all right um can you all hear hello
can you guys hear through this if we go
ahead and get started
you can't hear let's see you can hear
it's not there there's there we go okay
great
all right hi hello everyone welcome
thank you for joining us this evening
for tonight's lecture by Esther Choi as
we get started I went into first my name
is Jennifer Akerman I'm from the school
of architecture and wanted to first say
a couple of quick thank-yous thank you
all for being here tonight as I start as
we start I wanted to take a moment to
thank the College of Architecture and
Design and the Robert B memorial church
the third memorial series for making
this lecture series possible I also want
to thank the lectures and the
exhibition's committee for their hard
work and planning a really vibrant
lineup for the series this year that
committee is chaired by Mark Stanley and
also includes Gale Fulton Diane Fox
Felicia Dean Christopher Cote and myself
we strive to bring a diverse set of
ideas and ways of modeling how
architectural thought and production
emerge in the world and trying to kind
of demonstrate as many different ways
that architects and designers make a
difference for our students and I think
that tonight's lecture will certainly
bring some alternative forms of practice
into the discussion so it is my extreme
pleasure tonight to introduce Esther
Choi
Esther is an artist a writer and
architectural historian currently based
in Brooklyn New York she brings with her
a fascinating academic background she
trained first as a photographer and
holds a BFA and an MFA in photography
how to practice as an assistant
professor like an academic teaching
educational practice as a professor of
art pardon curatorial there was a really
cool name for this pardon me of
criticism and curatorial practice at
at University in Toronto she's also
pursued a master of design degree from
Harvard GSD within the history and
theory of architecture program and so
the kind of combination there between
photography and design is is pretty
fascinating
she then often to pursue a PhD of the
history and theory of architecture from
Princeton University conferred in 2019
her work first came to my attention
through the provocative book
architecture is all over which you all
may have seen be aware of kind of
floating around published in 2017 by
Columbia books on architecture in the
city and which she co-edited with
America Trotter this book claims that
architecture is both everywhere and at
the same time all over conventionally a
dead right and in both both positions
both dead and everywhere that
architecture is in crisis of various
forms and it also argues that
architecture has probably been in crisis
for every generation that this isn't a
unique kind of condition it's a really
fascinating read and I highly recommend
it it's a great kind of curated volume
of powerful essays on contemporary
practice in addition to writing and
editing thoughtful works on the state of
the profession of architecture
Esther is a photographer and artist and
she's the creator of the Mecore Buffay an
artist cookbook that explores quote how
the cultural Canon is consumed and
reproduced and I think Esther plans to
share much about work with us tonight
though artistic practice and
architectural history and theory may
seem to be remote from one another I
think Esther is a fantastic example of
how that doesn't have to be the case and
I was really struck by this portions of
this portion of Esther's research
statements which in her words said quote
bridging disciplines her diverse
practice has focused on the social
architectures of everyday life often in
often examining the political potential
of ordinary spaces and rituals to act as
tools for cultural analysis in her
projects history and photography are not
regarded as ways to simply record facts
but rather as complex practices of
description that can reveal the
prevailing ideas assumptions and
experiences of an era end quote
and Esther Choi's essays on topics
related to social practice ecological
politics and the image economy have
appeared in art forum our
papers and pinup and in publications for
the Walker Center double excuse me
wealth Walker Art Center and the 8a ha
of Zurich and in addition to
architecture is all over
she is also co-editor of architecture at
the edge of everything else from the MIT
press so please join me in welcoming
ester Troy to present tonight's lecture
that's working can you hear me 
hello can you hear me yeah okay I'm
looking right yeah okay
well thanks very much for the invitation
to come to Knoxville to speak to you
this evening it's been a really great
day of just getting to know you and see
your work so I thought for today I would
talk about a project that I released
about four months ago in October 2019 I
released an artist book entitled the Le Corbuffet with a publisher called presto
and the book is really a post conceptual
art project that appropriates the format
and distribution networks of cookbook
publishing to probe questions about
history and cultural value and I thought
it so I thought it would take this
opportunity to discuss the project's
aspirations and its theoretical
frameworks as a cultural experiment all
the while keeping in mind that to borrow
a phrase from the art historian George
Kubler I'm very much within the contours
of the moment and so my resident my
observations will really reflect this
perspective so one of the questions that
I have been thinking a lot about is are
there ways to capture the artifacts of
history both literally and figuratively
as theoretical tools to understand what
else have changed the present moment
what does it mean to be a student of
history or a writer and maker of history
today what does it mean to consume
historical narratives today we certainly
live in a day and age where a sense of
historical consciousness has permeated
cultural consciousness so take for
instance for those of you that read the
New York Times the 16:19 project which
examines the legacy of American slavery
in relation to the founding of the US
Constitution in their words quote
placing the consequences of slavery and
the contributions of black American
Americans at the very center of the
story that Americans tell ourselves
about who we are and quote now the act
of both writing history and remembering
is of course inherently political what
do we choose to remember and why
benefits from the narratives and
legacies and monuments that are
constructed reified and studied and in
so doing what values are communicated
more importantly who and what gets left
out so my talk today will hopefully it's
time to discuss the theoretical
frameworks for a project that aims to
explore these questions of history and
cultural value so I'm going to take us
back to 2014 while I was traveling
throughout Europe for research
pertaining to my doctoral dissertation
at Princeton which incidentally had
nothing to do with food and WA Corbusier
but I found myself lodged in a concrete
bunker here basically a brutalist
