SENSE AND SENSIBILITY: ON CONTEMPORARY MIGRATING AND FORAGING

Panita S. (Bume) — Actually it started in Sweden when I had an internship there for six months in 2014. There is a culture of picking the chanterelle mushrooms and blueberries, swimming in a natural lake with duck poops floating next to you, feeling the stream of hot and cold under your feet. The natural context around you, your surroundings, shifted the way you live, your lifestyle, and your mentality. That makes you realize it is possible to live this way which is different from the way we live in the concrete jungle like in Bangkok. I think it’s a balance I found in Sweden to combine both city life together. When I moved back to Bangkok to an old Bangkokian lifestyle, I easily got used to the same way of living. However, I keep recalling the way life can be in Sweden.

In 2017, I came to Belgium for my master’s degree in the city called Hasselt which is not a big city, it’s a city with a combination of urban life and nature. There is a nature reserve park called Bokrijk where you can bike around and be connected to nature unlike in Brussels or Antwerp.

Dohee Kwon (Dohee) — For me, it began in 2014 when I started to travel by myself abroad. Thailand is the first country I traveled by myself, mostly in the northern part. Since then I started to feel connected with nature. I was born in the city on the south coast, moved to Seoul, and surrounded by a concrete jungle more than a real jungle.

Then in 2017, I got a job from a Korean company in Bangkok. Even though I love nature, I also like the city life in Bangkok. I worked there for one year and during that time traveled back and forth between Korea and Thailand. 

I started my illustrator career after quitting the job in Bangkok. I usually draw something and post them on Instagram. There is one time that I drew an airplane and tagged the band called Khruangbin (meaning airplane in Thai) which is the band I love. Luckily the person who works for the band found my illustration on an Instagram and she contacted me to make posters for them. I made three posters for their shows in the States. It gave me good motivation and confidence to keep up with this career.

Pic. 1 — Poster design and illustration for Khruangbin.

Until last year, I got a chance to go to Chiang Dao for the first time. I feel like it is the place where I want to be, so I just decided to live there.

Bume — As we already live in a digital era, I use an application in the mobile phone called Picture This to check the type of the plant. It takes just a few seconds to analyze an algorithm to show the name of the plant, its family, and other information. Then, I double-check online if it’s edible. It’s always my first question (laughter). 

I sometimes read from the book and still go to libraries to search for more information. There is one forager that I admired who inspires me a lot. His name is Pascal Baudar. He is Belgian but lives in LA. I found his book is very interesting, it is called The New Wildcrafted Cuisine. He collected things like walnuts or cactus and experimented with how he can convert the plants into different tastes. Such as a seaweed dish made out of plantain (a common type of weed). I followed his recipe and tasted it but I thought it could taste more seaweed-like (laughter). I started from there, thought of how it could be more interesting and went further.

Pic. 2 — Pascal Baudar. Excerpts from short documentary, Forest Flavors. Available to watch online at https://vimeo.com/448759950 (password: forage).

Bume — I usually analyze the materials, context, and go from there what we can make out of it. What I can develop from that point. I use different mediums such as ceramics, edible installations, or information graphics. I try to combine what I know and put it into my work. I could say I’m a conceptual designer based on the sensory and taste.

Pic. 3 — Climate Reality: An Edible Scape is a weather report of ever-changing climate shifts. The scape has prompted a rethink of food production and consumption. It is a storytelling through food as a medium. The audiences are invited to taste and savour the edible installation.

Pic. 4 — Olfactory Time introduces an alternative way of perceiving time beyond the clock. This artistic intervention encourages us to re-experience the passage of time by exploring the sensorial phenomenon in which we are able to perceive and remember time indirectly through olfactory mediums. The artwork allows audiences to take a sniff from a circular ceramic plate, known as the ’Olfactory Calendar’.

