food – Page 3 – Kristen Baumlier

Tag: food

Flying Buffet: Sonja Alhaüser’s Fantastic Food Event

Posted on September 17, 2013September 17, 2013 by Kbaumlier

Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art was an exhibition that focused on the act of sharing food and drink in order “to advance aesthetic goals and to foster critical engagement with the culture of their moment.” The show premiered at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, and presented more than 30 artists works that explored the shared meal as an artistic medium. Feast featured gallery works, and also many participatory projects, meals, and performances. I recently read about the show again, since it recently traveled to The Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston.

One of the artists in the show includes German artist Sonja Sonja Alhaüser, who created a “catering performance” for the show when it was at the SMART Museum. The piece, entitled Flying Buffet, had servers wearing silver outfits and wearing white wigs who moved through the space like a “flying buffet”, serving food. “The piece moved through the lobby and had lots of movement, like flying,” the artist says in the online video created by the Smart Museum.

The performers would carry trays of food that included skewers of fruit, cheese with Marzipan figures; small canopies with signature drawings posted on toothpicks, and large sculptural elements. On the trays, and also on tables were angels, animals such as fish and cows, and figures out created out of margarine, which gave the food a baroque look, and pushed the edge of buffet food.

The artist says about the piece, “All together it is a big picture, or a landscape of food. All who want to come and eat are able to eat. I wanted to have all kinds of foods: meat, bread, cheese, fruit and others, so that all foods are in the buffet.”

Her planning for the process involved creating large recipe drawings, which were large wall-sized detailed sketches made in pencil and watercolor. The drawings featured images of ingredients, and also sketches of the sculptural elements, and the overall piece. The recipe drawings look fantastic, but when you see the video of the piece, you realize that the artist was able to realize her vision. The flying buffet comes alive.

The video and images of the piece can be seen in the Flying Buffet Vimeo video. Make sure you don’t want it hungry.

Image Source and Links:

Flying Buffet Vimeo video.

Feast Exhibition- Smart Museum

Sonja alhaeuser – Website

Feast Exhibition at the Blaffer Museum, Houston, TX

Baking for a Cause – The Depressed Cake Shop

Posted on July 22, 2013July 26, 2013 by Kbaumlier

As I posted last week, Miss Cakehead, a freelance creative director and managing director of Cakehead Loves generates and executes stunts, experiences and publicity campaigns that sometimes use food and drink in unusual ways.

This summer she is doing a charity project called The Depressed Cake Shop, which is a unique pop up cake shop where every single cake on sale will be grey, with color on the inside. The project will open in London on August 2-4, with other popup events taking place around England, and maybe even across the world.

The project is meant to bring awareness to depression and mental illness. The project website reports that one in four people will suffer from mental illness at some point in their lives, and the project will raise funds for a mental health charity, while bringing awareness to this issue. The project hopes to raise discussion about mental illness and to engage people with the issues that stems from this disease, and to talk about depression and mental health.

Just like how the symptoms of depression can vary widely, so will the cakes. Since depression makes others feel sad, hopeless and lose interest in things you used to enjoy, the bakers contributing cakes and baked goods to the project will try to visually represent this. Some of the cakes might be half decorated, be grey or dull in color, and provide visual ways to show the effects of depression.

Many of the bakers will be made by individuals who have personal experiences of depression, using baking as a way of expressing their struggles with, and experiences of, the illness. The project also has been looking for sponsorship to help setup a series of baking therapy sessions around England, and set up a support network for those who use baking to help combat depression.

If you want to get involved, or create a pop-up shop of your own, you can get information from the Miss Cakehead website, or the project Facebook page.
Image Source and Links:

misscakehead.wordpress.com/

www.facebook.com/groups/

Dirt: The Unique Food Ingredient at Ne Quittez Pas

Posted on May 5, 2013May 13, 2013 by Kbaumlier

Ever quickly wash a fresh vegetable, and then you find that you missed a little bit o dirt? Due to my quick lettuce washing technique, I have eaten my share of dirt, but on accident. Today at the French restaurant called Ne Quittez Pas in Tokyo, you can order southern French cuisine made with seafood, vegetables, and soil, which is the newest fresh ingredient.

A six-course dinner, which features dirt as an ingredient is created by owner and chef Toshio Tanabe for the cost of 10,000 yen or US$110. The dirt is unique, in that it is chemical-free soil that comes from a supplier in Tokyo. In order to prepare the dirt for cooking and eating, the dirt is lightly cooked in order to release the flavor, and is run through a sieve to remove any sand grains.

Some of the dishes of the 6 course dirt experience include an appetizer of soil soup, a soil-dusted potato ball with a truffle center, and soil sorbet with sweet dirt gratin.

Rocket News 24, a Japanese-language news blog, has an article written by Jessica Kozuka who tried the dinner and soil experience, which describes in detail the menu and dirt courses.

