MACA×1000小食 | Elementary in the Plate

2023.12.16 Saturday

Location

MACA Art Center

In a two-day food workshop co-presented by MACA and 1000小食, participants were invited to activate their unique elemental perceptions and "read" Elemental Constellations with detective-like curiosity.

Guest Co-Planner: 1000小食 (Xiao Yang, Yan Mo)

Eating is one of the activities in daily human behavior that is most closely related to the elements. Unlike the rational mind's abstract understanding of the elements, when eating, we experience the entangled relationship between the physical body and the elements, and in doing so, we recognize the tension-filled difference and coexistence between the "self" and "nature" as the "other". In this workshop, which feels like a detective novel, we'll start with "lǔ wèi" (Chinese marinated flavor). "lǔ wèi" multilayered aroma often diffuses in the traditional family kitchen of Chinese households, embodying the fragrance many associate with "home". However, for those with limited cooking experience, "lǔ wèi" exists in ambivalence and mystery, like a "blind box" filled with a dozen unnamed spices — sometimes, we have even lost track of the exact spices used. The workshop will guide participants through identifying, categorizing, and rearranging each element, ultimately illuminating and reviving everyone's memories of "lǔ wèi". And this is just a warm-up. In the next chapters, you will realize what Holmes said: Deduction is an art.

MACA Art Center is a non-profit contemporary art institution housed in a standalone building of minimalistic industrial style and futuristic design in Beijing's 798 Art District, a major hub for arts and culture in the city. Through forward-looking and experimental content, MACA aims to enable communication traversing disciplinary boundaries while forging international dialogues grounded in the specificities of a Chinese perspective. Our programmatic scope, which spans exhibitions, research initiatives, pan-performance practices, and alternative communal engagement, signals a commitment to exploring ideas outside established epistemic frameworks. MACA seeks to position itself as a new institutional mode, proposing an alternative coordinate within the topology of Chinese contemporary art. Through art, we address our radically transforming times.