Post on 12-Jan-2023
Ingestional Aesthetics: Deciphering Eating in Contemporary Art
by
Michelle A. Lee
A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillmentof the Requirements for the
Degree of Master of Arts
Department of Art History, Theory & Criticism
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago2011
Thesis Committee
Thesis Advisor: Stanley Murashige, Associate Professor; Art History, Theory, and Criticism; School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Thesis Reader: Simon Anderson, Associate Professor; Art History, Theory, and Criticism; School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Second Reader: Terri Kapsalis, Adjunct Associate Professor; Visual and Critical Studies; School of the Art Institute of Chicago
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Contents
Introduction 4
Chapter 1. Sweets 9
Chapter 2. Drinks 21
Chapter 3. Sit-Down Meals 39
Conclusion 55
Bibliography 62
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Introduction
Art in any medium can incite a visceral reaction, however nothing touches the gut quite
as literally as eating. Removed from (or highlighted as) the quotidian, the meanings of eating and
drinking are both heightened and transformed. The procurement, preparation, and ingestion of
food has always been at the forefront of human activity. As anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu puts
it, food is the “archetypal cultural good”.1 However, although eating has always been a human
preoccupation, only in the last quarter century have artists, curators and art historians begun to
consider food and eating as a subjects worthy of serious attention. In the last twenty-five years
an ever increasing number of artworks, exhibitions, and writings have been dedicated to food
and drinks as materials. Within this trend there has emerged a significant amount of artistic
activity that involves the literal eating or drinking by an audience. Rather than using ingestibles as
theatrical props or means of eliciting disgust, these artists employ food and drink as a means of
transforming the gallery or museum into a place for conviviality and nourishment, creating
aesthetic spaces more akin to cafés, bars, or restaurants than performance art stages or static
installation sites. Offering an alternative to the myopically optical field of fine art, the artists
discussed in this paper all create polysensorial experiences that engage the whole body,
encouraging audiences and art institutions to think about and relate to art works - and each
other - in new ways. With ingestion-based work foods and drinks are incorporated into the
body of the eater, dissolving the distinctions between artist, art, and audience.
Like many artists who use eating as a medium, my interest in food and drink began well
before I considered it within the context of artistic practice or art historical research. Although
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1 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 79.
my passion for all manner of ingestibles has been a life long affair, it was only when I became a
vegetarian and later a vegan in high school did I begin to seriously contemplate the significance
of eating and drinking in socialization rituals. Finding myself suddenly excluded in some way
from almost every social activity involving food - from school lunch (no hot food) to sleepovers
(no pizza or ice cream), to birthday parties (no cake), to family dinners (no mom or dad cooked
anything), to pretty much all major holidays (no turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie, hot dogs and
hamburgers, roast beef, Chinese banquet food et cetera) - I came to realize that my choice not
to eat animal-derived foods involved much more than a diet change. By not sharing common
foods invisible bonds were weakened, significantly affecting my relationships with my family,
friends, classmates, and almost everyone else. Additionally I found that what and where I did
choose to eat and drink came attached with a whole host of associations regarding everything
from class, to culture, to lifestyle, to political ideology. While I eventually found ways to reinsert
myself into eating-related social events - for example, by finding restaurants where everyone
could eat - during my time as a vegan I observed many eating activities from the margins, my life
becoming something of an amateur sociological study of which I was one of the principal
subjects. Through this experience I gained first-hand insight into - and interest in - how different
foods and drinks can affect and define social relationships. In much the same way that my vegan
diet prompted a change in perspective, food and drink experienced within the context of an art
work induces both artists and audiences to consider ingestion from a completely different angle.
From the outset ingestion-centered work, often grouped within what is now identified
as relational art, has proven somewhat difficult for art critics and historians to assess. Like
installation art - with which in some cases it overlaps - ingestion-based art is without a lengthy
medium-specific tradition from which to judge against, thus requiring new criteria to be
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established in order to evaluate the works. Writing in response to Nicolas Bourriaud’s book
Relational Aesthetics, critic and historian Claire Bishop suggests that one would do well to
consider key questions such as what is being cooked, how, and for whom.2
Cooking and eating activities residing primarily outside the purview of art history,
properly answering questions such as Bishop’s clearly necessitates an interdisciplinary
approach. Although the fields of food anthropology and culinary history are relatively young
themselves, insights from these sources have been extraordinarily useful for the reading of
works of ingestion-based art. Utilizing the works of cultural anthropologists such as
Pierre Bourdieu, Mary Douglas, Sidney Mintz, and Massimo Montanari, as well as theorists such
as Roland Barthes, has been instrumental in placing these works within the larger frame of
general culture. Of course while it is important to take an interdisciplinary approach, it is equally
important to also approach these works using a formal and art historical lens. While it is true
that artists are part of general culture, it is equally true that fine art practice has its own specific
history, lexicon, and internal logic. While there are now quite a few works surveying the
contemporary food based artistic landscape, there is still a dearth of critical material that
employs a seriously interdisciplinary approach. In writing about ingestion-based work, the task of
the art historian is to strike a proper balance between the two approaches.
Although eating or drinking as art is a relatively new phenomena, human ingestion
has a considerable history, replete with established traditions and formal conventions, from
which to draw upon or judge against. These pre-established meanings and uses - themselves
subject to constant change - are largely defined by the physical properties and relationship to
other foods within the ingestible universe. Placed within the language of art, particular formal
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2 Claire Bishop, “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,” October 110 (2004): 64.
qualities or “distinct materiality” of different food categories have a hand in predetermining the
possibilities of their use - in other words it could be said that different foods and drinks have a
certain degree of medium-specificity. Depending upon their goals - for example, how many
people they want to experience their work, how long they want audiences to linger, and how
much they want to serve - artists choose different types of food accordingly. With that in mind,
this thesis is divided by the categories of drinks, sweets, and full meals.
In addition to having near-universal appeal, sweets are generally small, inexpensive, and
self-contained, thus lending themselves well to reaching a large audience - albeit for a short
amount of time. With an endless supply of candy piled in minimalist spills Artist Felix Gonzalez-
Torres entices audiences to ingest less appetizing ideas such as AIDs and death. Meanwhile Los
Angeles-based art collective Fallen Fruit uses fruit, the most ancient form of sweetness, to
collapse time and space, resurrect the idea of communal property (otherwise known as “the
commons”), and imagine life pre-capitalism. Although the physical experience does not last
long, the impressions left by Gonzalez-Torres and Fallen Fruit are indelible.
Drinks, being composed of liquids rather than solids, lend themselves to fluid relations
between a loosely knitted network of strangers, acquaintances, and casual friends. Offering their
audiences some moments of respite, Rirkrit Tiravanija’s 1994 (angst essen seele auf) serves beer
and Coca-Cola, Italian collective Stalker’s serves drip coffee in styrofoam cups,
Tiravanija and Douglas Gordon serve espresso drinks for Guggenheim patrons in their Cinema
Liberté Bar Lounge, and World Tea Party serves loose leaf teas in ceramic cups.
Sit-down meals, being the most intimate and elaborate of all ingestion-based activities,
lend themselves to sustained interaction and fostering group cohesion. Channeling both Plato
and bell hooks, feminist collective subRosa stages their feast Love is Stronger than Death to
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inspire critical conviviality between teachers and students. Using the restaurant as a model,
artists and Chez Panisse employee collective OPENrestaurant serves their audience meals
gleaned entirely from the surrounding urban environs. Creating a handcrafted dinner for an
exclusive audience, London-based Italian designer Martino Gamper’s Total Trattoria is a top to
bottom “total design” experience. While the sit-down experiences are unforgettable for the
chosen few, unfortunately the price of intimacy and intricacy is often exclusion and alienation for
those not invited to the table.
Although organized into the major food categories, the list of artists and works
discussed in this thesis is by no means encyclopedic. Rather than being a broad survey of works,
the art discussed in this thesis is instead a relatively small sampling which serves to identify
some current strains within ingestional art practice. As much as this is an examination of
ingestional works, it is at the same time a study of how to approach ingestion-based art in
general. If the activity of the past twenty-five years is any indication, the influence of food culture
will undoubtably expand further within general culture. Artists being part of general culture as
much as fine art culture, eating and drinking will continue to have a prominent role in artistic
practice - and it is the responsibility of art critics and historians to adapt accordingly.
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Chapter 1: Sweets
Humans have always been predisposed to have a liking for sweetness1 and, volumetrically
at least, never more so than in our sugar-saturated age. For the vast majority of human
existence, sweetness came primarily from fruits and later honey. What we know as table sugar
did not appear in Europe until 1100 AD, and for six hundred years it remained an expensive
luxury commodity treated a spice and medicine rather than a separate food category. Thanks to
colonialism and industrial capitalism, starting in 1700 sugar became increasingly inexpensive and
available in the West.2 After sugar was made widely available - first in Britain and then elsewhere
in Europe and America - people quickly incorporated the ingredient into all manner of food
including drinks, candies, chocolate, and other desserts. Taking a cue from the sweet-toothed
British, the contemporary world is positively sugar-saturated; in addition to being part of many
everyday drinks, snacks, and meals, sugar-based sweets have come to play a dominant role in
most celebrations including birthday parties, Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and of
course Halloween. As their intensive and extensive use demonstrates, as both substances and
signifiers sweets are extremely flexible. Given their flexibility and wide appeal, many artists have
found that sweets - concretely and conceptually - are particularly well suited to artistic
applications. Of course not all sweets are the same, and the unique material qualities and
historical background of candy, chocolate and fruit account for the different meanings and
associations of each. With post-Minimalist forms reminiscent of overflowing candy barrels in
1 Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (New York: Scribner, 2004),650.
19th century sweet shops, late Cuban-American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres seduces audiences
into incorporating difficult or unpalatable subjects of sex, illness, AIDS, and death. Although
ostensibly Gonzalez-Torres’ confectionary promises egalitarian “pleasure for all”, the “freedom”
to participate in his work may be as illusory as the choice to consume mass-produced candies
themselves. In part a response to the economic systems allowing for an endless supply of cheap
candy, artist collective Fallen Fruit uses foraged fruit as a lens to the world; through sharing
urban foraging routes and fruit picked by hand, the collective offers participants an alternative
model of experiencing eating, each other, and the space around them.
Considered within the “grammar” of food and drink, candy occupies a position outside
of the meal. Although it can be incorporated into desserts, there is no designated “candy
course” even in the most elaborate dinners. While there may be some who would call candy a
“snack”, for the most part it is considered a “treat”; besides pure calories candy rarely has any
substantive nutritive value, and thus is consumed more for its psychological than nutritional
benefits. Because it exists outside of any meal categorizations, like drinks candy is consumed at
any time of the day. While most people would object to taking food from strangers, many will
make an exception for candy. While drinks require the repeated action of bringing a cup to one’s
mouth, candy can be eaten quickly without the need to linger by the candy bowl.
Of all sugar-based artworks, perhaps none are more recognizable than the candy spills of
the late Cuban-American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Having explored the idea of participatory
public art in other media such as replenishable paper stacks, in 1990 Gonzalez-Torres began
creating formations of mass-produced, often brightly colored candies to be taken by museum
and gallery visitors and replaced daily. In his desire to create work that would speak to both
“people who can read Frederic Jameson in an upright Mackintosh chair” and “people who watch
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the Golden Girls and sit in a in a big, brown, Lazy-boy chair,”3 Gonzalez-Torres found the
medium of candy to have a near-universal appeal. Making work during a time when artists and
the NEA were under attack by the conservative American Right, Gonzalez-Torres consciously
made work that was non-representational and ostensibly “non-political”. Playing with the
supposed neutrality and “macho solidity” of Minimalist serial forms4, although appearing to be
innocent abstractions, each spill serves as a different metaphor - in some cases representing real
individuals ( (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)), in others collective bodies ( (Public Opinion)), items
( (Placebo)), or even specific places ( (L.A.)). Though the candy lasts only a few minutes in one’s
mouth, the poly-sensorial experience of Gonzalez-Torres candy spills leaves lasting impressions.
