A Recipe of You: noticing the unknown & immeasurable with metaphorical recipes
A recipe is constructed by rules and instructions. It is an anticipated and measurable outcome yet includes annotative ways to add, mix, substitute, and pass down its knowledge.
Following this metaphor and vehicle of documentation, what is the line between transgression and modification? Where is the in-between-ness between these two concepts?
When thinking about yourself, how expected were you based on others' anticipations? How much uncertainty and lost information are passed down through you? Most importantly, do you feel satisfied with the existing tools allowed for you to present and describe your story?
Current forms of identification, instruction, and archives erase a galaxy, perhaps even cosmologies of human qualities and embodied knowledge in forms and categorizations. The result is the standardization of qualities, attaching importance to measurable categories such as ethnicity, age, and gender (which often only provides limited selections for us to choose).
How can we bring back the fragmentation, erasure, and discrepancy to extend the current lack of growing narratives? Rather than a linear narrative, what would a cosmological understanding of yourself be like?
The unknown and erased
When someone dies, the disappearance isn't solely physical or chemical. A typical example would be you trying to follow your family member's cooking recipe, but somehow it just doesn't taste the same. Likewise, cultural heritages such as food, music, and tradition allow us to connect to pasts we are not familiar with.
In the case of many immigrants, you are required to edit these "recipes" because you face nuances such as finding the right ingredients, cooking them in the right way, following with the fear that the chef's inevitable passing will result in lost knowledge. When you look at different versions of the same recipe, how would you compare them? How did they change and adapt to their surroundings, and how would authenticity be defined in these comparisons?
Violence & Imagination
Perhaps imagination is the evidence or result of violence.
Something is missing or lacking, and you want it to exist. Hence, you create.
Intersectionality
When we are lying and selectively filling out questions on forms, stating and proving who we are, how do these thought processes and actions form who we are? Rather, can our current design, usage, and understanding of instructional documentation be intersectional at all?
The tension of the individual identity
We lose facets of heritage every day while it evolves simultaneously. The dynamic between subtleties of yourself and the power of collectives constantly shift. Especially under current times of dissent and activism, we use our collective identities frequently to achieve change and progress. I wonder, is there an intersection between these two tensions that would inform a more complex and colourful human narrative?
An Invitation
Having these thoughts and questions in mind, I wanted to explore the idea of bodies as code. You are aware of certain traits and histories (both known and unknown) within you, but you may lack the language or knowledge to fully process their significance.
Perhaps the goal isn't to "go back" and materialize nostalgic imaginations of the past. The aim could be to accept and embrace these uncertainties within you, acknowledging them as essential building blocks of who you are.
Some of the recipes created and collected along the exploration process.