nightmare or a brutalist paradise
designed by Denis Lasdun depending on
where you stand on Brutalism so my
August days had been spent in the
University of East Anglia archives
searching and sorting painfully through
stacks of paper for clues so imagine my
amazement when I discovered in this
elaborate menu designed by the Hungarian
artist
lászló moholy-nagy and the multi-panel
bill affair was for dinner for Walter
Gropius
the famed German modernist architect and
Bauhaus school founder Gropius and his
family were about to leave London like
other European modernists in 1937 he and
his family had been living in exile
avoiding  Nazi occupation and
narrowly escaping a fate that many
others did not so he had accepted a
prestigious job at Harvard Graduate
School of Design and so this dinner this
event marked both an end and a beginning
at once concluding a period of
uncertainty and transience and then also
you know marking the start of yet
another chapter of life as immigrants in
a foreign country so this menu this
artifact led me to start to see Gropius
in slightly different light compared to
all the other documentation that I had
seen in the Bauhaus archives at
Harvard's archives etcetera in the way
that food can operate as an index of
social status of cultural taste and
lifestyle and class privilege it
actually allowed me to render a
different portrait of a man
deemed a genius by most Art and Design
textbooks as much as the menu revealed
the cultural assimilation required of
the group uses to survive in England in
the United States it also brought their
immense privilege into plain view
Britain's intellectual and artistic
literati partook in a glamorous evening
of gastronomic indulgences that night
which is far from the typical diet of
the average British citizen during a
period of interwar rations so this
strange and really beautiful artifact
reminded me of how food performs in
particularly unique ways revealing
aspects of our society and its
structures through subtler means now
certainly the low cost relatively low
cost of food and accessibility have made
it a preferred medium for artists and
designers engaged in social and cultural
commentary so take for instance the
artist run restaurant food divides by
Carol Gooden Tina Gerrard and Gordon
matta-clark in the early 1970s or
consider the feminist collective women
houses immersive domestic installation
of a dining room in 1971 we might
consider how to browse Ruger coasts
edible architectural models for their
food city events also in the early 1970s
and more recently Rick Ritter Vanya's
Pad Thai Serfdom museum and gallery
goers in the 90s food has prompted new
ways to understand and challenge the
place of aesthetics in the politics of
everyday life for lodged within the
quotidian rituals of commonality are
profound questions about the nature of
human existence so we might consider for
example Alison Knowles Fluxus
performance identical lunch which began
in 1969 in which the artist visited the
same luncheonette in Chelsea New York at
the same time and ordered the same daily
spread which consisted of a tuna fish
sandwich on wheat toast with lettuce and
butter no mayo and a large glass of
buttermilk or a cup of soup no she came
to think of the lunch as a performance
and published an event score when
reenacted by others
the range of experiences produced by the
same meal revealed the works main
philosophical gambit which is that no
object and human experience is identical
to itself now likewise the rituals of
food consumption I think can reveal the
basic yet profound truth that we are of
course the same but different alike but
unlike we all must eat in order to
survive yet how and one what eats is
anything but universal as much as food
can magnetize relations it's also a
seismograph of privileged access to food
is a plenty for some but for others it's
associated with scarcity and toil
now walk into any average grocery store
and you can tell a lot about a
neighborhood's demographics what
vegetables are fruit if any are
available and how much do they cost I
think art and design function in this
way too as modes of creative production
that can question and dismantle barriers
they can also effectively produce and
reinforce them through their
participation in privatize channels of
market value in art fairs which in my
mind limit access Gropius like many
modernist designers touted the
democratic values of making good
products available for the masses yet
their designs are now stored away in
museums and private collections embalmed
by the markets insatiable desire for
aesthetic consumption so while creative
expression was once regarded as an
activity as natural as eating in today's
economy common salty and aesthetic
connoisseurship are becoming
increasingly rarified and inaccessible
endeavors which are really subject to
the social systems and institutions that
separate the halves from the have-nots
so with all these questions in mind and
inspired by the menu for gropius's
dinner and the quiz questions that are
raised about the appraisal and elitism
of cultural production I decided to
conduct a social experiment
a year later I hosted the first in a
series of le Corbuffets in my Brooklyn
apartment a project which carried on for
two years until 2017
now these social gatherings revolved
around the presentation
sumption of absurd uninspired dishes
that refer to canonical artists and
designers such as the Carolee schneemann
meet joy balls an orgy of juicy spiced
aromatic lamb kefta piled high over
mounds of couscous and roasted
vegetables my guests marveled over the
Frank conceptual boldness of a platter
of Laurence wieners naked boiled and
unapologetically unadorned mouthfuls of
a Michael Heizer double- pavlova were
enjoyed in between giggles its
geological meringue Pete's slathered in
the levitating lightness of whipped
cream now as a satirical comment on the
elevated status of art design and food
as contemporary commodities that are
often gobbled up by the market
ironically paralleling their rarefied
stat statuses in each of our Britain the
product deliberately twisted idioms to
probe the notion of cultural consumption
through taste and perception but the
project also sought to be projective at
its core and this is always so very
important to me throughout all the work
that I do the core buffet events that
followed over the course of the next few
years we're based on a very simple set
of ideas many of which were explored
already by fluxes artists and these were
the kind of key ideas that I hope the
book would convey that perhaps first
there's a way to reintegrate the
presence of art in everyday life or art
evita through cooking and
experimentation and play all very
accessible resources and techniques that
are at our disposal second was the
notion that perhaps creativity does not
require expensive equipment or our or
rare ingredients third perhaps there's a
way to take what's been done before and
actually make it your own
so there's a kind of post-production