Although Gonzalez-Torres initially started with chocolate Baci for his first piece (A
Corner of Baci), he quickly found that hard candies were much better suited for his purposes and
never returned to chocolate as a material. Although manufacturers have attempted to add as
many synthetic fillers as possible, for the most part chocolate candies are still composed
primarily of unrefined or relatively unrefined materials such as chocolate, milk, and nuts. Baci in
particular, which is marketed as a luxury Italian confection, has a short ingredient list of sugar,
hazelnuts (chopped and whole), chocolate, milk, milk fat, soy lecithin, and Vanillin-An Artificial
Flavor.5 Although once too considered a luxury item, hard candies have not retained the same
connotations with luxury as chocolate, thus more completely aligned with Gonzalez-Torres’
desire for Pop-inspired accessibility and universal appeal. Chocolate itself is chewy, thick,
organic, messy and brown - all factors that too readily recall the earth, decay, the body, and
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3 Robert Storr, “Interview with Felix Gonzalez-Torres”, ArtPress (January 1995): 24-32.
4 Nancy Spector, Guggenheim Artist Description. Web. Last accessed: August 30, 2010. <http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_md_56A_1.html>
5 Baci Product Description, Gran Caffe Vuotto Website. Web. Last Accessed: August 30, 2010.<http://www.grancaffevuotto.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=85&products_id=500>
bodily matters. As a relatively unrefined organic material, chocolate requires sugar as a
preservative agent to extend its shelf-life. Hard candies on the other hand are composed almost
entirely of “pure” refined sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, or artificial sweeteners and mixed with
artificial colors and flavors, and thus occupying the edible space that teeters on the edge of
abstraction. The range of colors that can be added to hard candy rivals the inventory of any
paint store. In addition to its consumer-democrat accessibility, this almost other-worldly and
timeless quality of hard candies lends itself well to the non-representational idea-driven works
of Gonzalez-Torres.
Stripped down to a bare, almost abstract, essence of “sweetness”, white sugar itself is an
incredibly malleable material which can take on almost any shape or flavor. Recalling both
minimalist forms and the piles of sweets found in old fashioned candy stores, Gonzalez-Torres
deftly utilizes the physical qualities of sugar-based candies to convey varied meanings in each
work. For his piece (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) (1991), Gonzalez-Torres uses 175 pounds (ideal
weight) of brightly colored gold, silver, blue, pink, red, and green metallic foil wrapped Fruit
Flashers candies to represent the ideal weight of his late partner Ross Laycock. (Public Opinion)
(1991), is composed of 700 pounds (ideal weight) of clear cellophane-wrapped black rod licorice
candies, most often arranged in a giant pool-like formation. Made during the Gulf War and said
to resemble missiles, the ominous pool of black licorice candies demonstrate how destructive
activities such as war can only be taken on with the participation (or acquiescence) of
individuals. For his (Placebo) (1991), he uses 1,000 - 1,200 pounds (ideal weight) of silver foil
wrapped candies to allude to the sugar-based pills prescribed for their psychological rather than
physiological effect. Much like candy, placebos offer short-lasting comfort instead of long-term
real solutions. With Gonzalez-Torres’ piece (L.A.) (1991), a sea of brilliant green candies, we see
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how simple forms and colors can recall not only people but places. Anyone who has lived or
spent time in Los Angeles will recognize the distinctive green color that pervades the regional
landscape, including buildings, clothing, and art. The malleability of Gonzalez-Torres’ materials
also allows for a flexibility in meaning; like sugar and candy generally, his candies are easily able
to accommodate the meanings and memories generated by the artist and his audience.
Recognizing that the most powerful political art is art that does not appear political6,
Gonzalez-Torres candy spills are both visually and materially unthreatening. With the exception
of his first work, (A Corner of Baci), Gonzalez-Torres spills are composed of mass-produced
candies that are hard, dry, relatively odorless, and individually wrapped7 to allay fears of
contamination or feelings of disgust. While other food and drink works offer viewers unfamiliar
or challenging consumables, Gonzalez-Torres provides audiences something they are most likely
familiar with and probably enjoy. While some artist take the literal approach and offer audience
members food that appears disgusting to deal with difficult or disgusting subject matters,
Gonzalez-Torres approach attracts rather than repels. Ostensibly “pure” forms that exist to
provide beauty and pleasure alone, Gonzalez-Torres seduces audiences into incorporating
possibly difficult-to-swallow ideas of gay sex and love, illness, death, AIDS, and social coercion.
Engaging all five senses, Gonzalez-Torres poly-sensorial works activate both sight and
sense memory, rather than observing autonomous works from behind the tape line
encountering a Gonzalez-Torres spill is a full-body participatory experience. However, although
audience participation is necessary for the completion of the work, the nature of their
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6 Robert Storr, “Interview with Felix Gonzalez-Torres,” ArtPress (January 1995): 24-32.
7 As William Ian Miller notes, there are categories that fall into the binary of not disgusting vs. disgusting, or clean and dirty.
William Ian Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997) 38.
participation leaves the fundamental relationship between the artist-producer and the audience-
consumer relatively unchanged. Being restricted to one-candy-per-person and enforced by a
museum or gallery guard, audiences are simultaneously encouraged to feel their own agency and
helplessness. While candy barrels at stores are constantly refilled to create the illusion of
constant abundance, Gonzalez-Torres spills are allowed to wax and wane, showing the audience
the effects of individual and collective activities on the form before them. Like the candy barrels
or bins in retail shops, it is assured that Gonzalez-Torres’ works will constantly be replenished,
thus negating the power of individuals to cause any permanent change within the work. Unlike
temporary works that allow the audience to eat as much as they’d like, for example Argentinian
artist Marta Minujin’s El obelisco de pan dulce (The pannetone obelisk) (1978) during which an
ecstatic crowd devours a monument-sized obelisk made of 30,000 Italian sweet breads, the one-
candy-per-person limit forces people to exercise restraint rather than allowing participants to
make their own decisions about how much to take. This relationship between art institution
employees and the audience reinforces its role as stewards of high culture tasked with teaching
restraint, distance, and silent reverence. While in El obelisco de pan dulce to consume is to
conquer, in Gonzalez-Torres candy spills to consume is in part to accept and incorporate ideas
about the authority of the museum and the power if the artistic gesture. In Marta’s own words,
“What I want to do is to demystify the universal myths. So the universal myth is the Obelisk, the
James Joyce Tower, the Statue of Liberty. To eat is to demystify.”8 Like Minujin, a chief impetus of
Gonzalez-Torres’ work is to bring high art forms “down to earth” so to speak, demystifying
ideas such as the artist-as-genius, originality, and authenticity. With the abolition of the original
comes the predominance of the idea, and the abstract nature of the idea courts immortality:
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8 Anthony Bourdain, No Reservations: Collection 3, The Travel Channel, Season 3, Episode 9, 2007.
“They will always exist because they don’t really exist, or because they don’t have to exist all the
time.”9 Of course, as we have seen with mass production generally, there are some potential
downsides to the abandonment of originality and authenticity. If the candies are stand-ins for
people, the candies mirror one’s limited options and relative non-agency within an global
industrialized economy. Like the original British consumers of cheap sugar, the contemporary
consumer’s choices at the average supermarket are largely predetermined by factors that are
outside their control. Although sugar is no longer cultivated by slaves, present day working
conditions on farms in areas such as Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Africa are
generally still very poor. While audience members may produce their own meanings and relate
to the work as they wish, the real-time physical options are limited to taking or not taking and
eating or not eating a piece of mass-produced candy. While small variations may exist depending
on the source of the candies and each individual’s sense of taste, each audience member is
essentially eating the same thing. Although the means-of-production of the candies are less than
inspiring, just as it is in everyday life visitors must find it in themselves to transcend contextual
limitations in order to find greater meaning and pleasure. Drawing materials from “general
culture”, Gonzalez-Torres trusts the audience to make the work greater than the sum of its
parts. The combination of agency and non-agency of the audience reveals the complexities of
individual experience within contemporary society and the complexities of Gonzalez-Torres’
own feelings of both power and helplessness. At the same time Gonzalez-Torres was enjoying
great success in the art world, he was also living with and losing his partner Ross Laycock to
HIV and AIDS, later suffering from HIV and later AIDS himself at a time when there were not
many viable treatment options. In pieces such as “” (Placebo) (1991) and “” (Placebo - Landscape -
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for Roni) (1993) he uses the idea of the placebo not only to address the depressing lack of
options for HIV and AIDs sufferers, but for the more general human activity of self-medicating
with food or other comforts as a means of coping with problems that are (or are perceived to
be) out of their control. Ultimately Gonzalez-Torres works ask the viewer to acquiesce in order
to transcend; rather than dwell on the unchangeables one must make peace with one’s situation
in order to move beyond it.
In part a reaction to the global capitalist forces that render Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ mass-
produced candy spills “universally” recognizable, in 2004 Los Angeles-based artists David Burns,
Matias Viegener, and Austin Young conceived of the collective project “Fallen Fruit”. Prompted by
a call for submissions by the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest for works that addressed social
issues in a positive manner, Burns, Viegener and Young decided to create a project that would
“reactivate” public space in a pleasurable way through the mapping, foraging, and cooking of
public fruit with others. Of all materials, Burns, Viegener, and Young decided on fruit because of
its historic role in human civilization and its universal appeal:
Of all forms of food, fruit is the most symbolic; it is the food most often represented in art - perhaps because it is the most colorful - and it spans cultures and historical periods. Fruit is universal and uniquely democratic, crossing all classes as a symbol of generosity and bounty. It is a healthy food, unrefined and requiring no processing; eaten virtually off the tree, it symbolizes the uncomplicated goodness of nature, beauty, fertility, and hospitality, not the excess or waste of commercial or industrial culture.10
“Public fruit”, a term coined by Fallen Fruit, is fruit that is either growing on public property or
fruit from branches of private plants overhanging in to public space. Using fruit to ameliorate
the “obvious” problems of urban life - “disengagement, alienation from neighbors, and ignorance
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10 Fallen Fruit “Take Back the Fruit: Public Space and Community Activism” Alphabet City, The Food Issue (MIT Press, October 2007): 4.
of the often grave problems of others”11, Fallen Fruit uses public fruit to reinvigorate the idea of
the commons and the model of the gift economy, encouraging people to engage in mutual
replenishment and connection rather than alienation. In their first work, Burns, Viegener, and
Young created a map of public fruit in their home neighborhood of Silverlake, Los Angeles. In the
mapping their neighborhood, they discovered more than sixty fruit trees within a three block
radius. Upon finding the act of map-making an insufficient means of achieving their goals of
reaching the public and changing people’s experience of social space, this initial mapping led to
subsequent projects, including public fruit picking guided tours, “public fruit jams”, fruit tree
adoptions, videos, photos, and most recently a residency at LACMA during the museum’s year-
long EATLACMA project. Like other groups such as OPENrestaurant, Fallen Fruit activities
show that the division between city and farm “is not real or absolute”, revealing that bounty can
be found as close as one’s own backyard. However unlike OPENrestaurant, Fallen Fruit places
the bulk of the labor responsibility on their audience, trusting them with the task of picking
their own fruit, planting their own trees, and cooking their own jam.
Although the enjoyment of fruit is universal, the impetus for Fallen Fruit’s project is the
specific car-centric area of Los Angeles, California. Although the area was once prized for its
fruit cultivation, in the 20th century fruit orchards gave way to a suburban splendor of one-
story homes and endless roads, becoming the flagship model of the cement paved car-centric
city. “In L.A. especially we’re so disconnected from our neighborhoods and our streets ‘cause we
drive everywhere, but if it were a different time or place you would know where all the fruit
was in your neighborhood because you would walk by it, but nobody ... nobody walks by it. You
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11 Matias Viegener, “Fallen Fruit,” Cabinet 23, (2006): 69.
get in your car and you drive two blocks to go to Safeway.”12 While one can argue that there are
plenty of “nobodies” who walk by choice or economic necessity, it is undeniable that the
pervading culture and infrastructure of Los Angeles is geared towards car-based transport.
Despite the urban and suburbanization of Los Angeles, some of the fruit trees from the city’s
agrarian past remain alive and thriving. In Fallen Fruit’s own neighborhood of Silver Lake, “... the
trees have clearly been here longer than the people who currently call this home. They were
here first.”13 Although Los Angeles is known for its ahistorical outlook and habit of bulldozing
all signs of its past, the trees serve as historical records of pre-car life in Los Angeles. The trees
also serve as living proof that food can grow inside a city. While fruit is “packaged” in discrete
units, group forages do not lend themselves well to “movie theater spectatorship” but rather
require people to talk to each other and share resources “laterally”, thus reinvigorating the idea
of the commons and strengthening community bonds.14 Through activities such as Fallen Fruit’s
“Night Forages”, the collective shows Los Angeles residents a different way of viewing, relating,
and traveling through space is possible.