An excerpt from her account of trying the dirt dishes reads:

“The first course: a potato starch and dirt soup. It arrived in a shot glass looking so dark brown, it was almost black. It definitely looked like it had dirt in it. A slice of black truffle was balanced on top, and the staff instructed us to take a bite of it and then try the soup. So we did… and it was divine! There wasn’t a dirty flavor at all. Instead, this simple soup went down smoothly with just a hint of potato flavor.

The rim of the shot glass was dusted with salt like a margarita, so after the initial saltiness, your mouth filled with the mild flavor of the soup. The dish impressed us more with the chef’s skill than with the potential of the unusual ingredient, though.

Next up: salad with dirt dressing. As simply as I can describe it, this dish featured fresh vegetables like eggplant, tomato and turnips grilled and served with a dressing made from dirt and a fine powder made from ground popcorn. Here too the surprise wasn’t the dirt, but the deliciousness of the vegetables. The tomatoes had the perfect balance of sweetness and acidity, and the eggplant hadn’t taken on any bitterness from the grilling.

I’d come here to try a dirt course, but the food tasted so little of the earthiness I was expecting that I’d kind of forgotten about that ingredient. According to the staff, the dirt used is a special black soil from Kanuma, Tochigi Prefecture. It’s strictly tested for safety and purity to be used in food, but so far I thought I hadn’t been able to notice a “dirt” flavor in the meal.”

Got dirt?

Image Source:
en.rocketnews24.com

Links:

nequittezpas.com

en.rocketnews24.com

The Gleaners’ Kitchen

Posted on April 20, 2013April 23, 2013 by Kbaumlier

Gleaning is a practice that has been around since the beginning of agriculture. The first gleaners were poor peasants who picked up crops that had been left in the fields after the harvest. Today there are modern gleaners who have created a underground restaurant and grocery store called The Gleaners’ Kitchen where everything served is made from foods that came from dumpsters.

To support the project, founder Maximus Thaler and his collaborator go dumpster-diving behind grocery stores near Boston, getting fruit, vegetables, and packaged food which has been discarded for being past their expiration date.

Once cleaned up and prepared, the food is served and given away for free. The goal of the project is to foster community and support discussion about food and waste. The project’s website reports studies indicate that up to half of the food produced in the U.S. is ultimately thrown away, and that the National Resources Defense Council estimates that around $2300 dollars worth of food is thrown out by grocery stores nightly. Due to the variability of what is in the dumpsters, the food served in the Gleaners Kitchen is always changing.

At the last restaurant event the meal included:

Pesto Spaghetti
Curried Cauliflower and Peppers
Roasted Potatoes
Quiche with Cream, Onions, Brussels Sprouts, Cauliflower, Tomatoes and Chives
Roasted Chicken
Fruit Salad with Oranges, Clementines, Grapefruit, Apples, Bananas and Pomegranates
Green Salad with Lettuce, Arugula, Cucumbers, Peppers and Tomatoes
Warm Bread
Fresh Squeezed Apple Cider

The Gleaner’s Kitchen is currently operating out of Thaler’s apartment, but he’s hoping to get support s through Kickstarter to open up a dedicated café where everyone can eat for free.

Images:
www.thegleanerskitchen.org/

Links:

www.thegleanerskitchen.org/

Identical Lunch: Food + Performance by Alison Knowles

Posted on March 19, 2013March 24, 2013 by Kbaumlier

Ever eat a tuna fish sandwich on wheat toast with butter and lettuce, no mayo, and a cup of soup or glass of buttermilk? Alison Knowles, conceived of the piece the Identical Lunch in the 1960s. when a friend and fellow Fluxus artist Philip Corner observed that she ate the same lunch every day at a local diner This daily ritual became a performance where she invited friends to try the same lunch and to write about their experiences.

Knowles wrote a score for the piece, which reads, “The Identical Lunch: a tunafish sandwich on wheat toast with lettuce and butter, no mayo, and a large glass of buttermilk or a cup of soup was and is eaten many days of each week at the same place and at about the same time.” The piece explores how no object is identical to itself within the context of the human experience. Years later, the project has evolved to have communal events where groups of people eat the lunch, and people generate photographs and writings about the experience.

At MoMA, the Identical Lunch event was done in 2011 with visitors eating the Identical Lunch with Knowles. More recently, the piece was part of the exhibition Feast at the SMART Museum of Art at the University of Chicago. Here it was featured in an installation where several times a week, the security supervisor Paul Bryan puts out a real glass of buttermilk and a tunafish sandwich prepared fresh by a local caterer, according to the specifications of Knowles’ score. The lunch is on display and age (and most likely start to mold and smell) until a few days later Paul replaces them again. The museum’s café has the Identical Lunch available for purchase, and visitors are invited to perform the score and eat lunch.

A video about the Identical Lunch is online, and by watching it – you might even get inspired to eat a tuna sandwich.. and maybe a glass of buttermillk.

Image Source:
www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1126
blogs.uchicago.edu/feast/2012/05/planning_the_identical_lunch.html

Links:

vimeo.com/36770058

www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1126

blogs.uchicago.edu/feast/2012/05/planning_the_identical_lunch.html