remix in logic at play
perhaps perfection should also be
regarded with suspicion and perhaps
there's something actually revolutionary
especially in this particular and
economic this particular political and
economic climate in the idea that anyone
can make anything especially tools
meant for sharing using ordinary
materials so as these cellphones
continued I began to take them more
seriously they really began as sculpt
kind of sketches or kind of ways of
thinking through these theoretical
problems rather than you know
performances but I started to take them
more seriously as social sculptures
considering how art works and design
works and actually catalyzed forms of
alchemical transformation or let's say
energy conversion rather than operate a
strictly aestheticized objects so it
interested me and how an artistic
gesture could be designed furtively
secretively as a small gesture in the
form of a simple dinner can you imagine
just sitting around the table with a
handful of friends and asking can you
pass the flan Flavin I also began to
take an active interest in how the
politics of hospitality that is the art
of sharing could be a platform for
critical and political practice Marshall
Sahlins has written about the role of
food in non-western cultures as a medium
for kinship structures and he talks
about how food in these particular
instances results in a form of what he
calls productive consumption a form of
productive consumption that Marx did not
imagine so in this day and age when
privatized and unequal access to the
Commons has essentially become the norm
I'd like to argue that there's really
nothing simple or straightforward about
preparing something to be shared for
someone else especially if you don't
know them in this way I started to think
about the kitchen and the dinner table
as imaginative contact zones for asking
questions about how we wish to live
together and what conventions
constructions or narratives actually
prevent us from doing so ok so some
years past and in 2018 the universe
decided to send me another gift so I
sent an invitation for one of my core
buffets to a curator friend and I
received a call from him he happened to
have lunch with an editor at pressed L
who was an old college friend pressed L
being one of the oldest art and design
publishers in the world and the editor
had been explaining how after the
economic recession cookbooks were really
the only lucrative format
and wouldn't it be great if she could
come across a project that triangulated
the imprints new interest with food with
their kind of legacy of art and design
publishing so he showed her the
invitation and I received an email from
her shortly after prior to being
contacted I knew that I wanted to
somehow turn the Le Corbuffet project
into a publication but I thought of it
as this kind of lofty theoretical
manifesto and so it was serendipitous
when I heard from the senator but I
still wasn't sure of what form the
project would take cookbooks were
definitely not on my radar you know as
an artist or as a scholar and sure as an
avid home cook I owed owned a large
collection of them but I had really
never considered them as an artistic or
even a political format but certainly as
I start to think more about this there
was there's a history of artworks that
have adopted the format of the cookbook
to explore how rituals can provide a
space for plain invention and
essentially question how and why it is
that we do the thing that we do
so consider the futurist cookbook from
1932 in which Marin Eddy rallied for the
political possibilities of a 
low-carb diet or consider Salvador
Dali's Illustrated ode to gastronomic
surrealism laden ADA gala from 1972
which featured an array of sensual
delicacies and extremely unusual formats
and configurations so as a conceptual
art artwork and an artist book the
publication Lacroix Buffay decidedly
appropriated the format and conventions
of cookbook publishing essentially
framing the cookbook as a kind of
literal manual for consumption and
production to further explore how in
many ways economic values shape what
cultural legacies and artifacts we
choose to consume and reproduce now it's
designed by studio Lynne graphic design
firm based in New York City and the
illustrated compendium contains about 60
functional recipes real recipes that
work that are written according to we're
very similar to Fluxus action scripts
along with photographs of edible
sculptures so as a cultural experiment
the books ought to circulate a critical
proposition about cultural consumption
into the pre-existing circulation
networks of cookbook publishing
now images of food created by the food
biotech and lifestyle industries shape
not only what we think of as nutritive
and cultural they also tell us about
prevailing ways of thinking at the time
so ideas related to contemporary
technology and industry social
organization economics and ecological
politics for anyone on social media it's
evident how cuisine has become a cypher
for class privilege no longer just an
issue of preparation or nutrition but
really images of food have become an
index of what elizabeth curd halket has
referred to as the aspirational class so
as a signifier of education and income
the wellness and lifestyle industries in
particular and they're kind of a tenant
mantras of going to the farmers market
eating kale going on a juice cleanse or
buying local and organic are one of the
many ways that curd halket argues has
replaced Veblen's theory of conspicuous
consumption so with this in mind the
photographs the still life photographs
in the book seek to really push against
this visual rhetoric often placing
imperfect produce and home-cooked items
of it in my opinion still very
functional and tasty items beside the
waste products that they're sold in and
so approach from the vantage of
sculpture and photography the
irregularity and imperfection in these
images is actually more interesting to
me aesthetically rather than churning
out perfect images of handcrafted
items that resembled industrial products
and commodities which is typically how
we think about food today and the image
economy around food the recipes as well
were written akin to event scores so the
graphic designers alex lin and jenna
myung who designed the book thought
really carefully about how references to
things like 1960s process art could be
echoed in the typographic approach used
in the book and so for this reason there
was a monospaced type that
to echo the dominant kind of writing
technology of the 1960's which were
typewriters from which most process our
instruction set and recipe cards were
written the point size of the ingredient
lists are also exploded to enhance the
materiality again alluding to the
sculptural qualities of the foods
themselves and the material and the kind
of material conditions so instructions
are written with a nod as I said to
fluxes event scores to encourage the
reader to become a participant to
consider particular material perceptual
