Almost half a year back, my mum and aunt hatched a business plan to open a canteen store in an industrial estate. In such a place, you will only get traffic during morning and lunch hours, it’s almost zero at other times. Since they were new in the business, they settled only for a lunch menu.
We thought it was a pity to miss the morning peak, and decided to help come up with a breakfast menu for them. With limited culinary skills, we went to the supermarket to source for ingredients. Well, we only know about instant and canned food, so that’s the section we hung around. We were thinking of ways to mix and match them. Then, it struck us that we can make an artwork out of this, because we were trying to create our own line of products with these ready made brands. Is there a way we can hack a well-known product and pass it off as our own? This somehow became our starting point, that we can take on an initiative and be more than a passive consumer.
My mum’s business didn’t go too well, guess they were not suited to the rigours of being a hawker. At least we got something out of this experience.
This is a very enjoyable read. It’s easy to relate to the writings because they examine ordinary situations that we all face in the everyday. It points out ways in which people personalise mass culture to fulfill their own needs.
An essay by Midori Matsui, a Japanese art critic. It’s a cool read and perhaps gives a little hint about where our works are coming from.
The term “Micropop” is used to describe the attitude or approach to life that creates an unique and original path of living or aesthetics by combining fragments gathered from various places, without relying on institutional morals or major ideologies.
Customizing a burger. Well, if it’s not on the menu, then you may have to DIY. It goes the same for our work, most of the time we have to fabricate our own works, because we can’t find suitable or reasonably priced solutions in the market.
Kaifeng is the master in transforming Ikea items into artworks. He once turned a candle holder into a loudspeaker.