Dohee — I think the way I use colors is inspired by traveling a lot in Southeast Asia and especially in Thailand. Compared to the atmosphere in Korea and Thailand, it’s a different energy. It’s hard to explain. The way Thai people use color is really strong. I always look up for old random LP cover arts from all over the world but also love to see those chunky, dense, and dynamic compositions from old posters. I get inspired by the things that are close to me. Like where I am, what I do and like, who I met, and even what they do. If you look at my personal works, you can see they are mostly about music but also the culture that’s related to the music I listen to, the cities I traveled, and nature where I stay in and fall in love with. I think when I draw what I really like or what I have experienced and I know it’s what it is, things are so smooth and easy and mostly I get satisfied with the result.

Pic. 5 — Illustration by Dohee Kwon on an instagram. @kimchisuperpower

Dohee — I’d like to say possibly there are a few, like what I have answered in the previous question, my works always reflect the surroundings around me. My hometown is a small city on the south coast. I grew up there till I moved to Seoul for my college. Then I lived in Seoul, which is a huge and crazy busy city for almost ten years. In 2017, I always traveled back and forth between Thailand and Korea and regarded Thailand as my second home always. So I think it’s hard to define where and how I get influenced by my background. All the things are kind of mixed up. I think it makes my work unique and that’s my greatest strength.

Dohee — Chiang Dao has not many tall buildings, two to three stories are the highest, a very few bars, and the only entertainment there is seven-eleven. (laughter) There are not many tourists in Chiangdao compared to Pai.

Bume — Ingrained Flavour is also about food but expands to include social context. I join the Openset, a platform where you can have lectures and get a tutor to guide you through your project. It has lecture classes every two weeks in Amsterdam over six months. It’s a bit like an extended summer school. I worked on a social project related to Surinamese food in Amsterdam-Southeast (Bijlmer). It turns out that Amsterdam is very multicultural. Back in history, Suriname (a country in South America) was colonized by The Netherlands. Surinamese people worked as housekeepers and workers there. Then later in 1975 Suriname gained their independence but remained their stay in Amsterdam. They formed their kind of subculture and opened their restaurants. As a result of colonization, Indonesian restaurants and Surinamese restaurants are commonly found in Holland, meanwhile, very few can be found in Belgium. Surinamese food got influenced by a lot of tastes and flavors from seven continents in their cuisine. Surinamese food tasted so different to me. I got a chance to work with the Surinamese chef and made a data visualization showing the colonial influence on Surinamese cuisine in Amsterdam.

After this project, I thought of Thai food and wanted to research the influences on Thai cuisine. Some Thai desserts also got influenced by Portuguese cuisine, like eggs, butter, flour but we adapted our local ingredients to it.

Pic. 6-8 — Food in Ingrained Flavour is used as a medium that interconnects society and provokes conversations on the subjects of colonial histories, relocation, heritage and rituals. I delve into Bijlmermeer (Amsterdam Zuidoost) from the historical background of food culture, diversity and multiculturalism, which I observe and investigate.

Dohee — There are another two collaborators on this project. One is Note and the other is Will. I’ve met Will at the Wonderfruit Festival. He invited me to his homestay in Chiang Dao so I came up there. He gave me his idea about this project because he was collecting Thai herbs and wanted to make it into a book. He asked me to do illustrations for it. That’s where we started. He lives in Chiang Dao, so he knows everything and everyone there. He visited one elderly in the same village as him. He is the one who communicated with the elder. As I remember he’s almost 80 years old but still strong. He knows every single plant, tree, and flower. With his help, he told us what the usages of each plant are. We documented them and I started to draw the herbs. The village where we live is within walking distance to the forest. So we easily collected or took pictures of the plants. 

Pic. 9 — Spread from Samun Phrai Thai (สมุนไพรไทย) zine.

Talking about my experience with the herbs. I illustrated Kratom plants from my experience when I visited Arunothai village where its border connects to Myanmar. The villagers are Chinese tribes. We went there during the Chinese New Year and ended up making some friends with the local people. We had a chance to visit one of the houses where they served us Kratom tea. It gave a very chill effect but not like weed. We asked how it works and decided to put it in the book. The illustration is a translation of my feeling.