or experiential aspects of creation with
the aim of forging a relationship
between a domestic space of the kitchen
to the studio and each recipe is also
written with a preface to introduce a
work which may or may not be well known
to a reader and introducing perceptual
and conceptual ways of connecting with
an art or design work rather than market
evaluation and and in this sense I was
really thinking about how the kind of
dominant narratives that we ascribe to
these works that we study in some ways
are really actually driven by the market
right we're very rarely do you find
these kind of more critical narratives
that try to unpack the problematics of
the Bauhaus the kind of social exclusion
of the Bauhaus there's always this
rhetoric around the kind of socialist
mandate of the Bauhaus for example so
how I chose the artists and designers in
the collection which is usually a
question I get asked Lily in some ways
largely left to the puns themselves I
had to be able to make a pun that would
translate to a dish but also I had to
really think carefully about the number
of recognizable names and in the
collection and how these could be offset
with less recognizable figures often
people of color and this was a really
long set of conversations I had with
with my publisher about this about
creating a project that draws the
questions of what gets what gets
included and what gets left out and you
know that becomes part of the project so
here's an example of one recipe this is
an example for an Oklahoma recipe which
is essentially a kind of Japanese
pancake so the text reads in Yoko Ono's
1969 performance cut piece participants
approached the seated artist adorned in
her best suit and proceeded to cut
portions of her garment off with a pair
of scissors in accordance with the score
a set of instructions written by the
artist participants could keep the
portion of the garment they had cut now
whereas for Ono cut piece was largely a
study of how much people will choose to
take the cut in this okonomiyaki
performs as an act leading to a mass
mint adornment and sharing a giant
vegetarian pancake is created magically
by combining threads of elastic batter
which hold together mounds of shredded
cabbage so lots of cuts once fried the
crispy mound is further decorated with
fragments of ginger seaweed bonito
and tempura bits and served communally
with scissors guests are encouraged to
snip portions of the pancake to serve to
others rather than keep for themselves
so each recipe had a kind of you know
invocation of how one could meet
challenge normative sharing patterns and
my interest was really how this book
might in some ways tap the pre-existing
distribution systems of mainstream cook
book publishing and circulate to
audiences that I would otherwise never
interface with many of whom were totally
unsuspecting to encounter a very
different set of narratives and images
that attempt to politicize and draw
awareness to social commentary and
questions of cultural value and so the
idea of course is that by encouraging
participants to use food to produce a
quote unquote
replicas of cultural works and
narratives that will inevitably wildly
deviate from the originals the project
hopes to rewrite and recalibrate and
disseminate these cultural legacies and
artifacts with new sets of values and
interpretations so in this regard in
thinking about how a book as a kind of
art and design object could be operative
kind of kind of like create a kind of
theorize about object that functions in
the world instead of me you know writing
theory lets say
I look to a number of references and so
in 2002 the post conceptual artist Beth
price published an essay entitled
dispersion that sought to ask the
question of how artists could intervene
politically in a burgeoning image
economy so you have to remember in 2002
the internet was becoming increasingly
ubiquitous with home computing images
were in circulation as JPEGs net art was
proliferating etcetera etcetera so
prices' essay is an anticipated the
Tumblr and Pinterest culture that would
form from around 2007 onwards and so his
essay which you can still actually
access is designed as a downloadable PDF
it argued that participating in and
subverting circulation and distribution
networks rather than production was one
of the defining characteristics have.how
artworks could accrue meaning and price
advocated inhabiting a kind of given
system of cultural production and
distribution and that's working within
its constraints and formula as a kind of
contemporary reworking of the ready-made
now prices essay is totally fascinating I
really encourage you to take a look at
it but in many ways his thesis had
actually already been theorized and
tested over a decade earlier and here
for those of you that are probably born
you know after 1980 you might not know
this reference but I remembered this as
a child and it's kind of triggered this
memory
then in 1992 a year later the Kayla
revealed themselves to be an elaborate
hoax a cultural experiment that sought
to prove the formulaic nature of the
music industry and so they
self-published a book of that year
called the manual which you can still
find online which explained how to
essentially hack the music industry and
reach a number-one hit so that anyone
could do it and become a millionaire and
actually many groups have since actually
consulted the manual and achieved great
success
now the Calif would also go on to be
known as these kind of cultural
antagonists at one time burning a
million pounds and then turning the
ashes into a brick which I thought you'd
like his architecture students they also
as a kind of push against the Turner
Prize which is the kind of greatest art
prize you know in in Britain they had
the kind of anti Turner prize where they
awarded a million pounds to the worst
artists they would be you know in
Britain and so that person would be
forced to either accept the award or
they would burn the money so they were
really kind of you know constantly in
the kind of news media with these skits
now these kinds of hoaxes now you're
probably wondering why I decided to
title my talk doctor in the TARDIS and
apparently there was another talk today
that also dealt with the TARDIS which is
really strange coincidence but doctor
and the TARDIS was actually a hit song
by the klf which reached number one in
the UK Singles Chart in June 1988 and
the song made reference to the TARDIS
which was a fictional time machine and
spacecraft in the science fiction
television series Doctor Who which I
also watched as a child so appearing at
the telephone booth the TARDIS which
stands for time and relative dimension
in space possess certain perceptual
powers that enabled it to camouflage
with its surroundings unaware to
passersby so there's all these skits and
Doctor Who where you enter the TARDIS
and you're actually in this massive
control room but then you know it's
perceived to be this really kind of
quotidian object that most people ignore
in the same way I thought a lot about
