Indexing Sour, 2023
Kohkae Collective
Short and long ferment pickles, guava wine, paper lithography
In previous generations, fermented foods earned a place at the table as an important part of every meal. As sweetness has proliferated, earlier generations' knowledge, memories and skills are at risk of irrelevance. Reverting to our mammal instincts, where sourness is key to survival, we are following the path of acidity in Taiwan to relocate something in the previous generations’ food culture that might inform the next. Where is the local sour? and what does it mean for food to be Taiwanese? These questions always emerge in conversation with friends in Taiwan. The questions might seem unrelated but the basic tastes on our tongue can lead us to form an understanding of the self. Sourness indexes the immigration and colonization which has radically altered Taiwanese food over successive colonizations. The various groups whose occupation forms the history of Taiwan have complicated any clean understanding of what Taiwanese food is.
We could argue that sweetness is a key distinguisher. As many people say food from Tainan in the south is better than Taipei for its sweetness. As the center of sugar production during the Japanese colonial period, the birth of a hundred bubble milk tea shops is not a coincidence. But while sweetness occupies most of the gustary discussions in Taiwan, can we say Taiwan is shaped by sweetness? Sugar, and the sweetness that accompanies it, can be manufactured and replicated outside of its local context before being transplanted to the next. In its synthetic reproduction, it has no situatedness. It colonizes our tastebuds and causes us to lose locality. The knowledge of previous generations cannot compete with a favour for industrial flavours.
Driven by our curiosity for sourness as a cultural index, Kohkae collective are curious about the ways in which disappearing sourness in Taiwanese food is taking generations of fermenting knowledge with it. Emerging as a key to preservation across all cultures to extend the life of food, acidity provides nutrients in periods of lack between harvests. Its presence and absence in food is closely embedded with the industrialisation of farming. As preferences for sweet thrive, sourness is being methodically propagated out. Our research seeks to interrupt this process, preserving knowledge of older generations in Taiwan, through the action of preserving. Fostering connections across communities, we aim to collect recipes and pickling techniques generally overlooked by the younger generations. Built on field work in Taipei and the farms of Shetou, we are curious about the translation of taste, translating our sour index into a culinary experience.
Kohkae Collective brings together independent artist/curators Pimpakaporn (Fahmui) Pornpeng, Rebecca Jensen & Ray JH Chang, who bonded over snacks, cigarettes and foraging in the arable land of urban Taipei. From Thailand, Australia & Taiwan, the group is named for the perfect combination of peanuts - the most affordable nut in the world - and universal flavours such as coconut and BBQ. Khokae Collective aims to extend the conversation of locality within globalisation, fermenting delicious contributions to the global art world by using locality as a seasoning.