MAKE YOUR OWN FORTUNE
幸運指南
DETAILS
8′25″
Single-channel video (color, sound)、Fortune Cookie、Found Object
2024
NOTES
Directed and Edited by
Chih Kai Lu, Miao Ying Lu
Concept
Miao Ying Lu, Chih Kai Lu
Screenplay by
Miao Ying Lu, Chih Kai Lu
Photography
Chih Kai Lu
Colorist
Chih Kai Lu
Main–role
Leonardo Cattaneo, Miao Ying Lu
Voice-over
Leonardo Cattaneo
German Translation
Leonardo Cattaneo
Brochure
Miao Ying Lu
Special Thanks to
Anna Proissl, Finn
Ss
2025 PROVOKATION! - Kunstuniversität Linz, Linz, Austria.
Fortune cookies are a cultural product. In Western societies, they are often regarded as symbols of Oriental culture, yet they bear no actual connection to East Asian traditions. This dissonance inspired us to do a project on fortune cookies, exploring the cultural misunderstandings underlying their symbolism.
Since the colonial era of the 19th century, the Western imagination of the East was infused with exoticism. Oriental women were portrayed as mysterious, submissive, and seductive figures. This narrative persists in some of the media now, where visual, textual, and linguistic representations continue to reduce Oriental women to symbolic icons of "exotic allure" rather than acknowledging them as real individuals.
Against this, we want to deconstruct this cultural phenomenon through a video project, which takes the structure of a cooking tutorial and critiques cultural and gender issues. In this video, the Asian woman silently cooks fortune cookies and inserts messages with cultural misunderstandings into them. Meanwhile, the male voice-over is an authoritative guide, contrasting gender topics. There is also a Western male character as a "feng-shui master,” who represents a Westernized appropriation of Oriental culture. He wants to manipulate the kitchen interiors, holding feng shui tools of the German version, further emphasizing the misuse of Eastern cultural symbols. After tasting a fortune cookie made by the Asian woman, he enters a trance-like state and begins reciting the fortunes inside the cookies.