For their ongoing “Public Fruit Jam” events which have been held at amongst other
places Machine Project in Echo Park, Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
(LACMA), Fallen Fruit invites people to bring public or homegrown fruit to cook into jam.
During these events the only stipulations are that people make jam with others they don’t
already know and that they decide as a group what kind of jam to make. Fallen fruit also
encourages people to improvise rather than using recipes (using the basic proportions of 5:5:1
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12 Interview with David Burns, YouTube. Web. Last accessed August 30, 2010.<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNmNPQa9cSA&feature=related>
13 KCET Sustaining LA: Interview with Fallen Fruit, YouTube. Web. Last Accessed: August 30, 2010.< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5pcdeZCmK4>
14 Ibid.
fruit to sugar to packet of pectin) and to “explore radical or experimental” fruit combinations
such as “basil guava or lemon pepper jelly”.15 During their Public Fruit Jam at LACMA on August
1, 2010, the event took place between 12pm - 3pm with tickets given out ahead of time for free
with the limit of 150 per hour. Everyone who participates leaves with at least one jar of
communally made jam. While art collectives such as OPENrestaurant also use locally foraged
and home grown foods, instead of cooking it themselves and selling it to patrons, Fallen Fruit
invites people to share in the cooking process and reap the rewards in the form of free jam,
literally enjoying the fruits of their labor.
Like many of the other artists discussed in this thesis, Fallen Fruit operates using the
model of the gift economy - giving with no explicit expectation of return - with the implicit
understanding being that the strength of the economy relies on the circulation of requited and
unrequited gifts. While it is left undefined how one can circulate or reciprocate the gifts of
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, with Fallen Fruit the process is simple and immediately tangible. If
information is shared about where to find fruit, one is expected to share one’s newfound
knowledge with others. If fruit trees are given, the expectation is that they will be planted on the
margins of private and public land, thus opening the possibility that each plant will provide more
public fruit. If fruits and instructions are given to make jam, the expectation is that one will share
one’s jam and jam-making skills with others. Using the tangible starting point of fruit, Fallen Fruit
hopes that people will make the connection to other themes and an overall life model of
generosity and sharing: “It’s not just to share fruit, which is of course the theme, but it’s actually
to share resources, history, and culture, and knowledge, and tradition and things like that.”16
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15 Fallen Fruit, “Host Your Own PUBLIC FRUIT JAM”. Web. Last accessed: August 30, 2010.<http://www.fallenfruit.org/index.php/media/handouts/>
16 Interview with David Burns, YouTube. Web. Last accessed: August 30, 2010.<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNmNPQa9cSA&feature=related>
Although they both employ sweets, just as candy and fruit differ so too does the work of
Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Fallen Fruit. Making refined sugar and candy is an energy and
resource-heavy process often requiring an international effort of many people (voluntary or
coerced), while with or without the help of humans fruit can grow anywhere there is adequate
soil, water, and sun. While Gonzalez-Torres work is autobiographical, inward-looking, and often
death-centered, Fallen Fruit is communal, outward-looking, and life-centered. While Gonzalez-
Torres’ candy spills often position people as destructive or malignant, hungry maws destroying
lovers’ bodies or forming black pools of public opinion, and behavior is prescribed to ritual
actions of a participatory memorial or monument, Fallen Fruit positions people as being positive
and creative forces both in the gallery and the world at large. While Gonzalez-Torres candies
are produced by anonymous machines and people, the fruits and jams of Fallen Fruit are
provided by one’s own neighbors (or oneself) in one’s own city. While Gonzalez-Torres’ works
exist in a capital-fueled international gallery, museum, and art fair circuit, Fallen Fruit is a no- to
small-profit enterprise firmly centered in Los Angeles. However, both Gonzalez-Torres and
Fallen Fruit works each fulfill the artists’ respective goals, in their own ways both meeting their
publics with gestures of generosity and love.
20
Chapter 2: Drinks
Drinks, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, are the social lubricants that grease the wheels
of social interaction. In the times before centralized water purification systems, the cultivation of
bacteria-laden water into fermented or boiled drinks has been essential to human survival and
socialization. Being such an important element of life, humans have developed elaborate cultural
mythologies and rituals around these life-sustaining liquids. Although anthropologists have
historically neglected the role of drinking in social rituals1, ingestible liquids have always been
socially meaningful, often playing key role in group socialization and individual identity formation
on local, national, and global levels. Unlike meals, it is generally socially acceptable to drink liquids
at any time of day, with anyone from close friends to complete strangers. This relative taxonomic
casualness has allowed spaces such as the coffeehouse, bar, and water cooler to become popular
destinations for chance meetings and unlikely alliances. While all drinks have some social
significance, certain beverages such as tea, coffee, beer, wine, and soft drinks have captured
human attention in a particularly concentrated manner, shaping art and culture in the process.
Taking advantage of drinks already rife with symbolism and cultural significance, artists such as
Rirkrit Tiravanija, Douglas Gordon, Italian Collective Stalker, and Canadian Collective World Tea
Party (WTP) use these meta-symbolic drinks to create situations that are accessible and
conducive to socializing between strangers. Within each work, the formal and symbolic nuances
of each drink and its serving context produce different meanings and experiences.
In Rirkrit Tiravanija’s 1994 (angst essen seele auf), the artist pays homage to German
filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film, Tiravanija’s serving Coca-Cola and beer in a minimal
1 Mary Douglas, Constructive Drinking: Perspectives on Drink from Anthropology (New York: Routledge, 2003), 3.
bar to encourage chance encounters between people of vastly different backgrounds. The
Cinema Liberté Bar / Lounge serves professionally prepared Illy espresso to create high art
leisure a the Guggenheim while Stalker serves drip coffee in styrofoam cups on a bridge in
Miami. World Tea Party chooses to serve tea rather than coffee or alcohol to promote peaceful
contemplation and slow conviviality. In each work, the local context is considered, and audiences
are presented with drinks that take on meaning based on both the art space and the
geographical region.
Within the context of the art world, drinking has played a long-standing role in
socialization rituals. The industry standard of serving wine and cheese at openings, which imbues
art gallery activities with an air of European sophistication and good living, is integral to the
production of a convivial and cultured atmosphere. Although most galleries and museums
strictly prohibit the consumption of food and drink, an exception is often made for the
celebratory occasions of gallery and museum openings. During this ritual break with usual
gallery etiquette, the gallery or museum is transformed into a temporary bar, and at times
gallery or museum employees expand their usual roles and become bartenders or waiters for
the night. The public being already accustomed to drinking within art spaces, offering drinks is
perhaps the most welcoming (and least intimidating) of the artistic activities involving ingestibles.
Of all drinks, alcohol is perhaps the most beloved and controversial, and the bars where
alcohol is served the most conducive to lively and unexpected encounters. In Rainer Werner
Fassbinder’s 1974 movie Angst Essen Seele Auf (Fear Eat Up Soul), a bar is where the unlikely
romance between 60-year old German grandma Emmi and the younger Moroccan guest worker
Ali begins. In the film widowed cleaning lady Emmi ducks into a bar playing Arabic music to avoid
the rain, orders a Cola, and endures the cold stares of the staff and Arab guest workers for
22
whom the bar is a local hangout. One of Ali’s friends dares him to dance with Emmi, and to her
surprise he accepts the challenge. After sharing a dance and a drink (Emmi drinking cola, Ali
drinking beer), Ali walks Emmi home, stays for coffee and spends the night. Despite the chagrin
(and in the case of Emmi’s son, violent outbursts) of family, friends, coworkers, and West
German society generally, what begins as a dare leads to a relationship and later marriage. It is
only when people realize they can benefit from Emmi and Ali do they start to behave somewhat
cordially. Although the relationship is fraught with problems including Emmi’s insistence that Ali
eat German food and her objectification of Ali’s body, ultimately after a short separation Ali and
Emmi meet in the same bar and declare their love for each other. Unfortunately their tender
reunion is curtailed by Ali collapsing from a stress-induced stomach ulcer. In the closing scene
Emmi sits by Ali in his hospital bed, declaring that she will do anything in her power to reduce
Ali’s stress from being a foreigner. Though the film ends on a tragic note, as is the case with
most Fassbinder films, the courageously frank and awkwardly poetic portrayal of Emmi and Ali’s
relationship opens space for audience empathy, consideration and discussion. In an homage to
the film and the cinematic moment when this unorthodox relationship begins, artist Rirkrit
Tiravanija created the work 1994 (angst essen seele auf), a bar serving cola and beer - the drinks
ordered by the movie’s protagonists - in hopes of catalyzing discussion of the film’s themes and
encouraging similarly unlikely - and potentially uncomfortable - encounters between guests.
In most of Tiravanija’s oeuvre the artist draws heavily from the surrounding geographical
and temporal context framing his artistic praxis, and 1994 (angst essen seele auf) is no
exception. Finding that the recently unified Germany was experiencing a new wave of hostility
and violence towards immigrants, Tiravanija sees Fassbinder’s film as having continued
pertinence. In addition being an homage to the film, Tiravanija’s bar is also conceived as a
23
response to (and staged at the same time as) the Cologne art fair.2 Although artists are integral
to art fairs, they usually are not directly involved in the commercial dealings, and often do not
have the budget for the high-priced partying (“socializing”) that usually occurs in conjunction to
the fairs.3 In Fassbinder’s film, the bar where Emmi and Ali meet is a refuge for Arab guest
workers in an otherwise unwelcoming foreign environment. Separated from everyday German
space - and from the money-drenched atmosphere of the art fair - Tiravanija offers visitors a
cost-free space for relaxation, relation-building and respite.
The child-like romance between Emmi and Ali is simple, and the same goes for the film’s
overall aesthetic; stripping down Fassbinder’s bare-bones aesthetic even further, Tiravanija’s
minimally appointed bar is composed of a fridge, a radio, beer, Coca-Cola, and a monitor
screening Fassbinder’s film. The bar is an L-shaped structure made of an unpainted plywood base
and simple white countertop (perhaps formica) bordered by a slim metal bar. On the right side
of the bar, a small wall mounted monitor plays Fassbinder’s Angst Essen Seele Auf on a loop. To
the left of the monitor, a rectangular radio playing popular Arabic music sits on the bar. The
lights are harsh florescent bulbs. The bar is housed in a street-level commercial space with a
glass door and glass windows running almost the entire length of the bar, so that the entire
room is visible from the street. A striped red, white, and green awning shades the commercial
space. A lone barstool with a padded square top is the only available seating. There is no signage
at all.
Coming from a Brechtian avant-garde theater background where nothing exists
“naturally” onstage, Fassbinder’s films contain carefully placed food and drink “props” which all
24
2 Gridthiya Gaweewong et al., Rirkrit Tiravanija: A Retrospective (tomorrow is another fine day) (JRP | Ringier, October 2007), 21-22.
3 Ibid.
perform important cinematic or symbolic functions. An Auslander himself, Tiravanija is delicately
in tune with how food and drink are cultural products that can either bring people together or
create conflict. In the film Emmi’s consumption of Coca-Cola marks her as one who embraces
newness and modernity, but taken in the context of the bar also prudish and childlike. Ali’s
consumption of beer marks his relative youthfulness and willingness to embrace some German
customs. Later in the film Fassbinder uses food items to highlight points of cultural commonality
and conflict: Emmi and Ali’s shared love of strong coffee, Emmi’s excitement about the newly
available margarine, Ali’s longing for and Emmi’s unwillingness to prepare CousCous, and Emmi’s
heated insistence that Ali should eat German food in order to become more German. In other
works RT further explores (revisits) the idea of becoming German through assimilating food
culture.
Outside of both Fassbinder’s film and Tiravanija’s artwork, beer and Coca-Cola are two
important drinks within the German context. After the end of WWII Coke became a symbol of
the “Economic Miracle”, and along with other foreign goods such as whisky, canned pineapple,
cheese crackers, and candy bars4, “Coca-Cola consumption was a stage on which postwar
Germans could rehearse a new “identity” as cosmopolitan consumer-democrats.”5 As
championed by American artists such as Andy Warhol6, the consumption of mass-produced
25
4 Peter Scholliers, “Novelty and Tradition: The New Landscape for Gastronomy” in Food: The History of Taste (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 337.
