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.

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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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