Eating and Walking a Race Riot in RIOT FOOD HERE and 360 Riot Walk

Strategies of embodied experience would be presented through two of my art projects commemorating the 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver, Canada: 360 Riot Walk and RIOT FOOD HERE. Both artworks position the audience in the historic context in the US and Canada when Asian meant alien, as they, through the act of walking and eating, are led into the social and political environment where racialized communities were targeted through legislated as well as physical acts of exclusion and violence.

360 Riot Walk is a 360 video walking tour that traces the history and route of the mob that attacked the Chinese and Japanese communities following the parade and demonstration organized by the Asiatic Exclusion League. The interactive experience takes the audience into an uncanny space where past and present overlap, where historic and archival photographs and documents are embedded into the urban landscape, through the same spaces where these events took place.

RIOT FOOD HERE employs the form of pop-up food events along the route of the parade, demonstrations, and riots. Passersby on the street were invited to sit down for a chef-prepared meal to share what they knew about these events and their relationship to these sites. The offerings reflected the demographic palates of the area at the time: Chinese, Japanese, Punjabi, Indigenous and white. The act of eating foods similar to those who experienced the riots positioned the participant to reflect their own subjectivity in relation to what it meant to be a disenfranchise Asian at the time.