5 Jeff Schutts, “Born Again in the Gospel of Refreshment? Coca-Colonization and the Making of Postwar German Identity” in Consuming Germany in the Cold War (Oxford: Berg, 2003),142-143.
6 “What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.”
Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) (San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 1977), 100.
products allowed one to share identical - or nearly identical - experiences with people around
the world. In contrast, beer is an indigenous drink with a long history of cultivation and
consumption, and the drinking of beer is an integral part of German national culture. In medieval
times Germans were responsible for developing the process of flavoring beer with hops, and
invented the process of cold-brewing that results in the mild-flavored Lager-style beer7. Like the
rest of Europe before the introduction of tea and coffee, for centuries beer and wine were the
safe and commonly available beverages, and represented a significant part of citizens’ daily
caloric intake. To date Germany is one of the largest consumers and producers of beer.8 During
Oktoberfest, perhaps Germany’s most famous cultural event, the celebration is inaugurated with
the tapping of a keg, and in approximately 6,940,600 liters of beer are consumed by 6.2 million
people during an 18-day period9. Conversely in Morocco, a predominantly Islamic country, beer
is not consumed widely except amongst younger generations.
Although Tiravanija is known primarily for creating convivial and “open” work, Tiravanija
often employs alienating or antagonistic effects. Offering no visible explanation of the work or
the artist’s intentions, audience members are left to figure out how to interact with the bar on
their own. Much like Tiravanija’s other structures, his bar is an extremely pared down, almost to
the point of abstraction; his structure appears to be more of an homage to the idea of a bar
than an actual bar. Minimally appointed and framed by white walls and bright lights, Tiravanija’s
bar employs modernist devices of scarcity and distancing to create distinction and cultural
capital. Read another way, Tiravanija’s use of distance can be seen to encourage audiences to
26
7 Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (New York: Scribner, 2004), 741.
8 Ibid.
9 City of Munich, Oktoberfest Statistics. Web. Last Accessed: last accessed: 6/5/2010. <http://www.meunchen.de/Rathaus/tourist_office/oktobfest/126031/oktoberfest_Zahlen_Statistiken.html>
“step back” and contemplate the work instead of (or before) completely losing themselves in
the pedestrian activity of drinking. In Tiravanija’s view people need to be pushed to outside their
comfort zone in order to facilitate growth and understanding, or in his own words to make
“people realize that they have to go to the edge and find out that there’s nothing to be scared
of”.10 When Emmi first enters the bar in Fassbinder’s, she is met with cold stares of the Arab
guest worker patrons; the bar is their spot, and she is an interloper. Though intimidated Emmi
nonetheless stays for a drink and a dance, thus allowing the improbable to become possible.
Subscribing to the “no pain, no gain” ideology, in this piece and much of his other work,
Tiravanija requires the audience to do some work to reap the rewards. Unlike the conflict-free
version of multiculturalism of street fairs and cultural parades, Tiravanija recognizes that cross-
cultural interaction can be difficult or intimidating. In this work as well as many others, Tiravanija
creates a space that can be both easy and difficult to occupy.
The Cinéma Liberté project is a series of ongoing collaborations which began in 1996
between Scottish artist Douglas Gordon and Rirkrit Tiravanija. At the Guggenheim Museum
Cinéma Liberté Bar Lounge was installed as part of theanyspacewhatever exhibition, which ran from
October 24th, 2008 to January 7th, 2009. Although the specifics change from version to version,
the project always involves a free film screening component - usually films that were banned at
the time of their release - and a hospitality component which involves some sort of beverage,
often beer or wine. In all iterations of the project the artists seek to create a casual
environment where people can relax, socialize, and engage with the films as they wish. In the
Guggenheim iteration the space is divided into two parts: one side is a screening area with large
bean bag chairs showing movies that were censored in America at the time of their release, the
27
10 Bryce Dwyer, “Rirkrit Tiravanija Exclusive,” F News Magazine, March 31st, 2008. Web. Last Accessed: 11/15/2010<http://fnewsmagazine.com/wp/2008/03/rirkrit-tiravanija-exclusive/>
other side a full-service coffee bar sponsored by the Illy Italian espresso corporation. The coffee
bar serves Illy espresso, lattes, and cappuccinos prepared using bright red FrancisFrancis! brand
expresso machines by trained baristas. Much like Tiravanija’s bar in 1994 (angst essen seele auf),
the coffee bar is a minimalist construction, however this time the bar is composed of a more
solid and polished wood, smooth and sanded. Perhaps in reference to earlier, more DIY or
“street” renditions of the project, the “bar” and “cinéma liberté!” areas are marked with loose
handwritten red and blue signs spray painted directly on the museum’s white walls. All drinks are
free, and patrons are invited to interact with the staff as they see fit.
Like much of Tiravanija’s work generally, in each of Gordon and Tiravanija’s Cinéma Liberté
works, the environment is created based on the surrounding local context - in this case movies
previously censored in America, and espresso drinks for fine art museum-friendly refreshment.
Through watching (or at least reading the list of) previously censored movies, one is prompted
to reflect on what was considered taboo or offensive at the time of the movies’ release, and
what might be considered censor-worthy in the present. Watching movies within the context of
a museum, one is also prompted to contemplate the act of movie watching itself.
Within the Guggenheim version of Cinema Liberté Bar Lounge visitors are served
espresso rather than alcohol, thus creating a fundamentally different user experience and
environment than earlier iterations. In the Cinema Liberté Bar Lounge the provenance of the
coffee is stressed, both because of the Illy corporate sponsorship and to imbue the drinking
activities with high culture. Unlike Tiravanija’s liability-ridden do-it-yourself curries, Illy espresso
drinks are luxury consumables associated with European sophistication and leisure. Visitors are
not allowed to serve themselves but rather give their order to a trained coffee professional,
reinforcing the idea that the museum and the artist possess specialized knowledge that the
28
audience does not. Although one could receive coffee and drink it while walking around the
exhibition, one could not bring in nearly identical coffee drinks from the museum cafeteria
downstairs, thereby communicating to visitors that only certain coffee should be considered art
while the other is just a drink. This arbitrary distinction between cups of coffee thus serves to
illuminate the museum’s role of conferring value onto objects.
As Gordon and Tiravanija have done in many of their other works, Cinema Liberté Bar
Lounge was adapted for the local context, in this case the Guggenheim museum. As cultural
anthropologist Martin F. Manalansan IV notes in his essay “Immigrant Lives and the Politics of
Olfaction in the Global City”, New York City is often visually represented by the “mythical image of
an odorless Manhattan skyline.” This quality of odorlessness is not only an essential element of
the “utopic myth of the modern city”, but also the modern museum space. The absence of odor
conveys a sense of cleanliness, purity, technological advancement, and the triumph of modern
humans over nature. However, if the mythical modern city were to have a characteristic aroma,
coffee - with its associations with American capitalist frenzy and international cosmopolitanism -
would be an excellent candidate. Conversely, pungent smells - particularly from cooking - are
often associated with “the smelly immigrant” and “working-class culture of pre-modern or
archaic tradition.” After winning the Hugo Boss Prize in 2004, Rirkrit Tiravanija discussed serving
food at the Guggenheim but ultimately gave up on the endeavor because of liability issues and
bureaucratic red tape.11 While fragrant curries may be suitable for Chelsea galleries or “ethnic”
eateries, the (apparently dangerous) smells, sounds and temperature generated from cooking
Thai curries seem to have been untenable in a modernist temple such as the Guggenheim.
29
11 Rirkrit Tiravanija, Artist’s Talk at the Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago IL, January 30th, 2008.
While the type of drink served shapes visitors’ experience of a work, so too does the
formal and material differentiations within each drink. Using drip coffee rather than espresso, in
March of 2000 Italian collective Stalker presented “Meantime, Free Bridge Coffee” as part of a
series of events staged around the Miami River concurrent to the contemporary art fair Art
Basel Miami. Searching for public spaces to stage their activities, Stalker found the city’s street
grid system to be oppressive. The Miami River being “the only site that resists domination of the
square block,”12 the collective chose the river as the physical and conceptual center of their
“mean” projects - Meantime, Meanspace, and Meanculture. Taking the idea of “mean” as an in-
between or border space, Stalker creates small cleavages in time and space for people to
experience the local context in a new way. For their Meantime, Free Bridge Coffee, Stalker served
morning coffee to drivers and pedestrians as they waited for the drawbridge to descend at
Miami’s Flagler Bridge. In the absence of significant public space Stalker produces what they call
“public time”, repurposing a site and a fostering a moment of social interaction and respite for
audiences who normally are excluded by contemporary art activities. The bridge itself is a site
that people from a primarily Latino neighborhood must to cross in order to reach the central
business areas of Miami. As the name suggests, during the performance Stalker passed out cups
of free coffee to drivers and pedestrians waiting to cross the bridge. The coffee itself was
prepared off site and contained in thermoses until distributed to drivers in white styrofoam
cups. Unlike the Illy espresso drinks in theanyspacewhatever, no mention is made about the
provenance or quality of the coffee. The use of drip coffee in styrofoam cups, something one can
typically find at a convenience store or office break room, complements the egalitarian aesthetic
of the art collective.
30
12 Stalker, “From Transient inhabitant to dominoMiami”. Web. Last accessed: 12/21/10<http://www.osservatorionomade.net/tarkowsky/miami/blocks/dinamicBlocks.html>
Whether intentional or not, the type of coffee served also speaks to assumptions of
what would be most familiar to the bridge crossing audience. While Stalker’s actions are
ostensibly generous, there is also an underlying current of aggression. Instead of inviting people
in to an artist created space, Stalker encroaches upon the personal space of people’s automotive
vehicles, offering people coffee much in the same way as an unprompted windshield washer.
Pictures of Meantime, Free Bridge Coffee show that many are uncomfortable and unsure of what
to make of the Stalker’s gesture. The piece being produced at the same time as the Miami Basel
art fair, one has to wonder if the work was made primarily for the Flagler bridge crossers or
other artists, academics, and art world insiders.
In both Cinema Liberté Bar Lounge and Meantime, Free Bridge Coffee, the choice of coffee
speaks to the perceptions the artists have of their audience, and in the case of the Guggenheim,
what the institution deems appropriate to serve to patrons. In America, weak thermos coffee
served in styrofoam cups is associated with workday respite. Although the quality of coffee
available in the United States has improved significantly in the last fifteen years, drip coffee in
styrofoam cups is still recognizable as the stuff of donut shops and gas station convenience
stores. Stalker being Italian, the type of coffee they serve in Meantime, Free Bridge Coffee is
nonexistent in their native context. Practical considerations aside, Stalker made the choice to
serve drip coffee rather than an espresso or tea most likely because they wanted to serve
bridge-crossers something they were familiar with. On the other hand, the Guggenheim is an
institution associated with high art, and thus a carefully crafted espresso or cappuccino from a
trained barista was chosen over drip coffee or pungent Thai curries.
31
Founded in the summer of 1993 by Canadian artists Bryan Mulvihill, Daniel Dion, and Su
Schnee, World Tea Party (WTP) is a Vancouver-based “fête éternelle”13 of events, classes,
collaborations and art exhibitions tied together through the activity of serving and drinking tea.
Events range from small to large, and have been presented in a diverse range of contexts
including cultural societies, schools, senior citizen centers, fairs, public parks, and art galleries.
Venues have included the Winnipeg Pan Am Games, the Venice Biennale, the National Gallery of
Canada, the Hollywood Bowl, and the Eiffel Tower.14 Using the tea salon as a model, the World
Tea Party creates spaces that encourage conviviality and “pancultural” exchange. Although their
rhetoric often touches dangerously into naive universalism, they are careful to emphasize their
commitment to recognizing and addressing a multiplicity of “publics”, “histories”, and
“traditions”.15
For one of their most recent events World Tea Party took over Centre A (Vancouver
International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art), a 3,000 square foot space in Downtown
Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Walls were painted neon vertical lines
overlaid with white Chinese characters. Modern couches and tables, flower arrangements,
elevated tatami mats (presumably for the Japanese Tea Ceremonies), and tea paraphernalia are
placed in clusters scattered through the exhibition space. Throughout the World Tea Party
exhibition artist Bryan Mulvihill served free tea to visitors of the gallery. In addition to the daily
serving of tea, with the help of Centre A the World Tea Party presented thirty-eight events
32
13 “WORLD TEA PARTY is a continually evolving fête éternelle developing through dialogue among people and cultures around the world.”