how a cookbook is really an object that
we consider a venue for
historical inquiry but when recalibrated
as a tool for historical transportation
Le Corbuffet really as a book aspired
to operate as a shape-shifting object
like the TARDIS one that could travel
through distribution systems to ask
critical questions about history and
cultural value now what's been
interesting is observing the kind of
effects of the book in the world so upon
its release in the fall of 2019 it
instantly entered the cultural water
supply to borrow a phrase from my friend
and appeared in publications such as the
New York Times The Globe and Mail Vanity
Fair France ad magazine design and even
American Vogue what was so puzzling to
me especially as when publications
outing luxury as their focus co-opted
Le Corbuffet in their shopping lists
for coffee table offerings when the
entire project isn't really quite
Marxist and it's kind of you know in its
on a theoretical framework so it's been
really interesting to see how it sort of
proved its point about cultural
consumption literally I just thought a
text about another German magazine that
somehow also co-opted it in some other
capacity but I'm you know I'm kind of
curious for when the journalist will
actually read the book and kind of
realize what they're actually really
promoting in a way which I'm very
grateful for but it's been a really
interesting experience to see it
actually you know maneuver these
circulation networks and so in this
sense like the TARDIS the book aspires
to adopt an unassuming and chameleon ik
form to really hopefully act as a
subversive tool for cultural inquiry and
so in this sense the publication itself
really tries to kind of lodge itself
with a lineage of artworks and design
works that adopt the motif of
domesticity to imagine rituals and the
ordinary and the quotidian and the
everyday as accessible sites for
critical and social engagement now the
German artist Joseph Bois wrote and
spoke a lot about this idea of social
alchemy that's an idea that he inherited
from Rudolf Steiner
and his idea of what he called a social
architecture afraid that I often borrow
which for boys represented a kind of new
living model of social reality for
Steiner and for his acolyte boys the
present materiality of common objects
allowed them to act as tools for
transforming existing conditions into a
new living model of social difference
now Steiner is particularly interesting
a very multifaceted character because he
sought to make the sympathetic relation
between self and the world and otherwise
in his mind an alchemical force into a
kind of modern medium and so his model
of social ecology which is essentially
appropriated from the Natural Sciences
and visual culture viewed the world of
sensible things generated out of human
intuition and imagination such as
biodynamic agricultural practices or
paintings or in this instance functional
objects that he designed as contact
zones between the self and the sometimes
non-human other and what I think is
particularly astute in Steiners work
this is implicit recognition of
technological objects such as chairs or
architecture or books as expressions
derived from particular values and
context that become further perpetuated
and brought forth into reality through
their use so the use value is incredibly
important and likewise as a devotee of
Steiners principles Joseph boys took up
Steiners call for an alchemy of the
everyday through his use of props and
sculptures often in his performances now
technically these everyday ordinary
objects were interpreted by many art
historians to convey a collective social
vision through the symbolic depiction of
processes what I would actually argue
that they performed a very different
very practical function as conduits and
mediators for the production of new
experiences their use brought different
constituencies into relation to produce
new centers of gravity so for both
figures social transformation
take place through a collective ritual
interaction with the objects that
comprise the everyday environment
echoing gotas maxim art is the mediator
of the inexpressible and so likewise to
close I just would like to say that I'm
also really interested in the kind of
epistemological function of technical
objects and their ability to code
rituals or ways of thinking and ways of
experiencing the world this is what
brought me in to Architecture from our
practice we might consider cookbooks not
only as domestic manuals but also as
instruction sets and the social tools
much like buildings or artworks that
aggravate resources labor and attention
to pursue to produce material
configurations and social outcomes by
translating rituals of cooking or eating
relating the discussion into quasi
automated protocols and so cookbooks as
cultural forms are literally in this way
manuals containing algorithms for both
production and consumption recipes in
particular I think are fascinating
cultural forms as they often allude to
the creation of a replicable object and
experience whose original is more often
than not unknown I mean who can claim to
have experienced the first the original
chicken pot pie or the first the
original crepe suzette we're all kind of
constructing constructing replicas based
on an imagined ideal and this is much
like how I think canonical works of art
and design that we study and rare fire
often know really as JPEGs or ideas
rather than erratic experiences that are
material material and perceptual and in
this sense cookbook culture mirrors I
think the post-production status of art
and design works today so as an artist
who came to architectural history and
theory about a decade ago via conceptual
pursuits in my art practice my interest
in history really stems from this desire
to explore how contexts and privileges
that shape both cultural memory and
cultural production in turn influence
belief systems and I
and how these intern structure the
perceptions and material material
realities of everyday experience and so
for me this project hopes or seeks to
understand history and to think about
how history is central to how art and
design can operate as critical forms and
how artists and designers can engage in
what Theodor Adorno would call imminent
criticism to reflexively question the
production of culture and its
relationship to ideologies and systems
of power while participating in the
culture and in this sense I see I guess
you know all kind of varied avenues of
my output whether it's scholarship or
art projects are writing in alignment
with the goals of New Historicism by
focusing on the emissions and Erasers of
dominant historical narratives in an
effort to hopefully recuperate these
histories from the margins but also
actively occupy the absences as a place
from which to create a new end there
open this up for questions if you have
any
hello great talk thank you I was
interested a little bit you spoke about
the Bauhaus being having a little bit of
an alienating practice and with their
