The Pho Phenomenon

In this perilous age we turn our attention to Pho, the Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup. Sure, it’s hot and tasty, but what lies beneath? What can it tell us about the essential questions of our time?




Art and pho are brethren in the eternal whys and wherefores of our very it-ness. Society, in all its transmillennial limbo, looks towards the artist (especially the photographer, the recorder of truth), twitches, raises a quizzical eyebrow and ventures: “What will come of all this? What could this mean?” The artist, ironically enough, has little time for such temporally specific anxiety. Rather, photographasmical mindscapes such as these say: “Behold the book of eternity - our souls are just so many noodles, our bodies so much beef soup.”



As for “meaning,” clearly substance means nothing to an artisan of such lofty concerns. Yet, in the microcosmoscopic grain of this photocyberphysical atom clusters we see the perfect metaphor for a society floundering in the vapour trails of narrative. Indeed, in lieu of any historicological superstructure binding our temporo-cultural perceptions, beef noodle soup becomes a perfect metaphor for an ideal rhizomatic social (de)structure. Art this inspiring shows us that if we are to survive psychically we must become just so many tangled noodles in the soup of cybernetic so-psi-ety. --Sage Pho Maximus