中间声音｜中间美术馆的朋友们：梁超洪（Alvin Luong）

Dispatch from Toronto

It is the end of summer in Toronto and the city has just relaxed many of its pandemic precautions allowing for life to return to a very normal state. The city now allows for indoor dining at restaurants which is a sight that feels very alien to me after months of cooking and eating at home. Toronto has not experienced a second wave of the pandemic. Instead the city has maintained a continual drop in confirmed infections per day. It is strange to write this reflection in this relaxed summer moment when there is a general consensus in Toronto’s news media that a second wave of the pandemic is just around the corner in the fall. I only have to remember my conversation with Wenlong (文珑) in July when Beijing was experiencing its second wave or look south of the Canadian border to the USA to feel apprehensive.

Before the pandemic had reached Toronto in March, I had just concluded a long research trip in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam. In China, I was living and working amongst friends and colleagues at HB Station (黃邊站當代藝術研究中心) in Guangzhou and Gudskul in Jakarta. In Vietnam, I had just met my family members who live in Ho Chi Minh City in the Cantonese quarters called Chợ Lớn. Throughout this trip, I was observing how cultural producers and workers form communities under the various political and economic contexts of their locations; as well as beginning to formulate new ideas for future art projects in Guangzhou and Ho Chi Minh City.

When the lockdowns took hold of both Canada and China, I had the opportunity to reflect on my thoughts from the trip in a humorous yet solemn cooking show that I produced with Guangdong Times Art Museum (广东时代美术馆) alongside the curators Yang Tiange (a former team member at IOAM), Tan Yue (谭悦), and Nikita Choi (蔡影茜). We discussed our observations travelling to Vietnam, Vietnam War boat people refugees, the history of Cantonese migration to Vietnam, and Vietnamese migration to Hong Kong. We hosted our discussions over a video chat while we cooked and ate Phở Bò, a Vietnamese beef noodle soup.

The collective fascination with food from life during the lockdowns has also influenced my own artistic practice. While my planned video and performance projects are on hold, I have adapted to a studio-based practice by producing hundreds of plastic Chaozhou beef balls (潮州牛丸) and fish balls (潮州魚蛋) that will be turned into a boat and life jackets. I have been thinking about the migrations of people from Guangdong to Southeast Asia using boats, and how these migrations brought with them beef balls (牛丸) and fish balls (魚蛋) that have fully integrated into the food cultures in Southeast Asia. When the pandemic is under control, I would like to bring the boat and life jackets to different shorelines in Southern China and Southeast Asia that face the South China Sea. For now, I have used some of these plastic beef balls 牛丸 and fish balls 魚蛋 in a short video where I throw them at different houses that my parents have lived in since their immigration to Toronto.

— Alvin Luong