Manipulated Memory Tasting Booth

Gayle Chong Kwan, Manipulated Memory Tasting Booth, Chinese Arts Centre, 2006

The Manipulated Memory Tasting Booth plays with authenticity and fashion in Chinese art, food and architecture. A selection of pre-packaged, commercially available, spring rolls are provided to taste. Visitors are given the opportunity to listen to recorded memories or fictional stories associated with the food, left by previous visitors. They are also invited to record their own message. In the same way that ‘Chinese’ food undergoes a kind of translation or manipulation into other countries tastes, each memory or sensory recollection is a creative act affected by the circumstances in which it is experienced. Based on the design of Luke Lightfoot’s Chinoiserie Room, created for the quintessentially English Claydon House in Buckinghamshire in the 1760s. The Manipulated Memory Tasting Booth features elements found in the intricate and delicate fanciful plasterwork, including smiling Chinese men holding up door features.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]