te issue 1: The Lost Society 失落的协会
18.5 x 26cm
160p
Chinese & English
Hectograph, thread-bound
ISBN 978-1-7368389-8-3
First published in 2021
Contributors: Mary-Jean Chan, Cao Yu, Cooking Sections, Tang Han & Zhou Xiaopeng, Wolfgang Tillmans, Felix Ho Yuen Chan, Yia Vang, Alvin Luong, Ye Wuji, Elia Nurvista, Gu Tao
Designer: Can Yang
PRESS:
Stack
Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council
Asymmetry
Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation
落日NOW
idea
abC
USD$40
There cannot be more possibilities and layers of complexity embodied in food throughout human development. On one hand, it constructed a system that assembles taste, cultural memory and historical movements; on the other hand, the correlation between food and geography provides a hidden motivation to examine human behaviours and social transformation. This inaugural issue of te magazine adopts Ye Wuji's “The Lost Society” as the central theme. The term “lost” means ephemeral silence and enfeeblement rather than disappearance and extinction. This means that many cultures only dissipate temporarily, and some are metamorphosed. Food happens to witness this transition, and the word “society” refers to a collective destiny. In this issue, we invited 13 creative practitioners of different disciplines — to bring in and reflect upon their respective expertise, knowledge system and research trajectories from and in anthropology, sociology, and contemporary art—to explore food as a multi-faceted intricacy, at the same time reconstruct the relationship between food and geography.
As an introductory remark, the exploration unfolds through a poem written by Dr Mary-Jean Chan, a Senior Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University. She recreates a scene of misunderstanding incurred by cultural differences through a daily conversation. Her poem opens up the topic of cross-cultural mistranslation and individual identity displacement. The precariousness of identity will metastasise to class structure. Anthropologist Cao Yu regards betel nuts as an addictive that bridges the historical trajectories of various ethnic groups. From the fluid subgroups in the Southern islands to the empire of the continental states, the pronunciation and functions of betel nuts differ from human activities and social transformation. The transition implies the establishment and segregation of social classes in different eras. During their field research in Taiwan, artist duo Cooking Sections explored the potentials of oysters that not only act as water filters, their leftover shells can also be used as building materials. The romantic, yet persuasive writing of the artists disassociates oysters from their basic nutritional values and instead envisions a symbiotic future between oysters and human bodies. Similarly, artists Tang Han and Zhou Xiaopeng also detach food from its original functionality. Growing up, the artists witnessed the prosperity and decline of food sculptures in Guangzhou. Their essay explores food sculptures as a form of dieting with an earnest generational recollection that will be replaced or eventually devoured by the new fast-paced lifestyle.
The still life series of German artist Wolfgang Tillmans achieves a reality that transcends temporality and geography. Between the continents, the still lifes gradually decay and deteriorate over time. The photos capture the mundanity, while at the same time reveals a certain universal truth. Yia Vang, a Hmong chef based in Minnesota and Canadian Chinese artist Alvin Luong created two recipes based on their memories. As Asian immigrants who grew up in North America, recipes inherited nostalgic gustatory memories. Blending with the traces and results of immigration and cultural hybridity, the ingredients and cooking techniques of the recipes impart a unique scent. The research focus of Ye Wuji is on Central Asia. When confronting the gigantic and complex geopolitical context of Central Asia, he initiated the “Palovosh Society,” an organisation disarming oneself through a delicious rice dish. The Society is the optime of Eurasian revolutions. Alternating in the confluences of fiction and non-fiction, his narrative elaborates on a crucial turning point in the development of Central Asia. If Palovosh is a common dish across Central Asia, then some other familiar foods are often accompanied by geopolitics and consumerism, and even become the victims of national disputes. Elia Nurvista initiates the discourse with borscht and explores the cultural ownership of food. Here, food is divided by borders while it acts as a border. The notion of the border is vague to hunter-gatherers, the Ewenki people. What is also dim is their consciousness after drinking alcohol that also performs as a substitute testifying to their spirit. During several visits, Director Gu Tao and his father Gu Deqing became acquainted with the Ewenki people living on the border of the Northeastern frontier. From the documentation of the two generations, we will understand the plural roles that alcohol undertakes in the life of the Ewenki people and how it carries the ethnic group towards an unknown future.