interested in the space created by the inhabiting or embodying of histories. He employs humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and contemporary culture. He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally including Tate Britain and Tate Modern, South London Gallery, Turf Projects, London, Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, Wysing Art Centre, Studio Museum Harlem, New York, MAC VAL, France, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Denmark and Art Tower Mito.
Panel 2: Approaching and Transforming Anxiety
Anxiety has become one of the most common mental health challenges in the world. In the era of uncertainty, youth often find themselves stressing about what their future holds. In this panel, all participants were encouraged to explore raw and organic emotions, whether good or bad, in their lives and tap back into the natural world.
Often, our minds inadvertently construct fictional mental images of a threatening future. By cultivating inner peace, connecting with others, and integrating cross-cultural experience, we strengthen our ability to identify the source of anxiety and then transform the energy of threat and alarm into the drive toward resilience and harmony.
Featured panelists:
Qin Han:
Qin Han is a digital artist and printmaker. Her work adapts a traditional approach to our digital era, but formally grounded in painting, drawing and printmaking. Her work questions the experience of transition and relocation. Based on her experience, the images and the layers explored the pattern of travel. Han has exhibited in the United States and China, including Zhejiang Art Museum(Hangzhou, China), 2016 Long Island Biennial at Hechscher Museum (Huntington, NY), 2017 Fantastic Art China at The Metropolitan Pavilion, Islip Art Museum, and Changjiang International Photography & Video Biennale (Chongqing, China). A solo show Where is Home at Long Island Museum Visitor Center. Her work had showed in galleries including Riverside Gallery(Hackensack, NY), Gallerynorth (Stony Brook, NY), One Art Space (Manhattan), Pratt Manhattan Gallery, Alex Ferrone Gallery, Wook Flavio Gallery (Manhattan), DDA Gallery, and many in China. Han earned her MFA in Digital Arts from Pratt Institute, a BFA and another MFA in Printmaking from China Academy of Art. She based in Stony Brook, New York and Hangzhou, China.
Leigh·Davis:
Leigh Davis is an interdisciplinary artist and educator. Her work explores grief, memory, and storytelling – how these universal experiences help define what it means to be human. Davis’s work is highly site-specific; she is drawn to contexts that present their own spirituality, using this intrinsic human quality to complement the stories she tells through her installations. Trained as a photographer, her work now ranges across media, from sculpture and installation to sound, performance, and video.
Naomi Campbell:
Canadian-born Naomi Campbell studied at the CEGEP de Champlain, Lennoxville, et de Valleyfield, Quebec and University of Guelph, Ontario, before moving to New York in 1994. She studied painting, printmaking and drawing at the Art Students' League of New York. Campbell's work explores the expressive nature of the materials valid to each piece. It has been included in many group exhibitions including the Japanese Contemporary Prints Invitational, Gallery of Graphic Arts, NYC, PaineWebber UBS Art Gallery, NYC, Lehman College Art Gallery, Bronx, NY, The Gallery on Lafayette, Trenton, NJ, and Heidi Cho Gallery, NY. Her work is in public collections including Animal Tracks, Arts for Transit, Division of the MTA of New York; American University Public Gallery, Washington, DC, the 2000 Cow Parade of New York at 1251 Avenue of the Americas, NYC; and most recently at the #2 line East Tremont / Bronx Zoo train station commissioned by the MTA Arts for Transit program.
Sarah Howe:
Sarah Howe is a UK based artist whose installations situate still and moving image within sculptural space. Her work stands in the crossing between a material and psychological landscape, in a reach to illustrate heightened inner states. Howe is a graduate of the Royal College of Art, London. Recent exhibitions include Lets go through this again, Portland Works, Sheffield UK (2019) and Consider Falling, Brighton ONCA Gallery, Brighton UK (2018).
Panel 3: Cross-Cultural Challenges in Education
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) describes intercultural education as "sectors that spur innovation across the economy and contribute to numerous other channels for positive social impact, such as well-being and health, education, inclusion, urban regeneration, etc." Cross-cultural exchange enhances not only individual competence but also generates positive impact to society as a whole.
However, following the global pandemic, intercultural education is among the hardest hit and faces new challenges. The dynamics across sub-sectors and geopolitical tension have become perplexing, and such nuances subsequently affect the psychological effects on students, parents and educators in the industry. Policies to support firms and workers during the pandemic can be ill-adapted to the non-traditional business models and forms of employment in the sector.
The interest in studying globally will likely make a strong comeback as the pandemic fades away. And the younger generation is putting more emphasis on a means of cultural interaction instead of the human capital perspective.
Intercultural education evokes an ongoing and dynamic discussion. In this panel, we invite more students to brainstorm, collaborate, and embark on the cross-cultural challenges in education and promote cultural democracy in society, schools and beyond.
Featured panelists:
Minlan Wu:
Minlan Wu is currently the CEO of Cats Educational Institute and holds a Master's degree in Bilingual Education from Harvard University. She lived in Thailand for three years and Korea for six years, then returned to Taiwan for junior high school and Sweden for high school, then returned to Taiwan to study foreign languages at National Taiwan University.
Yaning Xu:
Yaning Xu, Ph.D. in Bilingual Education, completed her Master's degree in English Language Teaching from Columbia University and Master's in Management from New York University. Xu is the founder/CEO of H&H Education, an adjunct assistant professor and admissions professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Education, an English teacher and college counselor for grades K-12, and the author of many books and columns on education. Xu specializes in bilingual education and psychological education; she is familiar with education in the U.S. and Asia and has worked with many elite colleges and publishers. She is the co-chair of Emeritus, Parent Leadership Council at Columbia College, Columbia University.
Yifan Li:
Yifan Li is a graduate student in the Public Policy program at Columbia University, majoring in Energy and Environmental Policy. He studied Politics and History at Cornell University, where he served as the International Student Representative for Student Government and President of the Undergraduate Chinese Student Association. He has interned at the Chaoyang District People's Government Street Office, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, and CDH Investments. As an Assistant Mentor for Project Agora, Li hopes to help young students with global citizenship and foster self-understanding and cross-cultural awareness through trips to Europe and online workshops.
