A lot of my previous work had come from a place of hurt and desire.
Melancholy informed me.
I feel abandoned so I hurt. I lack community so I hurt. I don't know who I am so I hurt. I don't know my family so I hurt.
I desire understanding. I desire intimacy. I desire love. I desire to be held.
In conversation with Tech, I remember he brought up a great point that ironically, for as deeply vulnerable, intimate, and naked as a lot of the work we presented in our classes was, the way the cohort interacted with each other felt incredibly impersonal. This dissonance never sat right with me. How are we to witness the unpacking of your trauma but we can't even share a meal, look at each other in the eyes, acknowledge each other?
I wanted to be a facilitator, not a reactor. I desire intimacy, so I'll search for it myself.
Attempting to shift from a mode of representation into one of presentation, this isn't work about something, it is something, it's trying to do something.
Project #1: TERRAIN
Jesa (Celebrating Uncertainty, Speculation & Potential), 2024
Tomatillo Collard Greens, Watermelon, Peaches & Cotija, Chili Oil Chicken, Kimchi Rice & Beans, Video Projection
Participants: Tech, Chris, Cassie, Angel, Kaito, Fabien, Karyn, Seungyeon, Sebin & Peter
Jesa is a ceremony held to commemorate one's departed ancestors and to express one's gratitude to them. It's a tradition, ritual, offering, celebration (or worshipping) -- an ancestral rite.
An expanding definition: An opportunity for connection, a reflection of one's identity, an opportunity for guidance, affirmation, and strength. Reinforcing self in the context of a lineage, known or unknown.
In attempts to tread the unknown territories of identity -- stemming from an immigrant understanding of one's lineage that can be described as amnestic at best -- the work implicates viewers/participants in the process. Why navigate this alone when we can do it together?
A menu was created based on survey entries that responded to the following prompts:
1. Think about your cultural background, heritage, lineage, family (immediate, extended, or chosen), or personal/sentimental experiences. Write down any ingredient(s) that you resonate with in relation to these things, or remind you of these things, and why you care about the ingredient(s).
2. Dietary Restrictions/Allergies (Write N/A if none).
The following responses comprised a wide range of ingredients encompassing cuisines from Haiti, Mexico, Japan, China, the Black American South, Italy, and Korea. I then spent time to play with these ingredients, seeing their relations with each other, it's overlapping roles, it's contrasting profiles.
These connections started to form: kimchi fried rice can be fried with diri kole ak pwa nwa (Haitian rice & beans), collard greens cooked in ham hocks with Korean chili powder tastes like gamjatang (Korean pork neckbone stew), pollo asado could be interesting if we added lao gan ma (Chinese chili oil), etc.
Ingredient Workshopping
A Letter to an Ancestor:
I want to meet you.
I want to see what you look like.
What your name is.
How wonderful you are, how horrible you are.
How traumatizing you are, how traumatized you are.
I want to recognize your smile.
I want to recognize patterns at your most wrathful.
So that's where they got it from.
I want to taste your cooking; see how Omma's compares.
How mine compares.
You probably made the best tasting food.
A warmth that got diluted in each passing of generation.
Or maybe the food got better,
perfected, continuously workshopped and growing.
Maybe it's only Omma who can cook like that.
That warmly.
Either way, teach me how to cook.
I want to gather together and eat a meal as our family does.
Not that I'll act so different.
I'll still be the meek and shy son that I am.
But to be present there, I would do anything.
I want to sit down with my parents, and their parents, and their parents,
eager to share stories about each other, about you.
I want to hear what you believe in, who you believe in.
I want to understand you,
and learn our language better,
so I can actually understand the stories that you do tell - if you want to tell any at all.
I want you a part of my life.
A compass.
A reservoir full of reference and guidance.
I need an intervention.
I wonder if you'd stress about how I'll turn out like how your descendants stress.
Would you be scared of me?
See me?
Hear me?
Would you shoot me with the belittling and judgmental gaze of the uncles in church?
Or would you call me pretty, and tell me I favor Omma like the aunties in church?
Who taught you how to love?
Are you doing a better job than those before you?
Am I doing okay?
Best.
