I went to the market and looked for corns, played around with them and these are what I came up with. Using corns have definitely a lot to do with the interest on Lachan Bacor. As a phallic god of crops and fertility, my image of him is somehow related to corns. Not only that physically corns are very phallic, but also the idea of Vitamin C coming from maize is quite apt too.
Then it came across my mind, that this project can develop based on the idea that Vitamin C can make your dick grow bigger. Basically it can be used as penis enlargement. There was also a plan that I want to get those penis enlargement advertisement found in sex blogs and porn sites online, but unfortunately my laptop stopped working when I was in Manila.
I have also been thinking about what do I want the Vitamin C Kingdom will be. And after some thinking and poking around the net, playing with more materials, at the end of the residency, I thought, it will be nice if Vitamin C Kingdom is a ship. And so it is and every crew member will have a yellow/orange fruit attached to them. The works I was showing at New Nationalism is The King and his totem is Banana. Lachan Bacor is The Watchman with totem, Corn.
Another character will be The Chef and his totem will be Canistel aka Eggfruit. This is inspired by balut, a fertilized duck embryo, authentic to the Philippines and although they are sold on the street as snacks, they are actually very exotic. I was very glad that couple of friends bought and demonstrated eating them. However, the research for this character will have to stop here as I could not get further information.
There are balut, I could not bring myself to eat any of those. Maybe next visit. And if you are wondering how do canistels look like. Here you go. And more about them here. Images are taken from the link and wiki.
