Street food like noodles in Thailand and Vietnam showcases the diverse culinary cultures, lifestyles, and surrounding urban landscapes.
This film was shot in Thailand during the flourishing democratic era of 2005 and before the coup the following year, while Vietnam was just opening up after the war with America, adopting a socialist-oriented market economy, “Đổi Mới,” since late 1986.
Although relations between the two countries were disrupted by war and opposing sides, a look through their food culture reveals an undeniably close cultural connection.
Each region’s cuisine has shaped the unique identities of Thai and Vietnamese noodle dishes, exhibiting both significant differences and similarities in their origins, creation, and evolution into authentic regional specialities. These dishes have also adapted to changes in the natural environment and political and social conditions.
Noodles also spark imagination through the tasting of flavours perceived as representative of a particular country, leading to the creation of a new ethnic and cultural identity based on new beliefs, which may or may not accurately reflect their origins.
อาหารด่วนข้างถนนอย่างก๋วยเตี๋ยวในประเทศไทยและเวียดนามแสดงให้เห็นถึงความหลากหลายของวัฒนธรรมการกิน การใช้ชีวิตและสภาพภูมิทัศน์เมืองที่แวดล้อม
ภาพยนตร์เรื่องนี้ถ่ายทำในประเทศไทยในยุคที่ประชาธิปไตยเบ่งบาน ปี 2548 และก่อนจะเกิดรัฐประหารในปีต่อมาในขณะที่ประเทศเวียดนามเพิ่งเปิดประเทศหลังผ่านภาวะสงครามกับอเมริกา ด้วยระบบเศรษฐกิจแบบตลาดที่มุ่งเน้นสังคมนิยม “Đổi Mới” ตั้งแต่ปลายปี 1986
แม้ว่าความสัมพันธ์ของสองประเทศจะขาดช่วงเนื่องจากภาวะสงครามและการเลือกคนละข้าง แต่เมื่อมองผ่านวัฒนธรรมอาหารเราได้เห็นรากวัฒนธรรมที่สัมพันธ์กันอย่างใกล้ชิดอย่างไม่อาจซ้อนเร้นได้
อาหารแต่ละถิ่นได้หล่อหลอมเอกลักษณ์ของวัฒนธรรมก๋วยเตี๋ยวไทยและเวียดนาม ซึ่งมีทั้งความแตกต่างและความคล้ายคลึงกันมากในวิธีการกำเนิด การสร้างสรรค์ และการกลายเป็นอาหารต้นตำรับของแต่ละถิ่น ทั้งยังลื่นไหลไปกับความเปลี่ยนแปลงของธรรมชาติแวดล้อมและสภาวะทางการเมืองและสังคม
ก๋วยเตี๋ยวยังเร้าให้เกิดจินตนาการถึงวัฒนธรรมอื่นผ่านการลิ้มลองรสชาติ ที่เข้าใจว่าเป็นตัวแทนของประเทศนั้นๆ สู่การสร้างอัตลักษณ์ของเชื้อชาติ วัฒนธรรมตามความเชื่อใหม่นั้น ซึ่งอาจจะตรงหรือไม่กับที่มาของมัน
Reviews
“The view from elsewhere is an event not to be missed by anyone interested in the best that ‘art-house’ cinema has to offer and throws up some unexpected gems along the way such as Sutthirat Supaparinya’s quirky and compelling short feature, Taste of Noodles (2006), a delicious exploration of the difference and similarities between Thai and Vietnamese people seen through their food.”
The View From Elsewhere: Press Release. The exhibition curated by Kathryn Weir
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“Taste of Noodles, 2006, a documentary video by Thai artist Sutthirat Supaparinya, points to the great variety and local specificity of noodle culture across the Mekong basin. Vietnamese noodle-eaters delineate fine differences between Vietnamese noodle dishes and flavours, while drawing broad contrasts with Thai noodles, and vice versa. Knowing that there are other ways of cooking noodle soup opens up a space of not knowing, tasting, comparing and perhaps finding indescribable flavours and textures that displace previous distinctions and offer a new palate. In the last sequence of the work, a Thai man says, laughing: ‘I always taste a variety of noodles. It’s called change.’ Context is all in art and film, as in food and conversations. To take an example from the European provinces, when a Manceau eats rillettes, the local rustic shredded pork pâté, but speaks of liking ethnic food (perhaps particularly Indian food because their knowledge of sauces is comparable to the French mastery of this element), the use of ‘ethnic’ is a marker of ignorance supported by a context in which the word has arisen to define by opposition things French and European. It is a question in this context of who has power to define and who is not always already familiar with the other’s culture. ‘Ethnic’ food, music, jewellery, clothing and objects have all constituted brands for commercial activity promoting these aspects of a lifestyle supposedly cosmopolitan but clearly parochial. In the United States, Mexican food is simply considered American, as are other assimilated culinary traditions. The engaged awareness of and sustained curiosity about other systems of knowledge, aesthetics and cultural production (or finer culinary points), constitutes a cosmopolitan openness more difficult to attain when the understandings and preoccupations of a local cultural context are felt to define contemporary conversations internationally, or are the only known points of reference. The deep symbolic relationship between understanding and eating is discussed by philosopher Jacques Derrida as ‘a cultural a priori’ in the West, where comprehending is a form of incorporation:
‘Our culture rests on a structure of sacrifice. We are all mixed up in an eating of flesh – real or symbolic. In the past, I have spoken about the West’s phallic“logocentrism”. Now I would like to broaden this with the prefix carno- (flesh): “carnophallogocentrism”. We are all – vegetarians as well – carnivores in the symbolic sense.’13
To bring these questions of distinction, digestion and incorporation to the foreground of consciousness involves a respect for what cannot be eaten, understood or assimilated, what Derrida calls the ‘untranslatable’ in a text: that which remains alien and displaces the ground of possible understanding. In a conversation or an exhibition, this means cultivating an openness to what is not known or cannot be known. The question is how to listen, observe, pause and be silent on the ground of ‘elsewhere’.“
Kathryn Weir, News from Elsewhere: Gesturing in Another Language, The view from elsewhere, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, 2009, p 24-25
The work has been shown at the following places and countries:
2025:
“The River They Don’t See”, Kestner Gesellscharft, Hannover, Germany. [Film screening]
2020:
ASEAN Street Foods: Hororok Chopchop Omulomul, Special Exhibition Gallery, ASEAN Culture House 1F, Busan South Korea [15 December 2020 to 11 April 2021] Hosted by ASEAN Culture House, The Korea Foundation. Curated by LIUSHEN
2015:
Asian Film and Video Forum, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary arts (MMCA Film and Video), 9 Sep-31 Oct 2015, Seoul, Korea
2007:
Meta House, Phnom Penh, Cambodia,
HIGH ENERGY CONSTRUCTS, Los Angeles, CA, USA
2006:
-Villa Santi Resort and Spa, Luang Prabang, Lao PDR,
-Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane and Sherman -Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney, Australia,
-Yunan Film Festival, China
“Taste of Noodles” has broadcasted in ThaiTV 7, Thailand, Lao National Television (LNTV) , Laos PDR, WETV and Thai PBS, Thailand