Process Notes:
PROJECT 2: STRUCTURE
the Way We Come to Eachother, 2024
Performance, Video Projection, Screen Installation, Washing Bowl, Water, Candle
Sound, Keyboard: Mateo Karanja
Participants: Tech, Chris, Cassie, Angel, Kaito, Karyn, Sebin & Peter
Instructions:
WASH YOURSELF
OF THAT DIRT
OF THAT FILTH
OF THAT CASCADING SHIT
WASH YOURSELF
OF THAT SHAME
ILL TRY TO COME TO YOU AS YOU TO ME
IS IT SCARY? YES.
IT TAKES TRUST, YES.
I KNOW YOU'RE BRAVE.
This project draws from the imagery and auditory memory from 새벽기도 (Dawn Prayer): church services that took place in the late night/early morning. My mother would play the organs and whatever keyboard they had available at church, often using the standard default keyboard sounds that would come with the software -- real shitty 80s synth sounds. The space was meditative, shame wasn't present there. People confessed, prayed, praised, and spilled their souls, side by side. In the dimly lit sanctuary, the intermingling blues, blacks, pinks, and oranges peeked through the windows, inching across every surface.
In addition to the sanctuary, during New Year's services, we would meet on the eve in the lobby of the church. My father would stand there, draped in his green and white robe, over a large bowl filled with lukewarm water, which rested on a plastic folding table. One by one, members of the congregation approached him, as he held their hands underwater, delivering a spiritually potent prayer -- he penetrated everybody's souls.
I wanted to capture the magic of these spaces. What could I do to make people strip all the shame that surrounded them? Another opportunity for a caring and unrestrained intimacy needed to come of this -- new possibilities, speculative intimacies.
Project #3: INHABITANT
Sebin's Focaccia Party, 2024
6-Foot Foccacia from Grandaisy Bakery, Tomato, Garlic, Prosciutto
Participants: Chris, Cassie, Angel, Kaito, Seungyeon & Sebin
Dear Class,
I've been very appreciative of everyone's participation this semester in these experiments of connection. As the semester is coming to a close, I felt it was only right that we have another opportunity to share a meal together. I invite you all to come to my dorm after class. I'll be cooking some Roast Tomato Toast situation (something between bruschetta and like pan con tomate). You are also invited to help me cook -- or if you want to make something in addition, we can go to a grocery store and pick up some stuff. It's a pretty small dorm, like 8 minute walk -- if you don't wanna be in a smaller dorm you don't have to come lol. But, if you do, that'd be awesome.
From,
Sebin
Love, Love, Love
Leaning into informality.
Coming off of Project #2, I had a choice to make: would I continue transforming the space of a classroom into something much more informal, and play a more active role in structuring a world within these walls -- or would I disinvest from these spaces, and lean further into continuing these situations into a structure and system outside of the classroom. The first would require taking a much more active role in this curational role -- it feels more art-y -- I'm creating these situations in a class critique, with formal elements, with conceptual work informing the text, the lighting, the environment, the performance. The latter to me implied a world outside of these restraints. Why present food as artwork, when I could just have food with these people outside of class? Even within a more presentational mode of creating, I still found myself facing representation as a barrier. I would hate for these events to be one-off ephemeral flashes of connection -- I needed something to live and exist outside.
I chose the latter.
A brief recount of the night:
Who's coming over?
Chris, Cassie, Angel, Kaito & Seungyeon
We can leave as soon as class over
Let's congregate outside Barney first
Y'all are gonna chill outside for a bit, okay bet
We'll go on a mini field trip to Westside market we got a couple stuff to grab
Meet us at Coral Tower after we're done
9 Roma Tomatoes on the vine
Peeled garlic
Prosciutto and Salami from Chris
Basil-
Where the fuck is the basil?
How the fuck does this market not have basil?
You got thyme, fresh parsley, and cilantro but no basil?
Whatever
Everybody welcome to my place
Sorry if it's cramped
Could I get anybody something to drink?
Some water?
Some sorrel?
It's good, right?
We talk
We laugh
We eat after talking and laughing
Bread was broke
Let's do dishes
Take some bread with you
Goodnight everybody
Stay safe.