Ai der Weiwei in der Gwangju Biennale!
I have been comissioned to do a food performance piece for the Gwangju Biennale directed by the missing Ai Weiwei. For an artist who is actually arrested or missing in art action he is involved in a lot of projects and exhibition openings.
I am preparing a performed dinner with the wonderful team from Blanch & Shock in June in London. This dinner will be filmed and projected as part of an installation in Gwangju in September. The dinner will be eaten entirely without crockery and cutlery. Diners will be forced to find new ways to ingest food. Nibbling it suspended from mid air, injecting oil directly into bread rolls, reaching with tree branches into rilettes or having ceviche placed directly into the mouth like an Eucharist. It is a revolt against the mindless acceptance of everyday design objects. Will the food taste different if eaten without fork, knife or spoon? Will the wine taste purer if sucked straight from the bottle with a long tube?
Suspended form mid air will be a cutlery sculture – a cinematic slow motion implosion of all the cutlery we use everytime we eat as if magically pulled together by an invisible force:
I am welding the final piece on Tuesday…If Ai Weiwei can direct a Biennale from a prison cell I can weld a few forks together…