外卖白日梦 TAKEAWAY DAYDREAM
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As a little child I was fascinated with colourful and bright shops. I remember going for walks with my mom and sometimes I could stop and stare at shop windows for minutes. All these shops looked like diverse miniature universes at the time. I discovered that this fascination is still in me. I have explored the vibrant and often intimate world of Chinese fast food places, chicken/kebab shops and takeaway restaurants, places where different cultures and traditions clash. These places have the sense of the ‘old’ and every one of them has a particular atmosphere, where traces of the past and the present meets. For the shop owners these places bring about a memory of their home, sentimentality for the past, a sense of nostalgia. They tend to serve very identical food in each of these restaurants, but apart from the unified menu there is a shocking visual similarity in the interior. The visually overloaded, often aggressive graphics and displays, the golden dragons, red lanterns and the beckoning Maneki Neko cats are all part of the sheer fast food experience. These objects lack profound meanings, they aim to connect us with feelings of happiness (red colour), success and opulence (dragon/cat).These ethno symbols and interiors are built to remind us of a country which we have never yet visited and they generate this orientalising effect to give us the illusion of getting to know a new culture. 3
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BALINT MARJAI balint.marjai@gmail.com 2017
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