Startups in the South: a Workshop Project for Makers

In partnership with the Kaohsiung Multicultural Immigrants Sunday Market (KMISM), the Love Cuisine observed and learned how immigrants from Southeast Asia promote their own culture in the art, crafts, and food fairs they organize in their host country, Taiwan. After a series of on-site visits and investigations, leading artist Liao Chi-Yu organized workshops and activities to encourage immigrants to explore novel applications of technologies and learn more about the maker culture. While finding the intersections between the traditional crafts and new skills, Southeast Asian immigrants also had the opportunity to share their own cuisine and personal stories.  

In response to the thriving activities of the KMISM in which immigrants make their own cuisine and handmade crafts while organizing cross-cultural activities, artists presented this project about food and cuisine and they used the facilities and resources of the Mzone Maker Space to organize workshops, which, stimulating and provocative as they were, gave rise to more cultural experiences and particularly startup ideas. In these workshops, participants were asked to use polymer clay to prepare dishes native to their hometowns while sharing memories and stories about the food. Moreover, they were trained to photograph the food models they manufactured in the film studio provided by the Maker Space. In addition to learning skills and techniques of studio photography, they were given vacuum packaging machines to explore more creative ideas. For artists involved in this project, the maker culture is not limited to experiencing the DIY culture or the process of self-recovery. With the participation of Southeast Asian immigrants, this contemporary movement demonstrates its ability to expand the territory to be more culturally diverse and inclusive.