work being now over a hundred years ago
I was kind of wondering what you see as
the sort of future of who's
participating in this these new
histories and how that will move forward
as potentially a collective similar to
Bauhaus how that was kind of a
powerhouse at one point but kind of
wondering who's writing these histories
and how that's getting put out there
that's a great question I think there's
a lot of really interesting scholarship
especially now if you look at the topics
that most people are pursuing in PhD
programs for example at least in the
United States there's a lot of this kind
of new historicist influence which
actually comes from it doesn't come from
architecture new or service ism is
actually this course coming from like
you know basically the humanities but
it's this attempt about rethinking
history from the margins so you'll have
there's a lot of I think really exciting
I mean so many that I don't know
who did where to begin but the question
right now and we just had a discussion
with women in a design is about
platforms right so who would publish
that material who have publishes who's
interested in publishing a counter
history or a history from the margins
and this is where I think in tandem with
new scholarship we need new platforms
right so new publishing platforms but
also this is also to say that you know
as much as history can be problematized
I'm not I mean I am historian by
training and I'm interested in the
problems of history such that I'm not
interested in throwing out the baby with
the bathwater right so the BA house has
many problematics let's say around kind
of its constituencies and the narratives
that it pursued so women from the BA
house were essentially eradicated right
this is we know people of color in the
BA house at all and yet there's a kind
of democratic program of turning out
industrial products that can somehow
shape every day you know reform a kind
of civilized society right so it's
already a very specific political
project around subjectivity at play so
for me it's what's interesting is
actually really dealing with the
difficulties of that program and I think
that that needs to be questioned because
we learn the histories unquestioningly
in studios you know in my curriculum etc
etc and yet those kinds of outmoded ways
of thinking about subjectivity do not
align with the kind of pluralistic
society that we live in today right so
there has to be a way of rethinking the
kind of what's worth missing from that
program learning from the successes of
it but also really really rethinking and
retooling history in a sense so that can
be recalibrated you know as a kind of as
a learning opportunity in that sense or
a theorized object so I think maybe I
would like to be really optimistic I
think it's only a matter of a few years
and that we'll start to see new books
being put out in the world but it's also
a like I put a lot of pressure on my
colleagues right as historians are
asking for teaching studio who do you
decide to put on your syllabus right and
so will people think about Lina Bo Bardi
is someone that belongs in the
historical canon or will she continue to
be marginalized right does Lily Reich
take an equal place beside Mies van der
Rohe or does she continually get omitted
right so these are the kinds of
questions that I have to continually
contend with as an educator but also my
practice as an artist these are things
that really interest me so but I'm
optimistic
thanks Esther that was really cool great
look at the work it's all really really
interesting to me and fantastic
I was just wondering about as you were
talking about the role of irony and in
culture because I mean over the last few
years
everything seems ironic to a degree that
nothing is ironic so like I love the
work and I think it exceeds irony but I
just wonder like what's the role of
irony in a post irony excellent question
I literally just have this conversation
with someone else that I think I'm I
don't mean for this to sound like a
total cop-out but I totally understand
what you're what you're identifying and
observing I also agreed it's a kind of
post ironic ironic condition it kind of
reminds me of Andrews ago wrote an essay
years ago in any and log about looking he
was like desperate search for
post-ironic authenticity that was his
but this was years ago even at this
point the essays quite dated but it's
still something that's really stuck with
me and I don't know how to answer that
question because I think that somehow
with the rapidity of how markets gobble
up commodities even watching this
project get gobbled up seeing it in a
luxury it was like a luxury of men's
magazine from Los Angeles you know
beside mansions and Rolexes right
because the architecture section was
just like mansions that were on the
market for over you know a million
dollars and then Rolexes and then
weirdly this book so I don't I don't
know how to answer that question and I I
assume that maybe hopefully in a couple
years I'll have a better I can use this
as a kind of fear as the a theorizable object to think through that question
because it's one that's deeply
interesting to me and if anyone else has
I don't know thoughts about that I would
love to hear that because I I do think
it's a it's it's troubling it's
troubling that satire has things get
absorbed so quickly that it's difficult
to think about what a resistant model
can actually look like and that can
sustain itself in a way
look also gotten a lot of flack for it
but yeah I mean right well I think if
I'm not to be too biographical but I
think you know operating as an academic
publishing in journals or kind of
conventional modes of publishing right
and art criticism architectural
criticism etc I felt like in some ways I
was sort of sitting on my hands a little
bit like pointing to the the ills of
society but not necessarily always
totally leveraging my skillset to think
through how I could then insert a kind
of theorize about object-- in the world
and see how it actually operates so you
know I've had a lot of there's been a
mixed reaction you know it hasn't been
like totally celebratory I mean academia
has been really they've been troubled by
this project in a lot of ways because of
the fact that it's not operating within
a kind of traditional academic language
let's say my hope is that once you open
the book there's something else
happening but but I you know for me as a
cultural experiment I I had to sort of
you know take the opportunity and and in
that way I think like this is obviously
not architecture but I my training in
architectural history in theory really
has informed how I think about everyday
objects if we think about a building as
an opportunity or even like a partition
wall that's an opportunity for thinking
through certain kinds of you know
spatial politics to cetera cetera right
that everyday ordinary things actually
have a true habituation in years
actually have incredible value and
political political value but this just
happens to take the form of a cookbook
