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Ration Eater and the closing of a chapter

Added on by Alvin Luong.

My Ration Market project took on a new development in its Ration Eater iteration. The artwork was presented at The Plumb in a show curated by Callum Schuster, called “On a Table, Over Time”.

Ration Eater features a sculpture as well as a tasting event wherein guests can eat an actual bowl of the rau muong/ river spinach-ration congee that was advertised for sale in my Ration Market Special sculpture. The food that was served is a simple congee made with salt, water, and jasmine rice, that is then topped by a slurry of blended rau muong and then garnished with fried shallots. For me, the work was a way to bring the fiction of Ration Market further into life. At the tasting event, guests were encouraged to bring their own bowl and spoon, which for me as an artist, generates a mise-en-scene of a provisional sharing canteen.

The event for Ration Eater was brilliantly accompanied by the curator of the show, Callum, who prepared a cocktail revolving around the Vietnamese herb, Rice Paddy Herb/Ngo Om. An herb that came over to the Americas through the arrival of refugees from Vietnam. Callum had concentrated the rice paddy herb into a simple syrup paired with coconut water, Cointreau, Tanqueray, among other ingredients.

It was my first “relational work”, an activity that brought an intimate depth to the Ration Market project.


The event seemed like a fitting way to mark what feels like the closing of a chapter, with the openings of my three-years-in-making project, After the Cataclysm, Before the Storm, and my show of photographs and computer manufactured images in Destiny Is Not A Good Friend at Hunt Gallery. This period between March and April distills everything that I’ve been working on for three years—when I returned to Toronto in January 2020 after half a year working in Guangzhou, Jakarta, and Ho Chi Minh City, right before the pandemic.

It was a period of breakthrough development, I lived with the folks from HB Station / SJT / Boloho / Fong Fo and Gudskul / Serum / ruangrupa in the lead-up to their Documenta projects which in hindsight, imparted upon me a deep sensitivity to the spatial, political, material characteristics of the places around me. It untethered me from thinking about art production within silos, and to pay attention to the vernacular of culture (in the Bourdieu-sense) around me. To make art that may look less like art and more like the things around its means of production. This I believe, is a path towards continued experimentation.

Tunnel Rats and Sewer Holes (Hole Story Sketch)

Added on by Alvin Luong.

Some video tests using cheap xerox prints and diptych strategies to combine images of “tunnel rats” and exposed sewage holes around my family home on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City. “Tunnel Rats” were often shorter American troops who crawled thru underground tunnel systems in search of Vietnamese guerrillas who built the tunnels to evade aerial assaults. The sewage holes are a result of a contemporary botched real estate development on land that formally trained guerrillas to fight the French and American colonizers.

Ration Market Special and Underwater of Vietnam

Added on by Alvin Luong.

The universe that my ‘Ration Market’ builds is being extended into a special edition of the project called ‘Ration Market Special’. The title itself is a reference to and follows the grammatical logic of the Vietnamese and Cantonese word ‘dac biet/特別’, meaning ‘special’.

The ‘Ration Market’ will be expanded into a food cart that sells the river spinach rations as a prepared meal consisting of a rice porridge with a topping of reconstituted river spinach with a texture similar to spinach in a saag paneer. This food cart will also sell sim cards for different cellphone carriers in Asia Pacific, advertise a currency exchange service for currencies from Asia Pacific, as well as a makeshift booth for producing headshots for visa applications. Overall, ‘Ration Market Special’ is meant to paint a picture of a precarious station providing a quick meal and low-end services for people trying to flee Vietnam, a region that will soon face growing migratory pressures from Sea Level Rise (more of that below). The picture of migration that this artwork builds is not one for the upwardly mobile, who can migrate through official channels and high-end means of travel through flights, but rather one of the working class who may have to seek grey-market goods and human smuggling services to move across borders. It is a picture of low-end globalization in an era climate crisis.

The organization Climate Central provides a very intuitive and easy to comprehend visualization of the current climate models agreed upon by scientists and researchers in the field. Below are visualizations that reference the latest models from IPC2021. We can observe that Vietnam faces tremendous migratory pressures as its largest cities, Hanoi, the political centre in the north of Vietnam, and Ho Chi Minh City, the economic centre in the south of Vietnam, will both be effectively underwater when taking into account Sea Level Rise and the annual floods during the monsoon season. The areas around these sprawling metropolises which include small villages and towns will also be affected. The areas in red are regions that are below the projected flood level by 2050.

