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| ==TITLE: '''Nr. 39 with Rice'''==
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| FOOD FOOD FOOD IT BRINGS US TOGETHER
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| ==INTRODUCTION==
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| For my graduation I want to continue with a project which I initiated last year. My project Nr. 39 with Rice
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| is at first hand a respons to and outcome of an event that happened during an episode of Holland Got Talent in 2013. A second angle would be the sentence Nr. 39 with Rice itself. This holds a certain richness that I would like to explore.
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| In my project I want to present a scope of works ranging from photos, videos, interviews to installation based works.
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| ===''Holland Got Talent - What happened''===
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| During an episode of Holland Got Talent in 2013 Chinese contestant Xiao Wang was asked by jury member Gordon, a Dutch singer and TV-personality, if he is going to perform the song 'Number 39 with Rice’. Gordon’s question is a reference to the extensive menus Chinese restaurants often have. The dishes on the Chinese menus can be difficult to pronounce by people not familiar with the Chinese language. To prevent miscommunications a customer often says the number of the dish when ordering food. On the contrary, to order food by its number says maybe something about the position the food takes in our society. When we consider Chinese food we see it as something easy and that it comes in high quantity for a low price.
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| The event from Holland Got Talent is an interesting case. It yielded debate about racism and the position of Chinese people on national and international level. It was covered by the established media (e.g. television and newspapers) and by popular media like Youtube. Last, (part of) the Chinese community responded with a website that promoted an allowance by offering 39% discount for the Nr. 39 dish in 39 restaurants all around the country.
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| [[file:GordonWang.jpg|center|thumb|400px| Gordon vs. Xiao Wang]]
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| ===''Positioning''===
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| From the perspective that I’m born out of Chinese immigrants who came here with the hope to get a better life and who became restaurant owners the event is referring directly to me. I can be affected and have the feeling not being respected by people like Gordon. Yet with the knowledge that I’m raised by Dutch people the first 12 years of my life the event gets another perspective. From the outside look Chinese, but intellectually and culturally I feel more associated with Dutch society than the Chinese community.
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| ==POSSIBLE OUTCOMES==
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| The sentence ‘Nr. 39 with Rice’ is I believe an interesting point of departure. The outcomes I propose deal literally with the number 39, highlight possibly the underlying (true) feelings of the Chinese community in the Netherlands and last show a personal relationship between me and my father, who is from origin a chef.
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| ===''Outcomes according to the number 39''===
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| ====Photo series of number 39====
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| For this work I visit different Chinese restaurants that serve a number 39-dish. I order the dish and take a photo of the dish from a helicopter perspective. Ideally the series will consist of 39 different photos of dishes.
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| To display the photos in an exhibition setting I either want to frame or plasticise them. In restaurants you often see plasticised menus and pictures of the food they serve.
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| <gallery mode="packed-hover" height="50px">
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| file:Nr39a-benjaminli.jpg | Nr. 39: Kipblokjes in pikante saus
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| file:Nr39b-benjaminli.jpg | Nr. 39: Geroosterd vlees met bami
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| file:2-benl-nr39.jpg | Nr. 39: Pai kwat Chai
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| </gallery>
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| ====Mukbang number 39====
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| Mukbang is a type of performance in which someone eats large quantities of food, while interacting with their audience for apparent entertainment value. Mukbang originated in South Korea and its spreading gradually through different forms of media.
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| In my version of Mukbang the emphasis lies on the consumption of the food only. The interactive component of Mukbang is not part of my version. As far as I see now this branch of the project will be performed in the same restaurants I visit for the serie of the photos. The aim is not to have the same amount of videos as in the photo serie. Instead I aim for about 3 to 5 videos.
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| When exhibited I would like to have 5 equally sized televisions lined up in a row. Each television is broadcasting one of the videos. They are played simultaneously.
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| [[file:Mukbang1.png|center|thumb|400px| Test Mukbang studiosetting overview]]
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| [[file:Mukbang2.png|center|thumb|400px| Test Mukbang studiosetting detail]]
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| ====A cabinet of Nr. 39====
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| This idea is in a premature state, but this work consists of plastic 3D-models (1:1) of the food I consumed in the restaurants. This idea is derived from plastic versions of food I see when I’m in Hong Kong, the city where my parents are born.
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| Hong Kong holds a culture of eating outside. To comply to this there are many small diners and restaurants all around. Next to the usual strategies of luring people into their eateries like neon signs and displays of the menu outside, it is also common in Hong Kong to see plastic models of the food they offer. These models are in real size and come in vibrant colours. They are usually placed in a cabinet at the entrance of the eatery.
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| My models are either a copy or an interpretation of the food I had. For the exhibition i would like to have a glass cabinet that show all the models together with a little card that displays the name of the dish, how much I liked it and the price i paid for it.