World Tea Party website. Web. Last Accessed: 1/30/2011.<http://www.worldteaparty.com/about>
14 Ibid.
15 Bryan Mulvihill et al., World Tea Party Exhibition Catalog (Vancouver: Presentation House Gallery, 1996), 6.
which included fundraisers, musical performances, tea tastings, ceremonies, and classes. As with
many of their other events, the World Tea Party mixed old and new technology - bringing
together traditional tea rituals with international Skype chats and electronic music
performances.
Although they strive to feature a democratic range of tea customs, in practice World Tea
Party activities tend to favor certain tea cultures over others, particularly featuring a
disproportionate amount of Chinese and Japanese tea customs. The emphasis on Chinese and
Japanese tea cultures is perhaps part historical deference, and part myopic fetishization. While
they often emphasize the everydayness of tea, World Tea Party often places a special emphasis
on connoisseurship and cultural refinement. However, while there is a disconnect between their
output and their rhetoric, of all the artists discussed the World Tea Party has been the most
successful at reaching a wide and varied audience. Above all the World Tea Party is an exercise in
being cosmopolitan, global citizens in an increasingly inter-connected world.
While the World Tea Part ostensibly celebrates the everydayness of tea drinking, the teas
they serve are anything but pedestrian; instead, World Tea Party uses specialty teas to heighten
the aura of high culture and “otherworldliness”. Over 75% of tea consumed globally is black,
and much of it is brewed in tea bags. Like other once luxury in-demand food commodities such
as sugar, chocolate, and coffee, the farms where tea is cultivated place an extreme emphasis on
producing tea in quantity rather than for quality. In contrast, World Tea Party events feature
loose leaf and powdered green and specialty teas, usually with identifiable provenance, creating
an environment that is part art event and part tea connoisseurship lesson. For the “First
Nations Welcome” event held at Centre A in February 2010, visitors were shown examples of
indigenous ingredients and sampled teas such as Raspberry Leaf, Rose Hip Hibiscus Licorice, and
33
Stinging Nettle. Participants of the “Wild Party (Skype with UK)” were served Wild Berry Tea.
The “High Tea with Brady Marks” performance featured “rose petals & Chinese black tea, pine
smoked Chinese black tea, paraguayan roasted yerba maté, & Seamist tea”.16 For their event on
February 21, 2010 Project Rainbow served a “fine oolong ‘blue’ tea”. For “The Good Ol Days
[...] When Times Were Bad”, artists DRIL brewed and served the specialty and handmade drinks
of Poverty Weed Tea17, Apricot Hooch, and beer. Other events at Centre A included “Chinese
Tea Art”, “Introduction to the Art of Chinese Tea by Gina Zuiten” which featured a
demonstration of modern tea types and a Wu-Wo Tea Ceremony, two traditional Japanese tea
ceremonies, and a “The Japanese Way of Tea” presentation by the Urasenke Vancouver Branch18.
Most of the tea served is provided by the specialty tea shops in the Vancouver area who are
eager to cultivate the tastes of potential customers. In past events such as their Presentation
House Gallery exhibition in 1995 a local tea merchant created a special World Tea Party blend
of “fine teas from China, Darjeeling, Sri Lanka, and Kenya”.19 If the Illy coffee bar in the Tiravanija
and Gordon Cinema Liberté Bar Lounge creates an atmosphere of high culture and
cosmopolitanism, World Tea Party does so tenfold. The aura of high culture and civilized living is
compounded by the serving methods used. Unlike the the disposable drinks and cups of works
such as Tiravanija’s untitled 1994 (angst essen seele auf) and Stalker’s Meantime, Free Bridge Coffee,
34
16 World Tea Party, High Tea with Brady Marks. Web. Last Accessed: 6/20/2010.<http://www.worldteaparty.com/high-tea-with-brady-marks>
17 Povertyweed (Iva axillaris) is a weed that grows in many areas throughout the western and central regions of North America. It is used by indigenous peoples such as the Soshone Indians as a tea to aid indigestion.
Stephen Foster and Christopher Hobbs, A Field Guide to Western Medicinal Plants and Herbs (New York:Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002), 91.
18 Urasenke is one of the main schools of thought (ryūha) of Japanese tea ceremony practice. The other two schools descended from the 16th century tea master Sen no Rikyu are Omotesenke and Mushakōjisenke. There are currently over thirty Japanese tea schools currently practicing.
19 Jennifer Fisher, “Tea Time” in World Tea Party Exhibition Catalog (Vancouver: Presentation House Gallery, 1996), 9.
World Tea Party serves their tea in reusable cups borrowed from both private and public
collections. Instead of the portable thermoses of Meantime, Free Bridge Coffee, World Tea Party
opts for tea that is either brewed in large and elaborate samovars, french presses, or ceramic
pots and distributed in ceramic or sterling silver tea pots. Albeit on the extravagant side, the use
of lavish tea ware is not completely superficial. Through using reusable cups, the World Tea Party
offers an implicit criticism against the pervading fast-paced throw-away culture. The weight and
delicate nature of the ceramic cups and saucers forces visitors to adjust their behavior
accordingly. Entrusted with caring for pieces from private and public tea collections, participants
are given a sense of personal responsibility and connection to the work.
Western aspiring cosmopolitans have historically used Asian culture, particularly Japanese
and Chinese, to demonstrate their worldliness, refinement, and care for their body. In Europe of
the 18th and 19th century luxury items such as tea, silk, and porcelain were amongst the most
expensive and sought after items. Perhaps to appeal to budding cosmopolitans or to satisfy
their own cosmopolitan interests, the World Tea Party activities feature a disproportionately
high number of Japanese and Chinese tea events. Of the thirty-eight events at Centre A in 2010,
eight were either Japanese or Chinese themed, significantly higher than any other tea culture
featured in the series. In the 1995 Presentation House Gallery catalog, of the four essays
published two were about the World Tea Party and taking tea generally, one about the Japanese
“Way of Tea” and one about the various types of Chinese tea available. Following the Centre A
events, the only World Tea Party events have been a “Japanese Tea Ceremony & Demonstration”
and an “Introduction to the Art of Chinese Tea” class. To be fair, tea culture did originate in
China, and Chinese and Japanese tea cultures are amongst the oldest and most elaborate.
However, the disproportionate attention not only ignores the highly elaborated tea cultures of
35
other countries in an outside of East Asia, but also runs the risk of reinforcing stereotypes of
Asian culture as being more balanced, healthy, and refined. The Japanese Tea Ceremony in
particular plays into popular Orientalist fantasies. Although the Tea Ceremony remains a
significant cultural ritual for the Japanese, in contemporary times it has become more of a
“hobby” than a central activity in everyday Japanese life. To put it more bluntly: “Only rich and
old people do traditional tea ceremonies in Japan now.”20 Although the World Tea Party seeks to
bring people together through “universal” tea rituals, whether intentional or not at times their
activities can prove to be divisive through their reinforcement of essentialist notions of ethnicity
and culture.
Like the other artists discussed in this thesis, World Tea Party creates work that - while
global in reach - is very much a product of its particular local context. Their base being
Vancouver, the World Tea Party’s brand of pan-culturalism is steeped with a particularly affluent,
urban, and Western (British) - East Asian leaning outlook. In her writing about Japanese food and
Canadian Cosmopolitanism, Shaun Tanaka observes “The pluralistic principles of diversity and
the “song and dance” celebration of people’s cultural difference is part of the popular Canadian
ethos.”21 Like many public cultural festivals in Canada, World Tea Party promotes a conflict-free
version of multiculturalism, with the aid of tea creating a genteel atmosphere that encourages
polite conversation rather than substantive engagement. Unlike works such as Tiravanija’s
36
20 Yoshiaki Kaihatsu. Web. Last Accessed: 7/22/2010.< http://www.artopenings.ca/Art_Openings.ca/New_Wave_Preview.html>
21 Shaun Tanaka, “Consuming the ‘Oriental Other,’ Constructing the Cosmopolitan Canadian: Reinterpreting Japanese Culinary Culture in Toronto’s Japanese Restaurants” (Ph.D. diss., Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada, 2008) 111.
1994 (angst essen seele auf) which acknowledge that cross-cultural interaction can be difficult,
World Tea Party seems to believe that tea can wash away all the world’s problems, albeit
temporarily.
While humans can survive for weeks without food, one can perish in as little as three
days without water. The importance of water for survival has also cemented its place in human
cultural history. Through the procurement and preparation of beverages, humans transform
water - the essential element for all life on earth - into products of culture. Since the first
cultivation of water humans have used their drink(s) of choice as markers of personal and group
identity. Like all ingestion rituals, drinking rituals communicate ideas about culture, class, and
power, with or without host and guest acknowledgement. Although all these works are designed
to bring people together, through various formal choices they also create an environment that
can be intimidating or even divisive. Drinks are also the most casual of ingestion rituals - a
moment of respite between anyone from friends, family, or strangers - not requiring much
thought and often soon forgotten. However, through repetition and elaboration drinking rituals
acquire deeper significance for participants and in larger cultural spheres.
Like any food or drink, the significations of the beverage-based works discussed are
partially predetermined by both their physical properties and preexisting cultural uses. All of
the drinks discussed - beer, Coca-Cola, espresso drinks, coffee, and tea - are noted for having
particular physiological effects on the drinker. These physiological effects, while not wholly
predetermining a social situation, do work to shape the possible outcomes and ways people
interact while drinking the beverage in question. What is said in a bar whilst drinking beer is
usually much different than what is said while taking afternoon tea. Rather than fighting nature
or culture, the artists discussed have selected the beverage that is most suited to their artistic
37
intentions, exercising their artistic agency through defining the particulars of context, method of
preparation, and serving style. In the case of Tiravanija’s , the artist uses the framework of a bar
serving beer and coke to create space for candid conversation and unlikely couplings. In Gordon
and Tiravanija’s (and the Guggenheim’s) Cinema Liberté Bar Lounge, the artists serve fine
espresso drinks to stimulate the mind and body for the film screenings and
theanyspacewhatever exhibition. Finding Miami to have limited public spaces, Stalker uses their
Meantime, Free Bridge Coffee to serve quick cups of joe to car commuters, thus creating “public
time” in a space not normally designated for socializing. In World Tea Party events, the collective
uses the framework of the tea salon and the corresponding slow process of tea taking to
provide visitors with a cosmopolitan oasis in the middle of the city. Compared with works using
small sweets or complete sit-down meals, drinks are the happy medium between volume and
intimacy. Inside and out of the art context, drinks are conducive to fluid interaction, often
serving as a catalyst for bringing people together - strangers can become acquaintances,
acquaintances can become friends, and friends can become more than friends.
38
Chapter 3: Sit-Down Meals
For the vast majority of our collective existence, the human relationship to food has
primarily been a matter of not having enough. Freeing us from the fluctuations of the harvest
and periodic famines, the industrialization of food system has proven to be a boon for
humankind. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, innovations in farming, transportation, and
mass-production, along with structural and social changes have fundamentally changed how
humans eat and relate to the natural world.1 Particularly in affluent regions such as the United
States, Japan and Europe, at any given time everyday consumers have access to food shipped
from all over the world, including previously seasonally-restricted produce such as grapes or
strawberries. In the last half-century technological innovations have pushed the industrialization
of the food system even further. The advent of ready-to-eat or TV dinners marks the complete
industrialization of the food system from farm to table. Although most people still eat the
majority of their dinners at home, “cooking” has increasingly come to mean assembling or
heating up ready-made food components rather than the actual preparation and cooking of
food. The concurrent trends of increasing urbanization and industrialization of the food system
has meant that fewer and fewer people know where food comes from or what fresh, local fruits
and vegetables taste like. With the shrinking of public space, globalization, and the increase of
distractions such as television and the internet, more people are experiencing alienation from
the land and other people. In this environment of increased alienation, the handmade sit-down
meal offers respite and a sense of community, however fleeting.
1 Hans J. Teuteberg, “The Birth of the Modern Consumer Age: Food innovations from 1800” in Food: The History of Taste (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007) 237-239.