More relevant to my personal concerns is the Ho Chi Minh City area and regions to the south of HCMC. Below we can observe how Ho Chi Minh City’s historic quarters, Saigon and most of Cholon, are surrounded by a ring of flooding. Moving out, we can see the entire southern tip of Vietnam is effectively below projected flood levels. This also includes Cần Thơ, a historically important hub where Cantonese diaspora live, and where my grandmother moved to flee from the Japanese invasion of China during WW2. This area also includes Phuong Phu, the land that my video ‘Hole Story’ is about.

Aside from the loss of habitable areas and great cities, another great tragedy comes from the loss of effective agricultural land. When observing satellite images of regions around and south of HCMC, we can see that the land is densely packed with agricultural projects. Below we can see the agricultural lands near the vicinity of HCMC, and then the whole area south of HCMC. A myriad of green polygons can be observed in these satellite images dedicated to farming.

Lastly, we have a simulated fly-over of the southern tip of Vietnam around Ca Mau. In the video there is a simulated rain storm, and the whirring sounds come from the fans of an Nvidia RTX 3090 at full power. The GPU computing a storm sounds like a storm….

Ration Market (11.02.2022)

Added on by Alvin Luong.

Ration Market (11.02.2022)
200 survival rations made of river spinach/通菜/rau muông, 1 cut plastic sheet, 3 found plexi sheets, 9 red stools.

Moving forward, I’d like to make every installation of the ‘Ration Market’ unique by detailing the materials used to install the work, the amount of rations being installed, and using materials around the site of the installation.

Each iteration of a ‘Ration Market’ should be noted by date and documented. The installation should be provisional and low-end.

Forever sunset

Added on by Alvin Luong.

In contrast to the wet and nocturnal images of my ‘degradation pictures’, these sunset images convey a clarity in their fidelity, and a literal brightness in their illuminated form.

As the sun sets in Phong Phú (Ho Chi Minh City), the emerging moon pulls the rivers that surround the commune upwards which floods the land. The severity of the flooding is based on the height of the rivers which is further determined by the seasons, like the monsoon periods, as well as oceanic sea level rise that engorge the rivers. Night fall is then akin to an omen for things to come. As the lunar flooding of tonight becomes the permanent flooding of tomorrow. The southern half of South East Asia is due to be underwater by 2050 according to today’s climate predictions.

Here with these photographs, a permanent sunset is staged through a yellow-orange light that radiates through the smoggy skies of each image depicting Phong Phú in the early Twenty First Century. This current moment in 2022 does indeed feel like a sunset period. A moment before the flooding is permanent. A moment before the flooding is simply known as the shoreline.

This also feels like a sort of mourning.

Above is a picture of my friends observing the rising river waters in Phong Phú during sun set.

Wet Pictures, Degraded Pictures, Sad Pictures

Added on by Alvin Luong.

I’m constructing pictures that build up a visual world for the tong choy rations and Hole Story to exist together in for printed and exhibition contexts. A visual world that conveys degradation from a repeated cycle of wetting and drying.

Photography has existed in my practice for the purposes work to accomplish a specific project. While I take many photographs in leisure, typically with a phone, I had never used these leisurely images in my art practice. These two modes of image production were distinct operations. Now, I have been able to work with my leisure images with these ‘degradation pictures’ (a temporary name). Leisurely images that are specific to the geography of my tong choy rations and Hole Story are selected and given a treatment.

This type of work constitutes a deeper intimacy between myself and the artwork because these ‘degradation pictures’ are sourced from moments when I wasn’t actively laboring. In other words, these are images from my normal daily life tied to a specific and relevant geography and time. These images are a product of life and curiosity while living and researching somewhere. They are low-fi and compressed jpegs. These are photographs that a person makes and are then repurposed as a material to make art with.

When I view a ‘degradation picture’ I recall the moment or the reason why I took the picture. It is not as sentimental as it sounds, these pictures are usually just some curiosity that I come across in mundane life. When the added treatment transforms these images into ‘degradation pictures’, I impose an anticipated underwater future from sea level rise in Southeast Asia. Tragedy occurs when present time mundanity meets a dreaded future.