so yeah
thank you
I find your work very palatable so thank
you for this great picture
I'm wondering if this work only exists
in picture form or if it has a sort of
physical presence in an art museum
almost like the banana and duct tape
scenario right I've I've been asked that
question a lot primarily by galleries
that are interested in thinking about
you know like how this could operate in
other contexts I'm I've thought about
that question for a while and I I think
for the project to remain to retain its
integrity it has to remain a book that
operates in the world I think the minute
that I try to ratify it into some kind
of other set of commodities it loses its
point in a way right so yeah
right
it's already happened actually weirdly
the amount of media outlets that just
appropriate the images because they just
get grab people's attention and
republish them sometimes without my
permission has been happening a lot I
think I think Catalans projects a little
bit different than mine in that sense
like for me the images are now
circulating in the world as like their
own thing right but as a kind of
conceptual project I think my hope is
that they actually meet of the book and
then my hope and turn is that people
actually participate in what the book is
prompting them to do the action is
really the act of participating is
important to me as opposed to you know
some blogs that have been advocating
buying it because the color scheme off
is you know works nicely with your sofa
right literally there was an article
about this and I've been a lifestyle
thing so anyways so that that for me is
less interesting but I take your point
and you know this is to say again like
I'm within the contours of the moment
right so it's only been out for a few
months but it already has been
completely caught I mean literally I
just got a text message today about
there's a spread in German like a really
well-known German magazine cultural
magazine where they just we printed the
image that you see it on the poster for
this lecture without asking well I mean
I wasn't asked maybe they asked my
publisher but but it's just it's it's
operating like a meme in certain ways so
my hope was that the pictures themselves
the images themselves can be subversive
as standalone objects right like to ask
questions around like what does it mean
for edible edible foods to operate as
commodities on par with things that you
get from a hardware store when really
when you think about like as commodities
they're not actually that different you
know so there are these kinds of subtle
cues but i i'm i'm curious about
people's visual literacy and how they
consume images and i'm not entirely
convinced that because of the surplus of
images that were
with every day that we're actually
really seeing if that makes sense
like really being able to decipher
what's in front of us and the images
seems to sort of speak to that so far
sure
I think that's a great question I don't
I don't know I mean maybe I would open
this up to everyone if you can think of
collectively of other examples
I don't I don't really see I see
architects I mean it's the issue with
the Academy right is that it kind of
operates as a bubble in a way and we
tend to have conversations amongst
ourselves but whether it interfaces with
a larger public not always clear item
not convinced that architectural
exhibitions really achieve that most
people don't know how to read a model
you know they just look at these weird
foam core you know study models and walk
away so I'm I don't know I don't know
the answer to that question really I
can't I think you know I think
architects some architects seem to be
exploring interventions that operate a
different scale given like the kind of
protocols around building and how slow
building is right so furniture seems to
be something that a lot of architects
seem to be interested in I mean
historically architects would operate
through installations you know
historically right as quick ways of kind
of communicating ideas to a public but I
would love to see more of the spirit of
the sixties in some ways like the house
rupert co food events that they had I
mean we had one in Central Park they had
one in the Walker where they created
these really amazing elaborate models
urban models you know with Wonder Bread
and cake mix and it was a really
participatory and incredibly well
attended event but for them it was a
social catalyst to have questions around
urbanism and I don't know I I'm not
particularly precious around like
certain kinds of coated materials around
it comes to expressing architectural
ideas and I think I'm all for kind of
reimbursing that historical moment of a
60s in that sense and rethinking like
what other kinds of toolkits we can use
to generate conversations that are
timely and important in forming than a
work that you might do in more
architectural terms or more my not you
know so yeah but if I mean I would
totally open this up to everyone because
I mean definitely I mean I've definitely
been branded a weirdo for this work but
I'm not I'm not a spokesperson for the
weirdo yes no I don't put the other ones
yet but yeah
right
yes
sure yeah so in terms of the kind of
like twofold status of the object as the
thing that people just consume in by cuz
it's on the shopping list or it's on the
you know right like Epicurious put it on
their list of books your dad will like I
guess I didn't know I hit that niche
market but apparently I did so so I was
I've been really so I don't know if
you've read soft power by Joseph Nye
have you guys read that book so you'll
but you'll find it is like in a dollar
ninety-nine bin somewhere but it's
fascinating
so basically Joseph Nye was the head of
the School of Government at Harvard for
many years and he wrote this book that
was actually a critique of the Bush
administration's foreign policy called
soft power with the really fascinating
about soft power is that for me it
becomes a really empowering analysis of
the political function of culture so now
basically argues that the Bush
administration senior their failure on
the part of thinking about the role of
culture in perpetuating images like it's
in an international relations capacity
images of the United States right as
friendly convivial seductive at cetera
cetera they focused on basically hard
power like the top-down legislation but
that said images culture has a kind of
seductive role I mean certainly we know
soft powers effects via advertising
right where we can buy into something so
I've been thinking a lot about how a lot
of works from the 1960s for example like
the kind of stuff that we think of its
extra architectural inflatables etc
really we're interested in soft power
look how do you use seduction sensuality
perception play free spiritedness as a
kind of tool to then aggregate a tension
into a kind of conversation that
hopefully then unpacks you know ideas in
a more critical light so so that was
sort of my aspiration on that level but
this the second point that you make
