What are the stories we tell ourselves about food?
Singapore is often dubbed a 'food paradise' and celebrates its diverse food culture. Food is frequently spoken about as a source of comfort, in terms of our cravings and desires. At the same time, food is intimately bound up with our inner worlds - our shame, anxieties and neuroses - as well as issues such as scarcity, migration, the climate crisis and socioeconomic disparities, to name but a few.
In HOT POT TALK: The Measure of a Meal, the second in the HOT POT TALK series, we hope to gather and share people’s messy stories of pleasure and pain around food, as a way to reflect on our personal relationships with food, as well as to draw attention to the larger systems, forces and cultures that people and food are enmeshed in.
HOT POT TALK is a long-term series that explores conversation as both process and form in art making - how might intimate, self-reflexive and playful conversations amongst people from diverse worlds be centred in the devising process and in the experience of the work? How do we practice holding space for ourselves and each other’s messy stories, and leaning into our differences and discomforts?
Text by Chong Gua Khee
View the interactive website here: hotpottalk.sg
Production Credits
Director — Chong Gua Khee
Dramaturg — Kokila Annamalai
Co-Producers — Chong Gua Khee, Kokila Annamalai
Visual Artist — Alecia Neo
Sound Artist — Jevon Chandra
Production Stage Manager — Azy Alias
Performer-facilitators — Adib Kosnan, Suhaili Safari
Storytellers — Heather, Madhavan, Yanti, Yash
Website — Dennis Chen
Text curators — Kokila Annamalai, Scott Chua, Adib Kosnan, Teo Xiao Ting
Translators — Scott Chua (supported by Nathan Oranga), Suhaili Safari, Rajkumar (Raj) Thiagaras
Transcribers — Kokila Annamalai, Suhaili Safari, Alex Tan
Dramaturg — Kokila Annamalai
Co-Producers — Chong Gua Khee, Kokila Annamalai
Visual Artist — Alecia Neo
Sound Artist — Jevon Chandra
Production Stage Manager — Azy Alias
Performer-facilitators — Adib Kosnan, Suhaili Safari
Storytellers — Heather, Madhavan, Yanti, Yash
Website — Dennis Chen
Text curators — Kokila Annamalai, Scott Chua, Adib Kosnan, Teo Xiao Ting
Translators — Scott Chua (supported by Nathan Oranga), Suhaili Safari, Rajkumar (Raj) Thiagaras
Transcribers — Kokila Annamalai, Suhaili Safari, Alex Tan