In an odd way, I think this is a preparation for mourning.

Tong Choy Ration Prototyping

Added on by Alvin Luong.

What would a contemporary ration or shelf-stable emergency food made of Tong Choy look like?

During the reunification of Vietnam and the country’s reconstruction, my family was rationed Tong Choy as a primary food source. The plant, carrying both high-nutrition and toxic elements from American ordnances, was easily cultivated in the wet lands of the newly formed Ho Chi Minh City. Today, the plant grows in wild abundance in many parts of the city.

Here, over 45 years after Reunification, I have been prototyping the form, packaging, and aesthetics of a ration for future emergencies. It is important that these rations look ‘handy’ as if any civilian could produce them, that the packaging is simple without specialized packaging and tools used to make today’s highest-end rations, like the USA MRE; and that they look like the could be sold by any street vendor.

Lifebuoy for Te Magazine at TANK Art Festival (TANK Shanghai)

Added on by Alvin Luong.
 
Lifebuoy in still image from computer rendering.

Lifebuoy in still image from computer rendering.

 

Lifebuoy is a new sculpture made in continuity with Life Preserver + The Arrival for Te Magazine at the upcoming TANK Art Festival at TANK Shanhai. A total of 144 imitation beef and fish balls (鱼蛋 and 牛丸) are vacuum sealed into 16 packages similar to those found in food markets. They are then bound together using plastic strings that are vernacular to daily life in Asia Pacific. Inspiration for Life Preserver + The Arrival came after noticing how meatballs eaten in the food cultures of Asia Pacific have a tendency to float in the soups that they are served in. This style of meatball originated from the Southern Chinese who, just like their meatballs, were ‘buoyant’ in the liquids of the South China Sea as they sailed for new homes across the region. Lifebuoy accompanies the inaugural launch of Te Magazine, an art and anthropology publication. I contributed two recipes and a reflection on food that has been developed and adapted by the Chinese diaspora in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Lifebuoy, 21x21x1”, 2021.

 
Lifebuoy, Work-In-Progress documentation.

Lifebuoy, Work-In-Progress documentation.

 
Lifebuoy with wall vinyl of Lake Ontario (Toronto, Canada) in still image from computer rendering.

Lifebuoy with wall vinyl of Lake Ontario (Toronto, Canada) in still image from computer rendering.

Lifebuoy situated in TANK Shanghai, still image from computer rendering.

Lifebuoy situated in TANK Shanghai, still image from computer rendering.

Pho Podcast with TY, Tiange, and Nikita

Added on by Alvin Luong.

In this episode of podcast "Raw Boiled Congee 3: Revelations From Eating Pho" from Times Museum Guangzhou, Toronto-based artist Alvin Luong contributed his mother's Vietnamese beef pho recipe, and curators Tan Yue and Yang Tiange followed Alvin's teaching in Guangzhou and Beijing, respectively. The three cities from the south and the north have different ingredients that can be bought. They are made on the spot and improvised. The Pho that is made is mixed with the flavors of each place and everyone's imagination of pho. As Alvin said, "as long as you believe this is pho", and this confusion may be the essence of Pho. In the process of waiting for the beef bone broth to finishin cooking in the pot, we played the fine tradition of the art institution dubbed "Liao Zhai" and boiled the soup with friends to talk about Vietnam with our friends.

播客“生滚粥”作为以美食命名的栏目，终于失足哦不，涉足美食节目了。这一期在多伦多的艺术家梁超洪（Alvin Luong）贡献出妈妈的越南牛肉河粉配方，策展人谭悦和杨天歌分别在广州和北京跟随Alvin的教学来烹饪。三个天南地北的城市，能够买到的食材不尽相同，就地取材、即兴发挥，做出来的牛肉河粉也揉杂了各地的风味和各人对pho的想象。正如Alvin所说“as long as you believe this is pho”，而这种揉杂也许才正是Pho的精髓所在。在等待牛骨汤出锅的过程中，我们发挥被戏称为“聊斋”艺术机构的优良传统，和朋友们牛骨煮汤话越南