Yakult After the Revolution (zine)

This zine, created as a collaboration between the artists Dri Chiu Tattersfield and Ames Ma, explores a playful intersection of Asian American nostalgia and critique of supply chain capitalism through the lens of the iconic drink, Yakult. 

While the majority of Yakult is sold in Japan, where it originates, manufacturing and distribution currently happens in countries around the globe where the cost of labor is much lower and less regulated. We felt kinship with a similar winding journey presented in Anna Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World, which follows the matsutake mushroom’s journey from disturbed forests in Oregon to supermarkets in Japan, revealing portals to alternate futures the matsutake leaves in its wake.

We wondered, what can we learn from the multinational networks that brought these little red bottles to us? From the unique microbes inside them, and how species diversity relates to human health and the larger ecosystem? From the nostalgia we still feel about this drink from our youth, despite the ways it’s embedded in economic systems that must be destroyed?

Like growing gardens from compost, YAKULT AFTER THE REVOLUTION grants a diverse array of archival and raw materials space to create new beginnings. Shipping logs, historical advertisements, and substances used in microbiology are brought together and transformed in order to reimagine the ways communities steward land, perform science, and care for one another.

Published in the Special Issue of Asian American Abolition Feminisms in Frontiers: A Women’s Studies Journal.