|
 Knowledge
has been, since ancient times, one of the most powerful instruments for
self and social development.
It is common knowledge that in the Western tradition, since
the establishment of Medieval Universities, the church played a foremost
importance role as the keeper of knowledge, manuscripts, libraries and
copies of precious books that were to be painfully hand copied before the
age of Guttenberg.
Universitas is therefore linked to an imagery of the church,
so well described in Umberto Eco's
The Name of the Rose where one is led into a romanticized universe
of keepers of knowledge and of scribes. |
|
 Hence
it is unquestionable that Academic knowledge and teaching derives
from the Western mind, which, through different stages of development,
kept a constant link to the roots. The most visible one being the formal
clothing worn today.
Universities have since evolved into now public of private
institutions, Academic regalia having taken a simplified version according
to different cultures, while the ecclesiastical regalia evolved much less,
for the sacred symbolism invested in the later would require it to be
charged of all the symbolism that it represents.
Therefore, no matter the approach, my task is to come up with
something different and challenging enough as to blend Western and Eastern
clothing with symbols of each side. |
|
 |
This Anglo-Saxon regalia from Oxford
has its own traditions.
But when the
Inter University Institute of Macau
provides a challenge to create a new tradition rooted in the essence of
Macau, the transcultural subtlety between West and East, a visitation to
the Archetypes
of both cultures is inevitable.
It is a wonderful journey into the worlds of Plato and
Confucius.
Hence that creating these unique
Academic regalia will necessarily be a joy and, possibly, an act of
culture in itself. |
