Energy Loss Cabinet 能量損失櫃

Energy Loss Cabinet, 2010

Packages of food, acrylic cabinet and wooden table

Dimension variable

As a child, I loved watching adults eat packaged food—opening it to reveal rows of identical, mass‑produced items neatly arranged inside. After they had eaten everything, there would always be a few crumbs left in the four corners of the packaging. To me, that was a small feast often overlooked, a place where fragments ignored and lost beneath the main event quietly remained.

In this efficiency‑driven city, such instant or fast‑food culture has already become a habit, a way of life. People—Hongkongers—I believe most can only carve out a sliver of time from their pressured lives to enjoy themselves, to affirm their existence, and to search for meaning within it. When appreciation can only be fleeting, and when we have come to take for granted the rapid consumption of everything around us that once held deeper meaning, it makes one wonder: does life truly hold any value at all? If, within food culture, the presence of packaged food can symbolise and extend this fast‑food mentality, then I try to salvage whatever I can from it.

From May to June, over the course of 30 days, I ate only packaged food, and after each meal I inverted and re‑wrapped the packaging. Fast food was no longer fast; the points of energy loss in the packaging were turned outward, no longer hidden. What remained was the use of surplus materials under consumerism—perhaps itself a sign of another kind of energy loss.

小時候很喜歡看著大人吃著包裝食品，打開它，裡面單一又重覆地排列著加工食物。在他們吃光過後，包裝的四個角落總會留下一些碎屑兒，那是一頓常被錯過的小盛宴，亦是主體下被忽略及遺失的碎片之地。

在這個講求效率的都市裡，如此即食或速食文化已然是一種習慣，一種生活模式。人，香港人，我深信大部分都只能在緊迫的生活裡頭擠出小許時間來享受、確立人生，以尋求當中的意義。當欣賞只能稍縱即逝，而我們已經認為快捷地消費身邊一切原有更多含意的東西已是理所當然之事，實最令人感到，人生，是否真的沒有什麼價值可言。如果在飲食文化裡，包裝食物的出現能象徵及引申出這種速食文化，我嘗試從中挽留多少東西。

在五至六月30天的時間裡，我只進食包裝食品，並將進食後的包裝倒置包裹。速食品不再速食；包裝的能量損失處向外展露而不再損失，那麼，餘下的是消費主義下過剩的物資使用，正是另一能量損失的暗示?