RED TONGUE RAPID PULSE - FIRE DIVINATIONS
Sue Man
2 December 2024
Metroland Cultures
It explored traditional Chinese medicine, eastern philosophy, and food as a communal space for rage and playfulness. Sue built a food altar, then participants were encouraged to make their own effigies using ingredients from the altar. The effigies were cooked in communal hotpots then eaten to transmogrify grudges and transform anxiety into nourishment. It aimed to seek out co-metabolic processes of care and repair, beyond the limitations of language, that honoured different experiences and fragilities, in shared time and space.
To coincide with the workshop, Sue was commissioned to contribute a text to the Brent Biennial 2025 Toolkit, a forthcoming publication developed from the Divinations programme. The text drew from her personal history in hospitality, childhood memories of Hong Kong food markets, theories from traditional Chinese medicine, and the role of food as healing and community within the East Asian diaspora. It also features a recipe to create a food altar and conduct a cooking ceremony.
Divinations engaged with the four elements – Water, Earth, Fire and Air – in a series of one-day programmes preceding Brent Biennial 2025. The Brent Biennial Toolkit will be published in 2026. More details coming soon!
Divinations and Brent Biennial 2025 were curated by Annie Jael Kwan
Photos by Andreia Leito