2020
Exhibition
Daniel Spoerri: Rezept of Hirn, Rezept of Hoden
(Tragically reactivated by a vegan castration of Marco Bruzzone)
Description
An exhibition performance that puts together two visions of circularity of events through the process of food as a poetical possibilty. Daniel Spoerri and Marco Bruzzone
Three questions by Gigiotto Del Vecchio to Marco Bruzzone
Gigiotto Del Vecchio: How do you define your interaction between art and food?
Marco Bruzzone: I believe that food and art have always had a relationship that got mediated by the artist. I often think of those instances were the fur of boars was put aside after their slaughter, so that later on, brushes could be made out of it. Or when only two out of three eggs were eaten, while the remaining one was used as a binder for colors. I also think that in more recent times, certain dynamics have reversed. Immediately after the World War II, many artists have started to work with poor or everyday materials and as result, the work of art itself has become dematerialized, as can be seen in conceptual art. Food and waste became components of performances, videos and sculptures or furthermore were the parts that constituted them. Later on, during the economic recession in the nineties, this concept was broadened as some artists started to organize dinners in museums and galleries, some put Christmas trees on display. We got by with what we had.
In the winter of 2010, yet again in the midst of an economic downturn, I go invited to participate in an artist residency program in Brussels. Besides a return ticket, I was provide a room and a kitchen. Every week, I would also receive two boxes full of organic vegetables. That’s when I started using food as a means to make art. I believe that today more than ever, food has become a material in the sheer range of media that art has to offer (such as neon, corrugated cardboard or watercolors).
GDV: And what fascinates you the most about food?
MB: Food, particularly compared to art, so inexorably passes through my body, from lips to anus. It is a strong experience that bears a certain degree of danger. It is a form of pleasure that is more visceral and less metaphysical than the mere look at painting. It is more like a sexual act, a surgery or even physical violence.
GDV: What is your approach to Spoerri‘s recipes?
MB: When you invited me, I immediately thought that one cannot simply slaughter off animals only for the sake of an exhibition, just to redo Spoerri’s recipes: The nose, the brain, the foot, the testicles – it’s too much. But then I looked at the cookbooks and I realized that the illustrations were really beautiful, delicate, sometimes abstract. They didn’t have anything to do with violence and death.
I figured I could only do something with those cookbooks if I ruled out death and animal sacrifice. Also, in my view, Spoerri‘s recipes seemed to be about humans not animals. I read this as a critique towards certain human behaviors, perhaps very close to cannibalism (World War II just came to an end when Spoerri started to work as an artist). So I chose to cook human testicles and brains. Veganly. Vegan death in itself is only staged. No animals or human beings were harmed during the process, as they say in movies. I am fascinated by the idea of vegan cannibalism and decided to use Knödel dough for the testicles and cauliflower that were cut into halves as brains. Castrations, lobotomies… I don‘t know. Is that okay?
GDV: Very well …