BEYOND THE RICE

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BEYOND THE RICE

2020 | Rice-made Artefact

The purpose of my research is to explore the connection between food, perception, and memory. I hope that through this topic, I can answer the doubts in my life about the existence of food and self-identity, and extend them to ask contemporary society: Do we need such exquisite material consumption to satisfy our spiritual desires? In what ways does the food in our memory stay in our hearts? What do they mean to us?

This work was born during the epidemic, making it an extraordinary 2020. It seemed to have the ability to stagnate the world and make people rethink the delicate balance between man and nature.

我本次研究的目的是探索食物、感知和记忆之间的联系。我希望通过这个研究生项目，回答我生活中部分关于食物和自我认同关系的疑惑，并进一步延伸出对于当代社会时尚生产与生活方面的思考：我们需要怎样的物质生活来回应自我精神欲望的需求呢？记忆中的食物会以什么方式留存在我们的心中呢？他们对我们意味着什么？

此系列作品诞生于疫情期间。不平凡的2020年，似乎拥有让世界停滞的能力，

它被迫让人重新思考起人与自然之间日常被忽略已久的微妙平衡。

Coming from China with a very developed food culture, I am interested in exploring the connection between food, perception, time and space, and memory. I think that choosing important foods and cooking is a kind of "self-metaphor" to think about the relationship between oneself and others. Constructing one's identity is a symbolic practice and value shaping process that travels through time.

我来自饮食文化博大精深的中国，并且对于食物、感知、时空和记忆之间的联系很感兴趣。

我把自身生活中熟识的食物和烹饪方式视为是一种思考个体与他人关系的“自我隐喻”。

个人身份的建构则是一个可以穿越时空的象征性实践和价值观塑造过程。

In fact, in East Asia where rice culture is widely spread, people share the self-identity and sense of ethnicity brought about by this culture. Similarly, my plan is to draw inspiration from studying the attitudes towards food in traditional Chinese dietary philosophy and combining it with the exploration of food in contemporary art, hoping to bring a fancy sensory experience to the audience.

实际上在稻米文化广为传播的东亚地区，人们共同分享着这种饮食文化带来的自我认同感和民族感。

因此我计划是从研究中国传统饮食哲学中对食物的态度中汲取灵感，并将其与当代艺术中对食物的探索相结合，希望给观众带来一种全新奇特的感官体验。

Art has a profound impact on the fashion industry, but can only precious materials and complicated designs bring the ultimate sensory enjoyment? Can people use more environmentally friendly and inexpensive materials to create beauty with simple designs?

艺术对于时尚界有着深远的影响，但是否只有名贵的材料和繁复的设计才能给人们带来极致的感官享受呢？

人们能否用更环保、造价更低的材料，通过设计师巧妙简约的设计创造不平凡的美感呢？

Rice serves both as a kind of tribute and a kind of gratitude and as my material of choice, it acts as a way to communicate my mind and body. That is, as a biomaterial, it can be degraded, which can inspire us to think about the artefact, the environment, nature, and human beings themselves.

我选择大米作为本次项目的主要创作材料。作为一种搭建我思想和肉体的材料我想对她致于一份敬意与感激。

另外作为一种可降解的生物材料，她也提供给了大众关于人工制品、人类和自然环境间关系的启发。

Roel Sterckx once mentioned in "Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood in Early China" that cooking and food as religious sacrifices are closely related to self-cultivation and ethics. As active cultural phenomena, food and cooking profoundly impact the operating mechanisms of human senses (vision, smell, taste, etc.) in early Chinese culture.

Roel Sterckx教授曾在《早期中国的食物，祭祀与圣贤》一书中提到，中国自古以来宗教祭祀的烹饪方式和食物选择与修身和道德密切相关。作为活跃的文化现象，食物和烹饪深刻影响着中国早期文化中人类感官（视觉、嗅觉、味觉等）的运行机制。

Almost everyone has experienced a sudden return to the past, regaining strong and emotional memories triggered by smell, taste, sound, or visual sensations. This phenomenon is usually illustrated by the famous Madeleine de Proust story. In this episode, Marcel describes how the taste of Proust steeped in tea accidentally triggers long-forgotten childhood memories.

几乎每个人都有通过嗅觉、味觉、声音或视觉感觉触发的强烈和情绪化的记忆，从而有突然回到过去的感受。这种现象通常由著名的玛德琳·德·普鲁斯特 (Madeleine de Proust) 的故事来说明。普鲁斯特就曾通过在泡在茶里的饼干味道意外地触发了被遗忘已久的童年记忆......

It is these societal and familial musings, group identity constructs and memories that grounded the decision to use rice for the fashion artefact. The growth of ethnic groups and the continuation of life depends on the grain......

Eating is not just a way to meet nutritional and biological needs. In many countries and regions, eating is also a means of cultural expression, because there are behavior standards handed down for thousands of years that permeate people's daily lives. Sharing a meal is a pleasure and an important way to build and strengthen social relationships. For eating, although the type, quantity or cooking method of the food is very important, the tableware and how they are placed, handled, and used on the table are also extremely important because they reflect the cultural traditions. In addition, the meaning of eating rituals is also a powerful form of expression in material culture. The combination of tableware and meaning condenses the association from the "stable representation" that marks its history. Therefore, modern people can know the traditional meaning of tableware culture through context interaction, instead of just focusing on eating behavior and the biological function itself.

饮食不仅仅是满足营养和生理需求的一种方式。在很多国家和地区，饮食也是一种文化表达方式，他们是流传千百年，约定俗成且渗透到人们的日常生活中的行为规范。一同吃饭是种乐趣，也是建立和加强社交关系的重要方式。在饮食方面，除了食物的种类、数量或烹饪方法很重要以外，餐具本身以及它们在餐桌上的放置、处理和使用方式也极为重要，因为它们反映了文化传统中的诸多讲究。

饮食仪式的意义是物质文化中一种强有力的表现形式。餐具与意义的结合，凝聚了从标志着其历史的“稳定表现”意义的联想。因此，现代人可以通过用餐语境中互动了解餐具文化的传统含义，而不是仅仅关注饮食行为和生物学功能本身。