Within the broad category of the sit-down meal, there are many possible variations. In
this chapter I explore three iterations of the sit-down meal - the feast, the restaurant meal, and
the private dinner party. Historically these forms of dining have been the most prestigious,
elaborate, and heavily ritualized, and thus have played a considerable role in the public
demonstration of social and economic status, political affiliation, and aesthetic refinement. The
elaborate nature of these meals results in the production of art works rife with ritualized
gestures, food courses and designed objects which one can subject to close analysis. Additionally
these three dining forms being similar - yet not wholly alike - allows for a more easy
comparison of the three works discussed.
Feasts are by nature large-scale events, and historically have been used as both a display
of power and a means of solidifying political ties and encouraging solidarity between group
members.2 In their project Love is Stronger Than Death: A Convivial Feast, feminist collective
subRosa brings together students and faculty at Brown University to examine the idea of
“political acts of love”, female solidarity and friendship, mutual replenishment and critical
conviviality within the context of capitalist pedagogical economies. With ever-shrinking public
space, the restaurant has increasingly become a civic meeting place. In OPENrestaurant’s
OPENcity, artists create a meal composed entirely of foods gathered from the local San
Francisco - Berkeley - Oakland perimeter to show that urban spaces can also be food
providers. A medium for organizing middle and upper class social hierarchy and displaying one’s
cultural and economic capital, the 19th century English dinner party was “one of the great
prestige symbols of the era, an index of a family’s taste, discrimination, bank balance and
connections ... The decor, the clothes, the number and quality of the servants, the decoration of
40
2 Roy Strong, Feast: A History of Grand Eating (Orlando: Oman Productions Ltd., 2002), 14.
the table, the choice of guests and food, all were indexes of how to impress. The dinner party
was also a place in the new age of commerce for combining pleasure and profit ...”3 In Martino
Gamper and design collective Abake’s Total Trattoria, something of the former era is brought back
to contemporary London, with the entire dining environment designed from top to bottom and
marketed as a luxury “once in a lifetime” experience for those who can afford the exorbitant
price tag. Although these artists’ each have different objectives, each aims to provide their
audience with an authentic experience, and reflecting this desire each of these menus centers
on fresh, local, and handmade foods.
Channeling Plato’s Symposium, bell hooks imagination of a “beloved community”, and
feminist traditions of hosting and hospitality, artist collective subRosa staged Love is Stronger than
Death: A Convivial Feast in the fall of 2006. The primarily local and organic multi-course “home-
cooked” meal, wine toasts, and open mike was conceived with the idea of “mutual nourishment,
friendship and consciousness-raising as sites for critical conviviality”4. The title of the feast itself
was taken from an inscription (taken from the Song of Solomon) on a Brown University clock
tower. Commissioned by the Department of Visual Arts at Brown University as part of the “In
Transit: From Object to Site” (September 9-October 23, 2006) exhibition at the David Winton
Bell Gallery, the event was held on the Brown campus on the evening of September 15, 2006
and was open to the public on an RSVP basis. The work of subRosa being “both site and
situation specific—an art of social relations and discursive participation”, audience members
were asked to contemplate contemporary “capitalist pedagogical economies”, and the
sometimes strained relations between teachers and students in the academy. In addition guests
41
3 Ibid. p 293
4 subRosa, “Love is Strong as Death”. Web. Last accessed July 9, 2010. <http://refugia.net/subrosafeast/carrie.html>
were invited to add to the aesthetic richness of the convivial exchange by wearing festive garb
and to “contribute a gift of nourishment—whether material, intellectual, spiritual, or
otherwise.”5 Known for their conceptual rather than object-based practice, although subRosa
paid attention to the feast’s aesthetics, the setting itself was less important than the relations the
artists hoped to generate, as demonstrated by the tables and chairs which were standard
foldable and stackable metal and wood covered in tablecloths. Documentation, ephemera, and
objects generated during the feast were later exhibited at Polvo in Chicago and Track 16 Gallery
in Santa Monica.
With an al fresco setting on the terrace of the List Art Center at Brown University,
subRosa’s convivial feast was divided into four themed courses punctuated by four wine
pourings and toasts, the mostly local and organic menu featured heavily European-influenced
rustic New American food. For the first course (Beginnings / Sight), guests were served “cheese
platters with olives and vegetables, ruby's fresh local goat cheese, lovella’s fresh goat/cow yogurt
with herbs and cucumbers, and macedonian pinjor, in honor of Elena”. For the second course
(Engagements / Touch), guests were served “fresh corn and squash chowder, prepared by Paige,
and cool vegetable pizza on homemade crust." After the second course, wine pourings and
toasts, guests were invited to change seats so that they could interact with different people. The
third course (Minglings / Smell) included "organic mesclun greens, picked this morning by diann +
friends, handmade coleslaw with yogurt dressing, fresh bread from seven stars bakery, and
steamed rhode island green beans." After a third wine pouring and toasts, guests were treated
to a dessert course of "handmade truffles by liz, ginger-rosemary shortbread, and fresh and local
fruit: whole and cut pieces, followed by a final wine pouring and round of toasts.” While some
42
5 subRosa, “Love is Strong As Death: A Convivial Feast ”. Web. Last accessed July 7, 2010. <http://refugia.net/subrosafeast/>
farmers and cooks were identified by name, the emphasis was on the communal act of
preparing food rather than the agricultural or culinary prowess of any one individual.
Amongst the models for the feast are Plato’s Symposium, a work in which guests at a
feast ruminate on and take turns discussing the idea of love. The resulting discussion is described
as perhaps Plato’s finest writing. The consideration of love and ethical relations with each other
is as necessary today as it was in Plato’s time. However it should be noted that guests in Plato's
Symposium are exclusively the Greek male elite, whose life of ease, learning and self-care is the
product of economic and cultural privilege conferred to them by virtue of their birth. In Plato’s
work, the guests take a break from their usual feasting and drinking, of which seems to be a
frequent occurrence, and send off the flute girl who would normally entertain them in order to
turn their attention to more serious matters.6 Acknowledging the problematic elements of the
original context for Symposium, subRosa offers a feminist reworking of the Greek feast,
encouraging shared labor, equal relations and mutual replenishment. While members of subRosa
and students and faculty of Brown University may or may not have been born into privilege, in
contemporary America they are regarded as the cultural elite. Using Plato’s Symposium as a
model, subRosa acknowledge both the merit of discourse, previous philosophical models, and
their own positions of privilege within society.
Aside from considering the idea of love, subRosa also takes from the Symposium model
an elaborate and lengthy style of eating replete with multiple courses and wine pourings.
However, instead of serving a sophisticated meat and fish heavy meal prepared by leagues of
servants, subRosa opts for a much simpler vegetarian menu prepared by the collective
themselves. By hand-making food using local and organic foods cultivated by small farmers
43
6 Plato, Symposium, trans. B. Jowett. ebook #1600 World eBook Library PGCC Collection 1999. Web. Last accessed: August 23, 2010. <http://www.worldpubliclibrary.org>
subRosa extends its critique from the pedagogical economy to the industrial food system,
acknowledging that the same alienating effects of the capitalist economy extend to all aspects of
daily life. Although the multi-course meal and wine pourings are suggestive of stuffy bourgeois
dining customs, the formality of the meal is mitigated by the modesty of the food preparation,
the open mike, and “ice-breaking” performative exercises involving mutual touch and the letting
go of personal ego.
The other influence identified by subRosa is prominent African-American scholar bell
hooks and her idea of ‘beloved community’. In hooks’ work she champions the idea of coming
together and appreciating each other in our differences, encouraging hybridity rather than
assimilation.7 While subRosa seeks to affirm difference without privileging one culture over
another, the composition of their meal with a cuisine that is associated with who hooks refers
to as “privileged-class whites”8 does not reflect an honoring of cultural difference. This is not to
suggest that subRosa should attempt to make food outside of their culinary experience, but it
does highlight the fact that the material presence and culinary influence of non-white feminists
seems to be severely lacking. Through the absence of other culinary influences subRosa
unintentionally privileges European-inspired culinary traditions, unfortunately failing in this
respect to honor hooks’ vision of beloved community.
Though their intentions are laudable, subRosa’s Death: A Convivial Feast comes across as
being willfully ignorant, or at least extremely oblivious. Though subRosa claims to draw influence
from both Plato’s Symposium and bell hooks’ “beloved community”, it is clear that the former
takes overwhelming precedence over the later. Merely citing bell hooks in an artist statement
44
7 bell hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism (New York: An Owl Book, 1995), 272.
8 Ibid. 266.
does nothing to ameliorate the alienating affects of systemic racism, classism and cultural and
culinary exclusion at the table. As self-described feminists who read bell hooks, one would
expect that these artists would be more attuned to the ways that all forms of privilege - not just
male - are expressed through seemingly innocuous everyday actions, not the least of which are
culinary and aesthetic choices. As it seems subRosa would like to have it both ways,
simultaneously upholding their privilege as members of the Eurocentric cultural elite while
championing equality and the celebration of difference; the idea that the two might be mutually
exclusive seems lost on the collective.
Approaching art praxis from a restaurant background, OPENrestaurant is a project
conceived by artists and restaurant professionals Stacie Pierce (pastry co-chef), Jerome Waag
(chef), and Sam White (host) in the Bay Area, California. All three work for the Berkeley
restaurant Chez Panisse started by legendary chef and food activist Alice Waters, and the
philosophy of the restaurant carries over heavily to the practice of the artistic collective.
Described by Jerome Waag as a "social sculpture", OPEN projects are foremost about showing
people where their food comes from and how to eat it. Described as “a plate of food”, “a
project”, and “a forum”, OPENrestaurant projects have included events such as OPENsoil,
carving an entire pig at SFMOMA, OPENcity, Don’t Bake Alaska (baking baked alaska using
ingredients from companies actively helping the environment), and OPENfuture (a reimagination
of a futurist dinner). Most of the OPENrestaurant events have included a sit-down meal
component offered to the public for a “modest price” of $20 - $65. To date all events have been
staged within the Bay Area in venues such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
(SFMOMA), the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), and the recently closed alternative
artist-run space New Langton Arts. Within and outside of an art context, a restaurant is a group
45
effort, and OPENrestaurant regularly collaborates with a large network of local chefs, farmers,
foragers, schools, and non-profit organizations.
Although most cities have many plots of arable land, the pervading perceptual division of
the rural and urban encourages the idea that the urban space is strictly for the consumption
rather than the production of food. Looking at the city as a site for the production and foraging
of food, for their OPENcity event held September 18, 2008 at New Langton Arts
OPENrestaurant staged an event including a dinner composed entirely of food sourced from
within the San Francisco - Berkeley - Oakland perimeter. After issuing an open call to the Bay
Area’s urban farming and foraging community, for the meal and tapas OPENcity sourced over
seventy ingredients from thirty-nine places within the local perimeter. Contributors included
members of the urban farming and foraging community, Alice Waters and her non-profit project
Edible Schoolyards, The People’s Grocery in Oakland, and chefs from local restaurants. Amongst
the ingredients were bush beans, butter, eggs, fish, herbs, honey, lettuce, plums, rabbit, squash,
strawberries, and tomatoes. Of the many contributions by collective member Stacie Pierce was
salt she made from dehydrating local Ocean Beach water. Divided into two parts, the first
component of OPENcity is a three-course meal for 50 people for the price of $65 by
reservation only. The menu of the sit-down meal includes vin d’orange and coppa made by chef
Chris Lee from Eccolo, a dish of vegetables and cheese, halibut caught outside of the Golden
Gate Bridge, and West Oakland Rabbit, and bicycle-churned ice cream served with plums
foraged in the Berkeley Hills. The second component is an open seating, no reservation
arrangement where diners are offered plates of tapas for $5 each. Although the dining is divided
into separate components, audience members are all invited in to the art space at the same
time.
