You Are What We Eat- Carmela Laganse and Taien Ng Chan

Food is a signifier of heritage and memory, a potent symbol of inclusion or exclusion, and a mashup of cultures and social systems that underlie identity formation. In You Are What We Eat, Carmela Laganse and Taien Ng-Chan connect images of food and cultural embodiment to the theme of semi-nostalgic reclamation as they turn interactive, face-tracking and augmented reality technologies (Touch Designer) into a playful exploration of foods from their memories of growing up in the Canadian Prairies. Our work speaks to the experience of looking back and seeing how growing up in the Asian diaspora has shaped our adult selves. We are interested in creating a hybrid Asian-Western cultural aesthetic, often with a surreal twist. These playful embodied representations provoke ideas of global food production and the identities and labour of people infused in the food with which we identify and consume. Our experiences growing up in the Asian diaspora meant navigating a cultural mishmash that could translate into a future hybrid existence of east and west. We are looking back to look forward, imagining what other worlds could be possible.