Culinary Physics_Final Proposal : The Why
Climate change has become this huge buzz topic that has seeped itself into most of my thinking and a lot of the projects that I am executing this semester. I went to a talk at Cooper Square the other day where Marina Zurkow and Elaine Gan spoke about their work. A lot of questions were throw
n around the room and much of their work had me thinking about these topics:
* the time-clock of non-animal species
* eco-spheric diets and regional ” food landscapes “
I want to explore why people are attracted to packaging, branding and aesthetic of their food; why are people snobbish about their food experience, how little people know about the geolocation/route of their food. Perhaps, I would like to explore the idea of “derivation” and “location” — from the very make-up of food physically speaking (if a meal or a togetherness of ingredients- how did they come to be in this way - what is local and what is imported? and if one food object/thing then what is it’s history and where the heck did it come from?) to its packaging and where that comes from too, to its import/export routes. Being italian, it’s funny for me to think that we have mentioned in class that tomatoes are actually from Central America when Italians boast often about the fact that we have ‘the best tomatoes.’ Marina mentioned that in California, people tend to identify with a Mediterranean diet when the climate is clearly changing the food landscape to a more desertic one…how are people going to respond to not having the same accessibility to the food that they have begun to identify with? This is a narrative that allows for a food elitism to ensue…. How could I possibly shift the idea of elitism from cultural narrative to a geo-locational narrative?
Reading about Marinetti, and updating my recollections of the futurist manifesto in addition to italians’ reactions to his culinary avant-garde efforts …I also wish to respond to the manifesto similarly to the way that Hakim Bey has entitled one of his communiques in the TAX:
“ Intellectual S/M Is the Fascism of the Eighties - The Avant-Garde Eats Shit and Likes It.”
I think it would be interesting to counter ‘aesthetics’ somehow. Marinetti and his futurism have been dubbed “the liberation of aesthetic terrorism,” a mysticism of food. [http://www.letteratura.rai.it/articoli/il-manifesto-della-cucina-futurista/15755/default.aspx] I believe the time has come instead, to unravel and de-mystify the aesthetics of food and pave a way for transparency. Hence, it would be worthy to work in some kind of format whether that means weaponizing performance or preparing an edible/ non-edible meal for someone to create a project that provokes the questions I have underlined. I will most certainly be exploring this for my futurist dish this week.