46
Situated in a large rectangularly shaped-warehouse in the Mission district of San
Francisco, the layout of OPENcity includes a live chicken coop, reception area, bar, swing, a
bicycle-powered ice cream maker, kitchen and prep area, a “seed swap” cart, wooden bleachers
and table seatings for 50 guests. The warehouse has approximately 20’ high ceilings punctuated
with thin cement columns, cement floors, and is lit with standard fluorescent lights. Some of the
columns have black boards with messages and information about the project. Somewhat dingy
and dirty, the walls are partially covered by painted white corrugated metal panels or partially
finished drywall. Near the roll-up door of the space is a wall with exposed utility-measuring
equipment. From the street one first sees an approximately 6’ by 6’ chicken coop generously
spread with fresh hay. Placed against the wall, the coop is an open-top fenced structure with the
three outer sides made of unpainted wood frames with rectangular gridded black wire. A
weathered wooden ladder attached to the wall runs down into the coop. The five chickens held
inside the coop are treated to a large basket of fresh vegetables and fruits. A reception area with
project literature and a credit card machine is attended by a male host in a light blue button-up
shirt and a black suit jacket . Against the right wall of the warehouse is the “kitchen” - a
makeshift table with a few portable stoves with a large wooden shelf above - and a prep
counter with a thin black frame, white shelves for plates, and a white countertop. In the kitchen
and prep area large bowls and plates sitting on the countertop are piled high with jewel-like
fruits and vegetables. Over the course of the evening the kitchen area activity waxes and wanes,
the chefs and assistants moving always with the smooth orchestration of well-practiced
professionals. At the back left side of the warehouse is a rope swing with a weathered wooden
seat. On one wall is a large map of the Bay Area is dotted by the places where food was
sourced. Under the map are four small stacks of cardboard produce boxes silk screened with
47
the phrase “seed the sensible, harvest the impossible”. A large old fashioned metal ice cream
churner sits on a table, later to be attached to a bicycle to churn bicycle powered ice cream. For
non-diners, a bleacher area is set up so that they could literally watch from the sidelines as
other guests enjoyed the bounty of the city.
Describing OPENcity, chef and artist Jerome Waag refers to the project as a “social
sculpture.”9 Expanding the term “sculpture” to include not only the shaping of physical objects
but “how we mold and shape the world in which we live”, the term “social sculpture” was
originally coined by German artist Joseph Beuys.10 For many people who make art out of social
relations, referring to their work as “social sculpture” is enough to justify their practice.
However, to be taken seriously as art praxis, a critique of the quality of the relations generation
is necessary. With OPENrestaurant, there is a disconnect between the artists conception of
their sculpture and the resulting concrete form. To many observers, the two-tiered dining
system and bleacher arrangement does not seem terribly “open”. Not surprisingly given the high
price of the meal, OPENcity visitor demographics skew towards an older and ostensibly
wealthier crowd. Although OPENrestaurant’s aims are laudable, like the organic or Slow Food
movement generally, their project is marred by a willful ignorance of the economic and cultural
inaccessibility of the foods they serve. This pervading inability to understand the connection
between organic and local food and privilege is demonstrated by Alice Waters during her
interview on the television show 60 minutes: "We make decisions every day about what we're
going to eat. And some people want to buy Nikes, two pairs. And other people want to eat
48
9 East Bay Pictures “OPENrestaurant,” YouTube, March 24, 2009. Web. Last accessed: August 3, 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxOi9OMYPsw>
10 Carin Kuoni, ed., Energy Plan for the Western Man: Joseph Beuys in America (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1990), 19.
Bronx grapes and nourish themselves."11 The idea that people’s choices may be more difficult
than deciding between Nikes or grapes is apparently unimaginable. To be fair, one of the
important aspects of both Chez Panisse and OPENrestaurant is that their suppliers be paid a
fair price for their products. Without the reliable economic support of restaurants such as Chez
Panisse, many small farms would simply not exist. Unlike other commissioned ingestional works
where food can be offered for free, visitors pay the true price for the artists’ and farmers’ labor,
presenting perhaps a more honest representation of the food system “in the real world”.
However conscious decisions were made, and while the artists of OPEN could have offered a
much more modest (and probably equally as delicious) menu to more people, they chose to go
with the high-end cuisine they are accustomed to cooking.
Using the idea of cooking as a design approach, London-based Italian artist and designer
Martino Gamper creates “design supported” pop-up Trattoria dinners. Over the past ten years
in collaboration with other artists and designers Gamper has staged multi-course dinners over
25 times. In his work Total Trattoria, a commission by The Aram Gallery in London shown in
March through April 2008, Martino Gamper designed every single dining element for a
“Trattoria” space replete with an open kitchen and seating for twenty-five guests. Previous to
the Total Trattoria commission, Gamper put on dinners with design collective Abake (Maki
Suzuki, Alex Rich, and Kajsa Stahl) under the name Trattoria al Cappello at various locations
around London. Using fresh and local ingredients, Gamper and Abake create rustic mostly
British, Italian and Japanese-inspired meals. From the food to the furniture, emphasis is on the
hand made and irregular. Although influenced by relational works by artists such as Rirkrit
Tiravanija, Gamper’s Trattoria works have typically been neither very open nor accessible. Like
49
11 Alice Waters, “The Mother of Slow Food” interview on 60 minutes. Web. Last accessed: August 20, 2010. <http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4867014n>
other non-art related “underground” restaurants Gamper’s Trattoria dinners were staged on an
invite-only basis for a fee, and previous to the Aram Gallery exhibition his related design works
not shown to the general public. Following Total Trattoria, Gamper takes his custom design
concept further into the private realm, offering his total design dining experience as a luxury
experiential commodity.
For his Total Trattoria furnishings, Martino Gamper creates everything from the chairs to
the tableware, often using reclaimed materials and repurposing found objects. For his twenty-
five Combo chairs, Gamper takes twelve different components (“ingredients”) made from three
different types of timber and without pre-planning assembles them in different arrangements.
The three types of wood are all unpainted, and aside from the square seat divided into relatively
thin pieces, creating somewhat austere looking, if irregular, forms. For his Off Cut dining table
Gamper creates thirteen individual units each of a different size, shape, and material placed
together in a horseshoe configuration. The woods vary from long blond planks to variegated
chocolate brown chunks, the smallest table being approximately 1 1/2’ x 2 1/2’ and the largest
being approximately 4’ x 9’. All the tables have thick tapered triangular shaped legs and angular
sides, giving them a free-form spontaneous appearance. While the chairs have mostly matte
surfaces, the tables are lacquered and polished. With the joining of diverse elements into one
unified shape, Gamper communicates his idea that the dining event brings people together
through a shared experience. The tables themselves are adorned with numerous decorative
elements, including handblown glass water pitchers and vases which are made to resemble
cheap plastic bottles, die cut leather coasters, hand etched glasses, and embossed invitations
which double as place mats. Found cutlery is strung together on a round bracelet-like holder,
meant to be passed from one diner to another around the table. Inside the horseshoe table
50
formation are the stove and sink islands. The stove is composed of a black painted rectangular
board supported by two thick black triangular bases, each in turn supported by four short and
thin wooden legs. The sink and counter island is a medium brown wooden rectangle with an
approximately 1 1/2 ’ high baseboard of the same material. The sink itself appears to be
unfinished, with a light-colored possibly epoxy-based residue visible where it joins the
countertop. As the sink is an unconnected freestanding island, a orange bucket is placed under
the drainage hole to collect liquids. The prep area is covered with various spice and seasoning
containers, cleansing materials, and cooking utensils.
The hand made and improvisational - yet elegant and sophisticated - qualities of the Total
Trattoria furnishings are mirrored by the rustic-cosmopolitan eight course meal Gamper serves
to his guests. Outside of Gamper’s context, a trattoria is typically an Italian restaurant which
serves simple but plentiful foods. In Gamper’s Trattorias, the cuisine is a hybrid of mostly British,
Italian, and Japanese food, reflecting the local British context and the culinary traditions and
predilections of Gamper and his Abake collaborators. For Total Trattoria the menu is composed
of raw giant squid with a soy sauce dressing, goat cheese horseradish bruschetta on thick slices
of brown sourdough bread, onion and orange salad, celeriac & chili gratin, beet and celeriac soup
served half-in-half in bowls, miso ginger rosemary mackerel, handmade soba with shoyu
garnished with daikon and green onion, and rhubarb stewed in homemade beer with clotted
cream.12 Accompanying the meal is red and white wine. Before the meal is prepared in front of
the guests, the stovetop prep table is completely covered by an enviable cornucopia of
vegetables and fruits, including whole stalks of brussel sprouts, daikon, beets, ginger, lemons,
garlic, rhubarb, and onions. Of the more theatric elements of the food preparation is the
51
12 Martino Gamper “total trattoria,”, YouTube, April 17, 2008. Web. last accessed: August 23, 2010.<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X1h6A_Wug4>
kneading, rolling and cutting of the handmade soba. As with the food served at Chez Panisse and
OPENrestaurant, these ostensibly simple foods are actually quite labor and time intensive both
to cultivate and prepare. Although organic farming is partially subsidized in the UK, as it is in
America seasonal and organic foods are still often more expensive than “conventional”
produce, and is often associated with educated and moneyed lifestyles. However as it is also in
North America, in the UK regional, rustic and handmade foods have steadily resurged in
popularity both within and outside “locavore” circles, reflecting the widespread collective desire
for a sense of authenticity and personal connection. Although not nearly as challenging as the
meals of previous generations of artists, for example Daniel Spoerri’s Restaurant Spoerri
(1968-1972) where he served delicacies such as elephant’s trunk steak13 or Gordon Matta-
Clark’s FOOD(1971-1973) which included meals such as the fabled “bone dinner”14, Total
Trattoria’s hybrid menu may seem disparate or even hodgepodge to those unaccustomed to
eating such a wide range of foods together. However, like Gamper’s furniture design the
patchwork menu fits together in its own peculiar way, working together to create a symbiotic, if
irregular whole.
Following his Total Trattoria project, Martino Gamper began working with art curator and
consultant Meredith Gunderson to offer similar Trattoria dinners for private clients on
artnet.com and the high-end tourist site quintessentiallyescape.com for a fee of 10,000 to 20,000
GBP (approximately $15,560 - $31,122). Filed under Quintessentially Escape’s “Blow Your
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13 Elizabeth Hartung, “Food, Art and Communication: Food as a New Model of Art Reception,” in To Eat or not to Eat (Salamanca: Centro de Arte de Salamanca, 2002), 77.
14 Randy Kennedy, “When Meals Played the Muse,” The New York TImes, February 21, 2007,http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/dining/21soho.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1, last accessed: 12/12/10.
At Gordon Matta-Clark’s restaurant Food, he staged a dinner consisting of oxtail soup, roasted bone marrow, frogs’ legs, and “other bony entrees” at a time in New York when “people did not eat bone marrow.”
Mind” section, the advertisement sells Gamper’s six-course, aperitif, wine and champagne dinner
as “a real must do for any art lover” and promises amongst other things a “Luxury gift from
Martino”. (see fig. 3.1)15 In Claire Bishop’s essay “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics” she
expresses the fear that contemporary relational works too easily “dovetail with an ‘experience
economy,’ ” of commodified scripted and staged experiences.16 Marketed as a luxury “once in a
lifetime” custom experience, Gamper’s later Trattoria incarnations appear to be Bishop’s precise
fears manifested, making explicit the potentially exclusionary (and expensive) nature of
ingestional works and fine art generally. As with many of the works previously discussed,
Gamper’s Trattorias not only highlight the fact that simple, seasonal and fresh local food have
reached a luxury status, but reveal the power of the hand of the artist and the context of the
gallery to transform relatively mundane activities into premium and sought-after experiences.
As Gamper’s “total design” demonstrates, in the age of mass production and cyber-
connectivity the increasing desire for the concrete handmade, imperfect, and unique runs not
only though food circles but all manner of consumables from food to furniture to fashion - and
even experience itself. Unfortunately as Gamper as well as subRosa and OPENrestaurant’s
projects also demonstrate, access to experiences of “authenticity” is often undemocratic, those
with access to cultural or economic means often having more access to activities and foods that
mitigate the alienating effects of contemporary life.
Although ingestion within an art context is often celebrated as a means of bringing
everyday universal experience into the gallery, in the case of these sit down meals the audience
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15 Martino Gamper and Meredith Gunderson Trattoria Dinner - Quintessentially Escape, http://www.quintessentiallyescape.com/escape?id=101;name=Exclusive-Martino-Gamper-and-Meredith-Gunderson-Trattoria-Dinner;country=United-Kingdom;city=London,last accessed: 8/23/10.