around the Canon I would say you know
any anyone who's done in a like
historians will know pretty much all of
the artworks and design works that I
have included and I've gotten feedback
from people where they say well you
I don't I didn't know Helio HEC does
work right so my for me the point is not
that you have to know this this
particular artist so for me the question
is well okay we can easily Google who he
is right so I the kind of caption the
introductory caption is important
because it sets up the way to think
about the work so in this particular way
I think about his piranha lays which
were these kind of like wearable
architectures right and very
performative as ways of thinking about
cultural identity and immigration and
ethnicity in a global context so for me
I start to think about I mean I was very
much I wrote this book in a very
political particular political moment
where questions of food and migration
were at the core of my interest in
thinking about how it can be the
narrative itself can be a tool for
unpacking some of these issues so so I
start to think about how the dumpling
really like is there a culture that
doesn't have a dumpling it's pretty
amazing actually when I started to make
a list that most cultures have some form
of a dumpling right the insides and the
outsides might slightly change but
there's this idea of some kind of
substantive nutritive thing in a wrapper
so I started to think about how the
dumpling starts to mirror the paradigm
Golay the kind of inhabitable thing but
also then can I do a kind of cross
cultural mashup and so I have family
from Bolivia and my mum grew up eating
these Bolivian you know ways so I kind
of looked at Bolivia and I kind of make
it a soup dumpling and I kind of do this
kind of hybridized thing that is has
nothing to do with you know
understanding the artwork as such but
for me it became a kind of opportunity
to offer my own subjectivity in the
sense but also a kind of new
interpretation of how an artwork you
know the kind of signification of an
artwork or what how one could interpret
it other historians have had very
different interpretations of the work
right so but you know I think with
working with a mainstream publisher or
in any capacity I mean as architects you
know you have people give commissioning
systems you have to contend with your
clients you have different stakeholders
and constituencies but all want
different things out of a project and
for my publisher it was really important
that the book actually operate as a
sellable opt
they didn't want to go broke for them it
was really important that the book had
very recognizable names and of course I
had to push back and say well then I'm
just basically ratifying a Canon which
is already really problematic and very
limited so it was continually the entire
book is a negotiation of many
stakeholders involved in that process
you know I think if I had self-published
it might look very different right but
you know I'm sort of operating within a
pre-existing system that has
pre-existing values that might be
different than mine right so I have to
think about how to mitigate all of those
loopholes very much like how you have to
when you're making a building or a
theatre cetera so but my hope was that I
could sneak in there with a bit of a you
know a bit of a poke a bit of a wink
a bit of a nod to then even if I did
take a really canonical you know well
ruslan maybe Rosalind Krauss is maybe
not the most canonical for those of us
that have studied you know art history
like you know she's she's part of the
Canon but you know other ways that
someone who isn't you know burst in our
history could still find humor in this
or find it accessible in some ways but
most importantly I think start to
empower themselves and this is partly
due to my own kind of like I wrote this
book while finishing my dissertation
this was the project it did when I was
procrastinating on my dissertation and I
didn't have access to a traditional
studio so this is the project is very
biographical in some ways of thinking
about what resources I had at my
disposal and how to think resourceful
about those resources and you know my
apartment has a kitchen right so and I
previously this I'd never worked with
food so this was really a kind of
project that stemmed from my own
rethinking about how one creates meaning
in a world right when resources are not
handed to you there are maybe not in
traditional forms and how you can kind
of leverage what you have to then
rethink a set of relationships
oh sure so that's another project about
when you work without a studio what to
do so um I've been working on a project
that deals with the legacy of the
Bauhaus actually I should have explained
that some of these images probably
didn't totally make sense but the images
of the furniture that you saw there's
little squares because it comes from a
different project but I've been taking
an inventory of the furniture in the
Harvard Art Museum's in the Bauhaus
collection and working with performers
where we start to think about how the
furniture literally molds the human body
in particular ways as a kind of metaphor
for thinking about how the Bauhaus
project had a social project attached to
it right so this idea of molding
subjectivity so I've been working with
dancers a very different project but in
so doing was looking a lot at the
history of theater and performance in
the Bauhaus an Oscar Slammers book man I
mean the title alone it's a little bit
problematic
I started revisiting the literature
produced out of you know via bajas
members around subjectivity and I
thought the Schlemmer book was super
interesting and problematic in the way
that he uses a mathematical and
geometric language to striate the human
body but I found it to be a kind of you
know index of other kinds of ideological
you know attempts being made let's say
via his rhetoric so what I did was
basically took apart the book so I
ordered like an old copy of it and start
taking it apart and sort of reworking
using the book itself as a space of
inscription so using techniques of
cancellation of you know put running
through a printer multiple times like
certain kinds of images and starting to
degrade the kind of integrity of the
form as a kind of way of thinking about
redaction omission historically but also
visually right because he's really
trying to cancel out certain aspects of
the human body and especially different
so I think it's really telling that the
one time you see you know a person you
know inhabiting like a Marcel Boyer
chair it's you know that famous image of
the the one woman at the Bauhaus you
never see because she has a mask over
face and it was like a Schlemmer mask
right so it was really a kind of way of
trying to engage with how to occupy how
do you occupy a mission such that the
image the mission becomes registered as
a kind of literal positive does that
make sense so that's sort of just a few
images from many images from the book
that I've been working