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| [[file:Plasticfoodinjapaneserestaurantwindow.jpg|center|thumb|400px| Plastic food on display (Japanese)]]
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| ====A cabinet of real Nr. 39====
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| In response to the ‘plastic’ cabinet I want to give vistors of the exhibition the chance to experience of eating a Nr. 39. To do that I want to ask Chinese take-away restaurants to deliver the Nr. 39 to the address of the exhibition. When arrived the dish is placed on a table which need to be big enough to host a number of Nr. 39 at the same time. Visitors need to help themselves if they want to eat.
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| [[file:take-away1.jpg|center|thumb|400px| Chinese take-away food]]
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| ===''Outcomes according to the Chinese community''===
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| What kind of works and in which form is at this moment unclear, but in these work I want to look for the people directly involved and/or affected. The people that could be interesting for my project are restaurant owners, chefs and supporting staf.
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| ===''Outcomes according to the collaboration with my father''===
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| As mentioned earlier my father use to be a chef. In his late adolescent he became responsible for his family and started his career as a chef. He ended up working as a chef in Spain and when he met my mother he moved to her in The Netherlands. The first few years he worked in the restaurant of his father in law, my grandpa. After a few years he and my mother started their own restaurant in The Hague. I possess fun and warm memories to that place. The restaurants main focus was on take-aways, but they did had a few tables for people to dine at. The menu was extensive and contained at least over 100 dishes.
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| My father is out of the business for more than 10 years now. For my graduation I want to ask him to go back to a restaurant and cook. The final work will ideally be a video in which my father is cooking a Nr. 39 from begin to end. The shots of the video will mainly be details of him cutting and preparing the food. The video ends when he place the food on a plate.
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| At this moment I’m not quite sure to which extend I want to show my dad other than his hands preparing food. I do want to give him a voice by letting him talk about the things he is doing. Him talking can be during the process of preparing the food or afterwards so that it becomes a voice-over. When my father speaks he will do that in Cantonese, his mother tongue, for the sole reason that he is not fluent in either Dutch or English. The video of my father will be subtitled in English.
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| Juxtaposed I will be filmed and interviewed as well. The place for the interview is the dining hall of the chosen restaurant. What the interview will be, is not sure yet, but it is likely that I will talk about my father and the things he is doing in the kitchen. My interview will be in Dutch. My video will as well be subtitled in English.
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| The video ends when A) the dish of my father is served to me or B) when I finish eating the dish of my father in the restaurant. My interview will be in Dutch. To present the work I’m either thinking of merging the two videos into one or have them separately as works on themselves. The last option will lead to a presentation where the two videos are played alongside each other.
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| ====Considerations====
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| *This idea only stands when I have support and commitment from my father. As said before my parents don’t own a restaurant anymore, neither do any of my aunts and uncles. For me it is important that shooting takes place in a restaurant. I want to see and feel the atmosphere of the restaurant and how this affects both my father and me.
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| I don’t have any Chinese friends who’s parents have a restaurant. Yet maybe my parents can help me finding a restaurant that lets us in. He might have some former co-workers who can help out.
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| *The biggest challenge is to convince my father to participate. I don’t know how he feels to be on camera and second if he would like to go back to a restaurant to cook. Chinese people don’t want to be bother someone when there is no actual reason. In this light I find it plausible he only agrees to participate when the video is made at home.
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| *To make both videos a success I need a team with specific qualities. Since I’m not fluent in Cantonese I’m not able to interview my father to talk about his pursuits in the kitchen. Important is to find somebody who is fluent in Cantonese and Dutch.
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| *If I want to talk in my interview about the things my father is doing in the kitchen, I can’t do his interview prior to mine (if I want to be there when the interview is taken place with him anyways). A solution is to do first do my interview, followed by his. The end shot(s) of my video will be made after both interviews have taken place.
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| To tackle these issues I need to understand what I want and write clear possible scripts.
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| *What is very important is that the work with my father is (and stays) part of the broader project Nr. 39 with Rice. My history with my parents is turbulent and I can imagine that the work with my father can be a project on itself where I explore family ties and cultural differences. I don’t want to make a project which focuses on a parent-child relationship. I do want to include a certain ambivalence and uncertainty in the work. It is up to the audience to make assumptions and conclusions.
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| == RELATION TO A LARGER CONTEXT ==
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| Countries are an invention of humans. They work to help us frame the things we have in common whether or not influenced by natural boundaries. We created borders to discriminate and define us from the things on the order side of the border. Throughout time borders never proofed to be something stable and save. War, natural disasters and economic and political instability led to changes in borders. Borders were also breached because countries decided to merge or become alliances.
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| Another cause that leads to the breach of borders is the migration of people. Migration takes place for several reasons and as a result it changes the immigrants. Refugees become citizen and receive the same rights as natives. As a result the new citizens are looking for ways to define themselves. On one had the try to merge with the new society they belong too, on the other hand they try to preserve their cultural background and sometimes this clashes.
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| == PRACTICAL STEPS ==
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| At this moment I find it difficult to relate my project to a larger project. The ideas for the works are in most of the cases fresh, but do excite me. In most of the works I feel I'm in control. The work in which I think I'm not in control is the work with my father. I doubt if he will participate, he might propose to do it at home while for me it is very important to do it in an actual restaurant. Besides the uncertainties about the participation of my father it is also unclear which form the work will take. I requires time and energy to srt this out.
