In Visible Culture, Issue 14, Aesthetes and Eaters - Food and Artistry

In Visible Culture, Issue 14, Aesthetes and Eaters - Food and Artistry
Guest Editors: Alexandra Alisauskas and Paula Pinto
Deadline for completed papers and manuscripts: December 15, 2008
Submissions and inquiries should be sent, via email, to
aalisaus@mail.rochester.edu

The peer-reviewed, electronic journal In Visible Culture invites papers and
projects that explore the role of food in art and food as an art form. This
has two main implications: a reconsideration of the non-visual senses in art
spectatorship and a bringing together of the phenomenological and social in
various forms of aesthetic experience.

The 2006 Dokumenta art fair in Kassel, Germany included Ferran Adria head
chef of the experimental restaurant El Bulli in its roster of artists.  Such
an inclusion speaks to the ultimate confluence of concerns in both the art
world and the world of cuisine - namely the paramount role of food beyond
its biological function. This event specifically highlighted the role of
food as a mediator in aesthetic experience.

Whether recent instantiations, such as Rikrit Tiravinija's gallery feasts,
or historical practices such as Daniel Spoerri's EatGallery, Gordon
Matta-Clarks Food Restaurant, or Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, the use of
food in artistic practices has had various symbolic, cultural and aesthetic
resonances. Food as a loaded material, and food as a form of representation
might thus participate not only in questions about the form of the artwork
(a literal dematerialization of the art object through consumption), but the
specific role of artworks and artists. It might also present a different
form of engagement with the artwork that demands a sensual or social
dimension, therefore forcing us to reconsider the traditional role of the
spectator in aesthetic experience.

Similarly, food production and the theorization of food preparation as a
form of artistry, share with art projects a concern with the role of the
(food) object, and its formal components. It might also seek to reinvest the
individual's engagement with food and eating as a practice. As such, this
journal issue seeks to consider the potential role of food in or as an
aesthetic encounter. How might food reformulate or even repudiate typical
aesthetic conventions? How might food and food practices aestheticize forms
of everyday life? How might the use of food in the aesthetic realm present a
reconsideration of the role of the artwork? Submissions in the form of
2,500-6,000 word papers (along with a 500 word abstract), as well as
experimental digital projects, are welcome from all disciplines.

Areas of inquiry for submissions may include, but are not limited to, the
following topics and questions:

- Premodern uses of food in and as art (Giovanni Archimbaldo, Antonin
Careme's food sculptures) - Food as a material or process in the historical
avant-garde and the neo-avant-garde (Daniel Spoerri, Piero Manzoni) - The
role of food in artistic projects in the 1960s and 1970s (Gordon
Matta-Clark, Allan Kaprow's Happenings, Food in Pop Art, Tom Marioni's
gallery bar, Fluxus food practices)

- Community, sociality and the role of eating together in aesthetic
collectives - The rhetoric of artistry in food preparation (chefs such as
Ferran Adria and El Bulli's book and DVD productions; Michael Ruhlman's
series of books on cooking and artistry; Escoffier and his cookbooks) - Food
and questions of the subject in performance (whether food rituals, or
performance art) - Pleasure and food - potential of critical engagement? -
The senses in general as a mode of aesthetic engagement - The space and
design of food - the art gallery, the restaurant, or the agricultural
sphere; the nature of the dish

- Matters of "taste" whether physiological or social  - Can food be art?

- Lifestyle, and the aestheticization of life practices through food
practices (Slow Food, Locavore movement) - Food production and the
conception social movements (artistic or otherwise)

In Visible Culture is also currently seeking submissions for book and
exhibition reviews (600-1000 word). To submit book or exhibition review
proposals please email ivcbookreviews@gmail.com.

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In Visible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture is a
peer-reviewed journal dedicated to explorations of the material and
political dimensions of cultural practices: the means by which cultural
objects and communities are produced, the historical contexts in which they
emerge, and the regimes of knowledge or modes of social interaction to which
they contribute.

http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/