English / Chinese
2021
Published by te magazine
26 x 18 cm, 160 pages, color, offset, glue bound, softcover
There cannot be more possibilities and layers of complexity embodied in food throughout human development. On one hand, it constructed a system that assembles taste, cultural memory and historical movements; on the other hand, the correlation between food and geography provides a hidden motivation to examine human behaviours and social transformation. This inaugural issue of te magazine adopts Ye Wuji’s “The Lost Society” as the central theme. The term “lost” means ephemeral silence and enfeeblement rather than disappearance and extinction. This means that many cultures only dissipated temporarily, and some are metamorphised. Food happens to witness this transition, and the word “society” refers to a collective destiny. In this issue, we invited 13 creative practitioners of different disciplines — to bring in and reflect upon their respective expertise, knowledge system and research trajectories from and in anthropology, sociology, and contemporary art — to explore food as a multi-faceted intricacy, at the same time reconstruct the relationship between food and geography.
te is an annual bilingual publication of contemporary art and cultural anthropology. Each issue expands on a specific theme, and we invite practitioners in diverse fields to explore and reflect on the dynamic cultural landscapes across regions. Recurring motifs include the fluidity of cultures, languages and beliefs in specific communities and the adaptation of individual narratives to the shifting social and geopolitical environment.