16 Claire Bishop, “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,” October 110 (2004): 52.
is clearly not of the commons. Extending the artist’s hand to the chef’s table, all three of these
artists’ works create unique and handmade dining experiences for their audiences’ enjoyment
using unrefined, local, and often organic ingredients. Although the provenance the dishes served
by subRosa, OPENrestaurant, and Martino Gamper are mostly very humble, placed into a
format of multiple courses within an art space these foods are elevated a to luxury status. The
ostensible rusticity and “naturalness” of the food served obscures the fact that this style of
eating is a contemporary phenomenon that is just as much a product of the global industrialized
economy as the mass produced foods that are their antithesis. The ostensible naturalness of the
food also obscures the cultural and economic privileges that are necessary to be able to enjoy
such “simple” fare. In the cases of subRosa and OPENrestaurant the apparent obliviousness to
these invisible privileges are especially insidious, the artists’ having professed their commitment
to equality and openness, and is perhaps indicative of the ways people of color and the
economically disadvantaged feel alienated by the feminist and organic food movements. In the
case of these sit-down meals it appears that ingestion-based work can sometimes be less
accessible rather than more.
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Conclusion
In a postmodern landscape of endless choices, virtual worlds, and increasing
fragmentation, eating and drinking appear to be a link to the timeless, concrete, and universal.
Offering a counter to the globalized capitalism and the alienating aspects of contemporary
urban life, the artists discussed in this thesis all approach their work with the idea of offering
their audiences a bit of unexpected hospitality and respite. However, while ingestion is universal,
specific foods and drinks are the products of particular times, places, cultures and class
affiliations. The meanings and uses of identical foods also change depending on where and how it
is being served. Perhaps suffering from the same optimism and hubris of earlier generations of
universally minded people, although well meaning in their intent at times even the artists
themselves seem not to have fully considered the impact of their choices of what to serve and
to whom. However, just as the revival of American food culture is in its nascent stages, so too is
the use of food and drink as a medium in art praxis. As the art field expands to more
comfortably incorporate the serving of ingestibles as art, future artists will no doubt reflect on
the failures and successes of this particular wave of ingestional art and adjust their work
accordingly.
As with all artistic media, with food and drink the particular material qualities of each
ingestible shape what is possible for their use. When considering what type of food or drink to
choose, considerations of material factors such as size, method of preparation, mode of service,
time required to eat or drink, and possible physiological effects are of utmost importance to the
reception of one’s artistic output. Within and outside of an art context, the kind of ingestibles
selected both shapes and is shaped by the situation at hand. In everyday life foods and drinks
with the appropriate concrete and semantic qualities are selected for and molded to fit the
given gustatory event. Well before the invention of American “drive-thru” meals, all manner of
relatively small, handheld, usually dry, carbohydrate or protein heavy, and easily transportable “to
go” foods - from beef jerky to baozi to empanadas to onigiri to sea biscuits and salted fish - have
been developed for people in transit. Meanwhile throughout the world large and often elaborate
“family style” meals consisting of plentiful communal dishes have long been served for leisurely
sharing and hearty sustenance.
Sweets, whether candy or fruit, are populist gems with near universal appeal,
prepackaged in small, individual units, and lend themselves to easy distribution to a large number
of people. In the case of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ candy spills, the inexpensive, small, mass-
produced and individually wrapped treats lend themselves well to museum-friendly mass
distribution and enjoyment. In the case of Fallen Fruit’s fruit forages and Public Jam, local fruit is
also plentiful (at least in Los Angeles, appealingly sweet, and “prepackaged” in individual units, but
in some cases requires a degree of group cooperation and labor. Rather than being uniform and
industrially produced, fallen fruit is unique and organic. While one can be assured that a candy
spill in Venice, Italy will taste very much like (if not identical) to a candy spill in Venice, California,
the taste of a foraged neighborhood fruit or jam will taste different each time. While the
iteration of a Gonzalez-Torres candy spill requires the attention of museum professionals, Fallen
Fruit foraged fruit is available to anyone willing to harvest it. In either case, what the artists gain
in quantity they lose in time - whether candy or fruit, sweets are consumed relatively quickly
and without much in the way of ceremony.
Drinks, on the other hand, are liquids that must be sipped in small amounts over time,
and require some sustained attention be paid to the act of drinking. Also distributed in
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individual units, drinks are “to go” cups for the itinerant or delicate reusable cups and saucers
for those who wish to linger. In Rirkrit Tiravanija’s 1994 (angst essen seele auf) the choice to
serve beer and coke in a bar atmosphere creates a situation well suited for alcohol and caffeine
aided casual and candid conversations. In Tiravanija and Douglas Gordon’s Cinema Liberté Bar
Lounge, professionally prepared Illy espresso drinks provide European-flavored upscale leisure
and caffeine-fueled stimulation. Stalker, an Italian collective promoting egalitarian use of time and
space, opt for drip coffee served in Styrofoam cups for their piece Meantime, Free Bridge Coffee
to bring workaday respite and relaxation to the primarily Latino Miami bridge crossers. The
World Tea Party, serves fine loose leaf teas (primarily Chinese and Japanese) and tisanes in
delicate ceramic cups and saucers to promote sublime and civilized cosmopolitan repose. Taking
up more space and time than sweets, drinks offer a happy medium for relating between the
intimate and the near-anonymous.
Sit-down meals, particularly feasts, multi-course restaurant meals, and dinner parties, are
highly ritualized and usually elaborate affairs. The etymology of the word “companion” literally
means “one who breaks bread with another”, and the act of sitting and sharing a meal still
signifies that one is an equal with ones’ dining partners. The problem is there are usually not
many seats at the table. While foods such as hamburgers or hardtack were created for easy
transportability and consumption, the appearance of foods served at multi-course sit-down
meals are above all to demonstrate ones’ aesthetic and cultural refinement. In subRosa’s Love is
Stronger than Death: A Convivial Feast, OPENrestaurant’s, and Martino Gamper’s Total Trattoria,
fresh, handmade, local (and in the case of OPENrestaurant - hyper-local), and ostensibly simple
foods are served to very exclusive groups of diners. Sacrificing breadth for depth, logistically the
form of the sit-down meal does not allow for a large audience.
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While much ink is spilled over the terroir and provenance of fine food and drink, all
ingestibles are equally imbued with evidence of their origins and serving environment. Just as
important to the meaning of what is being served is the context and culture specific webs of
signification that people spin around ingestibles. In all the works discussed, the foods and drinks
chosen are a reflection of the particular environment where the work was conceived and first
served. Although Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ candy spills are exhibited all over the world, his art is
very much a product of the sugar-saturated (some would say obsessed) and largely mass
produced American food culture. While fruit has been enjoyed by humans - and many other
species - for millennia, Fallen Fruit’s project speaks particularly to a Los Angeles audience whose
land has historically been the site of fruit cultivation, and whose car-crazed culture discourages
the act of walking around one’s own neighborhood to enjoy the bevy of public fruit. Wanting to
Conscientiously keeping his local context in mind, Rirkrit Tiravanija chose to serve beer, the
national drink of Germany, and Coca-Cola, a widely enjoyed beverage with a long history in the
country, to a German audience within the context of an homage to Rainer Werner Fassbinder -
one of the most well known German directors in the country. In Tiravanija and Douglas
Gordon’s Cinema Liberté Bar Lounge, they chose to serve espresso drinks in the Guggenheim,
appealing to the American preference for coffee-based drinks and the upscale Eurocentric
sensibilities of the museum. Meanwhile Stalker chose to serve drip coffee in Styrofoam cups,
appealing to both the American and Latin American preference for coffee over tea, as well as the
American and Latin American workaday familiarity with coffee served in Styrofoam. World Tea
Party, headed by the British artist Bryan Mulvihill, serves Vancouverites tea rather than coffee,
speaking to the artists’ own cultural preference for tea, as well as appealing to the active
Canadian and Asian tea cultures. Serving food to an Ivy-league audience at Brown University,
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feminist collective subRosa chose local, mostly organic, and handmade Euro-American foods to
appeal to the particular New England life-stylization. Taking the idea of local to a whole other
level, San Francisco Bay Area’s OPENrestaurant served “hyper-local” foods sourced from within
the Oakland-San Francisco-Marin perimeter in what can be described as a hyper-politically
correct Franco-centric Chez Panisse-style “California Cuisine” on steroids. Serving food in
London - home of the Victorian dinner party and stalwart proponents of class distinctions -
Italian artist Martino Gamper chose to make a handmade menu of British-Italian-Japanese hybrid
cuisine to appeal to the refined palates of his well-to-do cosmopolitan patrons.
In an era of ever-increasing urbanization, more and more humans are becoming alienated
from the natural world - and each other. For those of us in affluent industrialized countries such
as America, we are longer burdened with having to meet our basic needs through our own - or
anyone we know’s - toil; our food comes from “big box” grocery stores, our water comes from
the faucet or plastic bottles, and our shelter comes from construction companies or craigslist
postings. The price of this freedom is a loss of connection to the land, the “fruits” of our labor,
and the communities that form as a result of shared resources and mutual dependence. While
populations in cities and suburbs are increasing, the amount of public space continues to
decrease.
Creating experiences that counter the industrial capitalist values of efficiency, speed, and
uniformity, through serving ingestibles - often time-consuming, handmade, and irregular - the
artists discussed in this thesis all offer their audiences relief from some of the alienating aspects
of contemporary life. Made using the same production methods as mass produced goods such
as cars or televisions, eating the uniform and unblemished factory farmed foods one can start to
feel like a mass-produced person. Offering an alternative to foods produced through large-scale
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industrial agriculture, artists Fallen Fruit, OPENrestaurant, subRosa, and Total Trattoria share the
experience of eating foods locally sourced and lovingly prepared by the artists or the audience
themselves. With the Fallen Fruit and OPENrestaurant projects in particular, audiences are
introduced to the idea that the urban space around them - in some cases literally in their back
yard - can be a source of sustenance. In a world where we are made to feel constantly rushed,
modern day conveniences making us feel like we have less time rather than more, works such as
subRosa’s Love is Stronger than Death, OPENrestaurant, Martino Gamper’s Trattoria series,
Tiravanija’s 1994 (angst essen seele auf), and the World Tea Party’s tea parties encourage
participants to slow down, relax, and talk to other people. Rather than serving foods and drinks
in the most fast and efficient manner, these artists create spaces and meals that allow audience
members to linger. Offering a counter to consumerist values and commodified relations, Fallen
Fruit’s fruit forages and “Public Jams” are free - free, provided that audiences agree to take only
what they need and contribute in kind. Offering a solution to shrinking public space, Stalker
produced instead “public time” with their Meantime, Free Bridge Coffee, offering waiting drivers
on Miami’s Flagler drawbridge some unexpected hospitality. Although people from many cultures
live side by side within urban spaces, cross-cultural relations are sometimes difficult or
discouraging. In Tiravanija’s (angst essen seele auf) he addresses the particularly German situation
of awkward Turkish and German relations, creating a space he hopes encourages generous and
unexpected interactions. In Stalker’s Meantime, Free Bridge Coffee the collective brings a bit of
respite to the under addressed Latino population that must cross the Flagler bridge to work in
the more central areas of Miami.
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As the late artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres put it, “... we are part of this culture, we don’t
come from outer space.”1; as food (and the lack thereof) remains at the forefront of general
culture, there will continue to be space for ingestional works. Still in its nascent stages, the food
culture in America continues to grow as people become more interested in where their food
comes from and what they are eating - and who they are eating with. Putting food and self-
sufficiency at the forefront of public debate, recently the Obama’s planted a Victory Garden of
all organic vegetables and fruits. Although in general culture certain aspects of ingestion are
becoming increasingly de-socialized and synthetic, there is a concurrent interest in the
importance of eating rituals and unprocessed food. As the world becomes more and more
urbanized and technologically dense, there will be an even greater need for artists to create
ways to mitigate the alienating aspects of contemporary life. While many works in the first
three-quarters of the 20th century focused more on divorcing the act of ingestion from
everyday experience many artists, including the ones discussed in this thesis, are interested in
providing relatively unspectacular “comfort food” for contemporary audiences. Although the
fanfare and novelty of these works can sometimes create an atmosphere akin to an extended
gallery openings of the worst sort, as the newness fades ingestion can be incorporated into
artistic praxis as just another medium an artist can choose to work with.
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1 Robert Storr, Interview with Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Artpress (January 1995): 25.
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