Pic. 10 — Illustration of Kratom in Samun Phrai Thai (สมุนไพรไทย) zine.

There is one time that I got a wound on my arms and legs from falling off a motorbike. The villager used the Buddha Belly plants to heal my wound. They put the liquid from the plant on my arm. It shielded the wound, protected it from dust and my wound healed very fast.

Bume — I think it’s quite similar. The way you get influenced by the color of Southeast Asia in your work as well. Your brain creates a connection, a kind of cognitive connection between different senses. For example, the sensory impression of magnolia blossoms. When you taste Magnolia blossoms, it begins with a floral scent followed by a strong punching flavor of ginger aftertaste. For me, I think of the sharp line when I taste this, meanwhile visually the magnolia is so soft and delicate. This is how your sensory makes a connection between floral scent and strong ginger taste, and makes relation to sharp lines.

Besides collecting plants from nature, I asked some neighbors if I could collect their plants like magnolia blossoms in their backyard. This way you know there is no pesticide. I brought the magnolia home and made a pickle from magnolia petal with fermentation technique. Keeping it for two weeks, it turns into something quite similar to Japanese pickled ginger (gari) that you eat with sushi. The Japanese eat it to cleanse the palate between different types of sushi.

Pic. 12 — Magnolia petals are fermented for the taste of Japanese pickled ginger (gari).

Pic. 13 — Spread from Tenderly about magnolia blossoms.
 

Pic. 14-15 — Wild strawberry (Fragaria vesca), illustrations in Tenderly, by Delphine Lejeune. 

Working this way the European plants connect me to my Asian roots. Or I can make wild sushi without using fish because I don’t live near the sea, so it will be more plant-based sushi made by green leaves. I used to use little buds of daisy to ferment capers too. You can find the linkage to your cuisine. The balance I find here is to connect my roots to the local context where I live.

Bume — Actually it’s a big shift. Since I was in Sweden, I can sense the season change radically unlike in tropical countries like Thailand. Our bodies need to adapt accordingly to the season, and our biorhythms change also. It’s more gloomy and rainy here in Belgium. It made me start missing the sun more than ever.

I also notice the micro season. For example at the beginning of spring. There is a particular time when a flower like magnolia will bloom for one week. You can divide the micro season into weeks and we will have fifty-two seasons per year. I can see this week is the week of these plants and later is another. It’s like a timeline of nature to see what you can forage. From there you know when is the time for which plants you can eat. It’s a way to appreciate the context of nature. It’s the beauty of it. If you work too hard and distance yourself from noticing it, you will miss the thing you want to forage and have to wait until next year.

Bume — I work more with the context of nature in terms of weather, temperature, and surroundings. It’s about nature and the senses that I perceived through my experience. It could be called conceptual or self-searching.

Bume — One more thing I would like to share is what I read from the book about an Italian tradition to pick unripe walnuts on the 24th of June. The unripe walnuts look like lime. You have to collect it at the right time, so you can use it to make a traditional Italian walnut liqueur that is called nocino. It takes seven months to ferment. You have to open the jar every month to let it burp a bit to get some air, let it ferment until five months, and add more spices. Then you have to ferment further for two more months. 

Another thing you can do with walnuts is pickling the walnuts. I’m very curious about the taste so I searched for the recipe online. There is a British recipe in which they eat it with a piece of steak. The acidity in walnut evolves into a taste palate and it contrasts with its acidity to the piece of steak.

The walnut will turn very black when we pickle it.

Dohee — I’m quite out of the context since I moved back here. But now I’m interested in making illustrations on the real stuff. For example, I’m doing a tied-dye with my t-shirt. And I’m planning to do silkscreen and make a zine with screen-printing or risograph.

Lately, I’ve been drawing some arts that are inspired by daily affirmations after doing yoga. My yoga teacher teaches me to do affirmation every day and it changes my day every day in a good way. Maybe I’m gonna illustrate it on the zine. So as people see the zin and follow the pages with the affirmation, they can use it as one of the ways to meditate and to be in the present.