THE YELLOW ONE IS COOKING, THE WHITE ONE IS EATING, May
1998

AES

Art Media Center "TV Gallery" production


Curator Nina Zaretskaya

Acknowledgement: the authors are grateful to the restaurant "Gold Dragon" (Moscow) and to the camera-man Eric Malinin (NTV, Moscow).
The exhibition has been made with the technical assistance of the State Contemporary Art Center (Moscow)

The West has been always fond of the East for its exotics. Behind this fondness are centuries of hostility, hatred and inevitable interest to SOMETHING DIFFERENT in all aspects, i.e. ethnic, religious, cultural. All this is hidden very deep inside, while on the surface we have got most pleasant and correct exchange between great human cultures.

But nowadays an ancient human fear of something different has acquired a new significance, Economical one. News from papers, stock-exchanges and just from the shelves of a super market bring a quiet and implacable rustle of constant work being done with the help of modern technologies very fast, qualitatively and which fills the world like that pot from the Grimm brothers’ fairy tale that had been pouring its sweet porridge untill it covered the whole city with its towers and cathedrals. "Young Dragons" and "Tigers", basing upon their traditional mentality, produce megatons of goods for filling super markets, department stores, car parks, they build whole cities for electronic production. All this is a real offensive in the economic war.

But this population and economic fear born by mass-media, passes off as soon as some Europian or white American enters Chinese restaurant. There he enjoys the exotics of taste and environment.

Video having such incorrect from political viewpoint title "The Yellow One Is Cooking, the White One Is Eating", is by no means dedicated to these fears caused by mass-media, it rather reproduces sensual feelings while intent watching of the process going on in the restaurant hall and in the kitchen. Classical Chinese restaurant becomes the meeting-place of ethnoses, mentalities, energetics. All this clearly reveals itself when one race cooks food and the other one swallows it up. Undisputable erotica of these two processes accentuated by media, is, of course, of physiological character, at the same time they possess their own attractiveness and meditativeness. All of a sudden video camera extracts from a rather brutal image of a Europian something being both feminine and predatory simultaneously. At the same time a Chinese cook who dresses raw food, chops vegetables, manipulates by the stove with a frying-pan and boiling oil, undoubtedly becomes a bearer of a masculine, bellicose origin. Even such simple phrases as "Give me, please, the flour" when said in Chinese, sound like Shao Lyng’s fighting commands.

c r i t i q u e

Matador, December 1998
(Freddy-Mercury)

AES Group which has been existing on the art scene only for a few years and which began its work with the projects being pretty indistinct, such as huge photographs of a post-operation stitch, now chose a sensible strategy, i.e. to orient themselves not towards local market of actual art, but towards world one. Moreover, Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich and Evgeny Svyatsky manage to put this strategy into practice. Their "Islamic Project", "Children-Killers", "A Yellow One Is Cooking, a White One Is Eating" and other works you could read in "Matador" about, present European art of a pretty high level. The project "Who Wants to Live Forever" Aes Group performed together with Vladimir Fridkis.

Itogy, June 2, 1998
A Yellow One Is Cooking, a White One Is Eating
AES Group
Art Media Center "TV Gallery"
Moscow

Being once quite a nice and intelligent group AES (Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich and Evgeny Svyatsky), which appeared during the work on graphic design of Anatoly Vasiliev’s show "Serso" considered to be cultic among Moscow intellectuals, not so long time back chose an artistic strategy of shock and provocation.

On the one hand, the AES made a few "bodily" installations whose heroes showed ripped throats and stomachs to the viewer. On the other hand, they travelled over half the world with their "Islamic Project", and with phtocollages telling of a frightful future of America and Europe which are to fall under the hordes’ invasion from the East. Both in their physiological and geopolitical works the group used to speak in a very incorrect way on the topics usually undiscussable, i.e. on the inner things, be it either guts or cultural phobias (it must be said that actually the West is scared of Asian expansion, being ashamed to confess it).

The video installation at "TV Gallery" has combined the passions of AES: both physiology of geopolitics and geopolitics of physiology are before our eyes. The meeting point of seemingly uncrossing spheres is a splendid Chinese restaurant, the agent of that very expansion European gourmets are ready to submit to. It is hard to say who makes whom serve himself – either a white client uses the services of a yellow cook or vice versa. As known, the one who pays orders the music, but a client of a very expensive place called "Golden Dragon" has to listen to pretty odd howls of the Daocians.

Wandering along the hard and repulsive video of AES (close-up of a European endlessly chewing exotic food, and the hands of a Chinese making this very food), one thing can be said with determination, i.e. that the restaurant is not the place for convergence, this is rather the place of latent war between two culturres. And when frozen faces of the heroes appear for a few minutes on the screens, one feels something tense and warlike in them. Actually, the artists-provocators just pull out to the surface the fears and complexes of the viewer, leaving him alone with the latters in a darkened hall of "TV Gallery

real video: 20 Kbps. fragment; 34 Kbps. fragment

The site has been created with the assistance of the "Open Society Institute" (Soros Foundation). Russia