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| I would like to start with finding out if my father would like to participate. From there on I think I can define the other works better or too. What I need to keep in mind is that I don't want the work with my father to take over the original starting point that is the investigation of Nr. 39 with Rice.
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| == THESIS INTENTION & REFERENCES==
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| Subject of the thesis can be the meaning and bonding of food in Chinese culture and how this is cultivated in Dutch society.
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| An interesting reference is the film Eat, Man, Drink, Woman (1994) directed by Ang Lee. The movie shows a family that struggles with themselves and with interaction outside the family. Yet their love for food, brings back together the remaining father and daughter.
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| The book Oostenwind (2010) by Karina Meeuwse gives a good insight in how the Chinese community in the Netherlands developed. It explains partially my own background.
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| [[file:Eat Man Drink Woman1.png|center|thumb|400px| Scene from Eat Man Drink Woman (1994) - Ang Lee]]
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| [[file:Eat Man Drink Woman2.png|center|thumb|400px| Ending scene from Eat Man Drink Woman (1994) - Ang Lee]]
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| == RELATION TO PREVIOUS PRACTICE ==
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| Working on or around online platforms, collecting data and making collections comes back in several other works I made or are working on.
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| [[file:36_benjamin---sprintello-race-bike.jpg|right|thumb|150px| TE KOOP: Sprintello Racefiets - Benjamin Li (2013)]]
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| [[file:36_ad6-benjaminl.jpg|right|thumb|150px| Screenshot of the advertisment - Benjamin Li (2013)]]
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| ===''TE KOOP''===
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| In my project TE KOOP I infiltrate online commodity markets e.g. Craigslist and Marktplaats. In ''TE KOOP'' I make photos of a furnitures or bikes in household settings. Each photo combined with a short description is turned in an advertisement and posted on several commodity markets around the world. The advertisements function as bait and elicit responses. Most responses are about the items offered. I answer the questions raised and try to start conversations with the respondents. In 95% of the cases the conversations stays around the product I seemingly offer. In some cases the conversations transform into an almost friendly conversation.
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| In TE KOOP both the photos and conversations are equally important, the photos of the items don’t exist without the online content generated and visa versa. The conversations differ in length and content, but are treated equally. They are all significant.
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| In the summer of 2015 I published my first book [[Media:TE KOOP-sprintello racefiets boek.jpg| ''TE KOOP: Sprintello Racefiets'']].
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| ===''UNBOXING''===
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| [[file:Unboxing1.jpg|right|thumb|150px| Still Unboxing]]
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| [[file:Unboxing2.jpg|right|thumb|150px| Publication Unboxing]]
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| In a recent project I changed the role I play on commodity markets. Instead of pretending to be a seller, I became the buyer. In UNBOXING I look for stamp books of any particular kind. So far it was never really about the content of the stamp books, what mattered was the color of the cover of the book. This because I asked the seller to execute an action before shipping took place. When the price was agreed I asked the seller not to pack the book in a conventional envelop or box and send it, rather I asked and insisted that the book will be packed according to a set of rules I created. First I asked them to enclose the top, bottom and side of the book that could fall open during shipping. Second, I asked the seller to write my name and postal address on the cover of the book. Last, I asked the seller to place the postal stamps alongside the address. When I receive the package I create a setting and film with two cameras positioned from different angles the act of unboxing. In the edit I interchange the image.
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| Also part of UNBOXING are the e-mail conversations with the sellers. What differs from TE KOOP is that in UNBOXING the conversations are subordinate to the videos created. Next to the video, I create a copy of the original stamp book. But instead of having the same content, that of stamps, I create a book in which the content is my e-mail conversation with the seller and documentation in the form of photos of the original stamp book.
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| ===''Rejected''===
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| [[file:Finalrejected2-benjaminl.png|right|thumb|150px| Rejected page detail]]
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| [[file:Book1-benjaminl.jpg|right|thumb|150px| Rejected book detail]]
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| A few years ago I came across a collection of school photos from my former elementary school. The collection is interesting because it hosts two types of pictures from the same person. Half of the collection consists of pictures marked with a (black) pen, the other half lacks the mark. The mark is an identification tool applied by the photographer to pictures which are in his opinion wrong. The pictures originate from a time when digital photography was non-existing. When a picture was made the photographer had no chance to see the picture back on a screen like we do now. Back then the photographer had to decide on the spot if a picture was good or not. Only after the film was developed the photographer could see if his decision was correct. To distinguish the two photos from each other he marked the one which was in his opinion wrong.
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| The collection consist over 200 pictures. The collection is ordered to the direction and length and thickness of the mark and turned into a book. Pictures at the beginning of the book are longer and thicker in length towards pictures at the end of the book. To add a personal note to the collection I included my personal elementary pictures found in the collection. Unfortunately they lack the mark by a pen, yet I used my own pictures to indicate the end and start of a new chapter.
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