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Café do Brasil 
巴西咖啡室

As the ice melts, the coffee losses its strength | 咖啡淡了, 是因為冰塊溶了

Archive of the People | 人人檔案
2019

Installation with cold brew drip towers, fake ice, plants, traffic cones and 3 single-channel videos

 

裝置(冰滴咖啡座、彷冰粒、植物、路錐和三個單頻道錄像)

Archive of the People takes Café do Brasil as a departure point to open up online conversations within its members’ network. They think about Brazil, coffee, public space, activism, encounters and time, and from the perspective of individual memories and emotions. Sitting inside Café do Brasil, there was perhaps a feeling of suspension, with the harbour just outside the window. Everything must have seemed to flow slowly.

 

The elevated platform in the exhibition space allows certain things to sink to the bottom and others to emerge at the top. This is like the fine layer of milk foam on top of coffee—one needs to draw few mouthfuls of milk-flavoured air before tasting the nuances in the coffee. To find a balance within variations, Archive of the People presents a blend of coffee beans, as a metaphor for the solidarity within a group. Every member picks their own variety of coffee beans, and these are then blended in different proportions, taste-tested and offered as a unique sharing experience.

 

Cold drip coffee takes time. The barista with her back to the platform says, “Good things take time. You need to whittle away the mediocre before getting to the cream of the crop. Some things just can’t be sped up.” She then tells me (us), “As the ice melts, the coffee loses its strength.” The coffee itself has not changed. One should’ve expected the dilution when one ordered iced coffee. Can iced coffee be blamed because water from the melting ice got mixed in? This is always a difficult subject.

 

The ice maker asks, ‘ Does the flavour of the coffee become impure after adding ice?’ Does it taste worse, it’s worse. It’s not a big deal.’

 

That’s right, what’s important is the repair after damage. Some people say they have gone bad, yet others claim that it’s the system that’s gone bad. Perhaps this little elevated platform can act as a buffer zone to allow us to regroup with a little coffee break.

 

The coffee observer listens to the cracking of the ice and watches the dripping of the ice water. That’s the constant physical reaction of stuff, from fluid to solid and then fluid again, back and forth, and finally, after passing through the mouth, it becomes something else.

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人人檔案藉著巴西咖啡廳展開想像,在組織成員的網路聚會打開話題,思路一路走向巴西、咖啡、公共空間、運動、聚合、時間等等, 再延伸至個人的記憶與感受。坐在巴西咖啡廳裡,或許有一種「懸空」的感覺:人在內、海港在外,中間隔著塊玻璃窗,外面一切流動都顯得緩慢。

 

展覽場內的升高空平台讓一些東西沉澱,另一些則懸浮於表面上--就如精密奶泡薄膜覆蓋在咖啡上,需先吃幾口牛奶味空氣,再探索被萃取的咖啡中的差異。為了在差異間找到平衡,人人檔案推出特調咖啡豆組合,暗喻團體特精神凝聚:成員會各自選擇一種咖啡豆,以不同比例調配並進行嘗味測試,作為是次獨特的味道分享。

 

「冰滴咖啡需時,背向著平台的咖啡調配員說:好事須多磨,存菁先去蕪,慢的快不了。『咖啡淡了,是因為冰塊溶了』她慢慢地告訴我(們)。咖啡成份從來沒有變動,點冰咖啡時早應預料到味道會變淡吧。冰咖啡被埋怨了,是因為摻雜了有水構成的冰塊而變得複雜嗎?箇中滋味,總是一個難以被恰當地談及的話題。

 

製冰員問:『咖啡的味道在加入冰塊後變得不純粹嗎?』味道有變差了嗎?然後,她淡淡唱出『壞了就是壞了,沒有甚麼大不了』。

 

對哦,崩壞過後的復修才是最重要的事。世上有人說自己是一個壞了的人,也有人說制度已經崩壞了。也許這一個被升高的平台,是一個小小的緩衝區, 讓我們在咖啡小憩中重新聚合組織起來。

 

咖啡觀察員靜下來去聆聽冰塊的裂縫, 觀看冰水滴答,那是物質的不斷轉變,從液體到冰再到液體,來來回回,經過口腔以後再成為其他。

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Real Danger Revisited

單頻錄像裝置|彩色|12' 53"

Single channel video Installation | Colour |

2019

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