Tanya Cushman Reviewer:"Peter van de Ven Can we learn different languages and learn different cultures? Besides learning accents and accents, there are also 10 languages. Hi, I'm Haitian. I'm an artist. And this is Yu Yu. who is a dancer I've been working with, I have asked her to translate for me. If I may, I would like to tell you a little bit about myself. and my artwork. 我们可以透过 说起不同的语言来认识不同的文化吗? I was born and raised near Manchester in England, but I'm not going to say it in English to you, as I'm trying to avoid any assumptions that might be made from my northern accent. 處理要說西口音和強調以外還有十句 更重要的是手勢,特有的習慣和動作 The only problem with masking it with Chinese Mandarin is I can only speak this paragraph which I have learned by heart when I was visiting in China So all I can do is keep repeating it in different tones and hope you won't notice to tie really tight to avoid embarrassment of them falling down. My dad never wore it, so I didn't see why I had to. Also, it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable that people assume I represent something genuinely Indian when I wear it because that's not how I feel. Actually, the only way I feel comfortable wearing it is by pretending they are the robes of a Kung Fu warrior likely moved by from that film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Okay, so my artwork is about identity and language. Challenging common assumptions based on what we look like or where we come from. Gender, race, class. What makes us who we are anyway? I used to read Spider-Man comics, watch Kung Fu movies, take philosophy lessons from Bruce Lee. He would say things like, Empty your mind. mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. Put in the teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend. This year... I'm 32 years old, the same age Bruce Lee was when he died. I have been wondering recently, if he were alive today, what advice he would give me about making this TED Talk. Don't imitate my voice. It offends me. Good advice. But I still think that we learn who we are by copying others. Who here has imitated their childhood hero in the playground or mom or father? I have. A few years ago, in order to make this video for my artwork, I shaved off all my hair so that I could grow it back as my father had it when he first emigrated from India to the UK in the 1960s. He had a side parting and a neat moustache. At first, it was going very well. I even started to get discounts in Indian shops. But then very quickly I started to underestimate my moustache growing ability and it got way too big. It didn't look Indian anymore. Instead people from across the road, they would shout things like Areeba! Areeba! Andale! Andale! Actually, I don't know why I'm even talking like this my dad doesn't even have an Indian accent anymore. He talks like this now So it's not just my father that I've imitated a few years ago. I went to China for a few months and I couldn't speak Chinese and this frustrated me so I wrote about this and had it translated into Chinese and then I learned this by heart like music I guess. This phrase is now etched into my mind clearer than the pin number to my bank card. So I can pretend I speak Chinese fluently. When I had learned this phrase, I had an artist over there hear me out to see how accurate it sounded. I spoke the phrase and then he laughed and told me, Oh yeah, that's great. Only kind of sounds like woman. He said, yeah, you learn from woman? I said, yes, so? He then explained the tonal differences between male and female voices are very different and distinct and then I had learned it very well, but in woman's voice. Okay, so this imitation business does come with risk. It doesn't always go as you plan it, even with a talented translator. But I am going to stick with it, because contrary to what... What we might usually assume, imitating somebody can reveal something unique. So every time I fail to become more like my father, I become more like myself. Every time I fail to become Bruce Lee, I become more authentically me. This is my art. I strive for authenticity. Even if it comes in a shape that we might not usually expect. It's only recently that I've started to understand that I didn't learn to sit like this through being Indian. I learned this from Spiderman. Thank you.