- HOW DOES MY PRODUCT REPRESENT SOCIAL GROUPS AND ISSUES?
My product touches on several dimensions of struggle at the same time. I address very personal feelings of disconnection and being lost, especially the inability to clearly see my own future as a refugee, but I also speak to more global issues such as war, displacement and the psychological weight that refugees carry. The lyric “what happened to your heart” is deliberately open.. some listeners may read it as personal heartbreak, but for me it is about losing a stable sense of what “home” is. In the digipak, these emotions are echoed visually through tarot cards, which act as symbolic clues to the emotional content of the songs (for example, cards linked to burden and paralysis).
I represent myself as a Ukrainian woman refugee who has processed her experiences through art and now offers that work as a bridge for others. The idea is that people with their own suppressed feelings about displacement or instability can project themselves onto my story and personalise it. I believe that my art is capable of that. The product also challenges classical representations of women in media, by not necessarily rejecting conventional attractiveness, but by placing that aesthetic in the hard context of war, destroyed sense of self and loss. I still appear feminine yet the narrative is heavy and complex, which complicates the usual “to-be-looked-at” role described by the male gaze theory. In this way, my media could be described as contemporary and postmodern – it combines multiple layers of meaning, types of struggle and intertextual symbols in one body of work which I am proud of…
- BRANDING AND HOW THE ELEMENTS WORK TOGETHER
My brand is not fully formed yet as I am still actively discovering who I am as a human and as an artist. I have a strong understanding of the creative process and confidence in my musical ability, but I am honest about the fact that my identity is still unfolding. Therefore, I treat this project as a document of that process of unpacking my fears and struggles in both personal and global contexts. My hope lies in the belief that this vulnerability encourages others to do the same.
Visually and musically, certain elements of my brand already repeat across my works and hint at a somehow coherent identity. I believe there is a constant presence of “magic” and a melancholic, almost hypnotic atmosphere, created through blue and white ethereal colours, soft blurred lighting and a generally atmospheric sound and image palette. Now, to visual elements. To link all products and create a substantive style, I used a very similar handwritten font across the music video titles, digipak text and my Instagram promotion posts. The completely clear CD is an important branding choice… for me it symbolises having no stable roots and simply reflecting what I am going through into my art, but it also allows the listener to literally see through my work into their own experiences. Even my artistic name, Marusya, is part of this story. It is the name my mother originally wanted to give me, but nurses mocked it as too childish, so it never became official. How ironic that is, from my first moments of life there was already an “identity crisis” jajaja, and now I am reclaiming that rejected version of myself, I’m not willing to hide her any longer. This has taught me to embrace the parts of me I was trained to be embarrassed by.
- AUDIENCE TARGET
My primary audience is teenagers and young adults, let’s say 15 to 25, who are already used to discovering music and visuals online through platforms such as Discogs and Spotify. Many of them could be European or Ukrainian, because the context of war and displacement is specific to this region, but I also aim at an international niche of emotionally sensitive, alternative/indie listeners who are drawn to this aesthetics and introspectivity.. I imagine people who feel slightly out of place in their own lives, who enjoy dreamy or post-punk stuff, who are familiar with topics like mental health, anxiety and identity crisis. Publishing the video on YouTube and cutting shorter reels content for TikTok and Instagram allows me to reach this younger audience where they scroll to avoid reality (who said that?). These platforms are dominated by teens and people in their twenties and are designed around quick, visually striking clips, which suits the atmospheric, hypnotic mood of “synthetic” and increases the chance that someone will stop, listen and then seek out the full song.
My work engages the audience by inviting them into a shared emotional space where they can feel it out for themselves – what they feel about my art without a framework. For instance, the ambiguity of the lyrics “what happened to your heart” allows different viewers to map their own experiences of loss, whether romantic, familial, or connected to place, onto the song. At the same time, my specific position as a Ukrainian refugee is visible through the context of war and displacement, so there is always a chance for many readings… My personal micronarrative and the listener’s own. The visual choices reinforce this. The direct gaze into the camera and intimate framing make the viewer feel personally addressed, the soft, dreamy aesthetic and slow, atmospheric pacing are meant to “hypnotise” them into sitting with their feelings rather than scrolling away.
The digipak and CD design that I designed to extend this engagement beyond the screen. The transparent disc acts as a literal and metaphorical mirror: when someone holds it, they can see their own reflection through my art, which symbolises the idea that my story is also a container for theirs. The use of tarot cards and symbolic objects (like the glass of wine and dead rose) gives the audience extra layers to decode if they choose, turning the product into a small puzzle about burden, exhaustion and emotional paralysis.
- RESEARCH AND CHALLENGING CONVENTIONS
My research in media studies, especially my essay exploring feminist theory, heavily impacted how I approached this project. Engaging with Liesbet van Zoonen’s work on the male gaze made me aware of how often women in media are reduced to spectacle and how easily conventional beauty is read as submission to patriarchal expectations. At the same time, reading postmodern thinkers like Lyotard helped me question the idea that any single theory should become a total explanation of my work. I realised I did not want to reject femininity to “prove” I am feminist. Instead I wanted to combine conventional attractiveness with themes that are usually hidden, such as war trauma, destroyed identity and refugee grief… this was my way of challenging conventions.
In terms of media language, I used and developed a range of conventions across the music video, digipak and social media page. In the video I followed typical music video conventions by combining close-ups of the artist with mid-shots and slower camera movements to maintain focus on performance and emotion. The camera often lingers on my face and hands, using blurred lighting and overlay technique to enhance the ethereal mood (to me, it gives off 2000s-like mood in the best way possible), which is conventional for melancholic or dream-pop videos, but I contrast this with lyrics about war and displacement, which is less common. The digipak uses familiar album cover elements such as title and symbolic objects, but I develop this convention through the tarot cards, clear CD and dead rose, which function as a small narrative about burden and identity rather than just decoration. On social media, I used recognisable platform conventions. Short teaser, screenshots from the video, “in the making” photos and videos to promote the release.. I tried to keep the tone intimate and reflective rather than commercial. In this way, some conventions (like close‑ups, object symbolism and teaser posts) are used, while other ones are modified to fit my personal and postmodern style.
Beyond theory, the whole media studies course trained me to take my art seriously enough to share it. Without this subject I might have kept everything in drafts forever, too scared of how I would be perceived. Researching different artists and stars, and analysing how they translate their inner worlds into visual and music languages, made me feel like a linguist decoding personal narratives of each person. It taught me there is no single path to artistry. “I never learned ‘superstar’ from a textbook,” as Doja Cat says. And that rage, sadness, euphoria and depression are all valid materials for both creators to decode and audiences to analyse. Without a single doubt, this project has been exhausting, full of breakdowns and tiny resurrections, but it quite literally forced me to be disciplined and to actually finish something. I am still scared of how I will be read, and I still don’t fully know who I am, yet I create.. in order to find out. This coursework became my micronarrative of self‑discovery, and I am genuinely grateful that it pushed me to release my work into the world.