Tomato Ketchup and Soya Sauce

The sun glared at alandriscoll and I, while we had difficulty reading maps of Bristol, as if the roads themselves had melted and were merging with other roads, roundabouts and pavements, in places they hadn't before.

We eventually found the harbourside and the Arnolfini Gallery, currently exhibiting Far West. Fruit made out of paper that other gallery visitors were constructing, was seen on the way in; a room full of paintings all just slightly different, made us wonder if we should be playing spot-the-difference; a calculator, alone in an otherwise empty room, left us puzzled; and the smashed-up crockery glued by visitors to the gallery into new, wonderful and sometimes creepy shapes intrigued us.

Outside the gallery, the tomato ketchup and soya sauce fight began. Tomato ketchup would be squeezed and soya sauce would be sploshed until the two men, Yuan Cai and JJ XI, inside the glass box were saturated in red and brown. As time passed, the smell of ketchup and soya sauce became more intense, the walls of the glass box became splattered, the men eventually stripped off some of their sauce ridden clothes, and let their flesh be dowsed in sauce. Globalisation and marginalisation provided the meaning behind it.

After the fight had ended, we hid from the sun in the darkest pub we could find, craving food smothered in tomato ketchup or soya sauce.