The September issue of frieze considers the role of food—aesthetically, sensorially, politically—in contemporary culture, and the human and environmental costs of its cultivation and supply. Writers Chloe Aridjis, Fernando A. Flores, Diana Hamilton, Alexandra Kleeman and Madeleine Thien reflect on our relationship with food through the five senses. Nine contemporary artists, including Olafur Eliasson, Rikrit Tiravanija, Otobong Nkanga and Heather Phillipson have produced new “recipes” for our cookbook. Jane Black profiles artist duo Cooking Sections and their long-term investigations into the ethical and political systems that underpin what and how we eat.
The Senses
“There are so many smells we know but cannot name, as if names are, in the end, the fleeting thing.” –Madeleine Thien
In five specially commissioned essays and short pieces of fiction, writers address touch, taste, hearing, sight and smell—the “outward wits,” as they were once known—and how these shape our understanding of the world and each other.
Cookbook
“Now to blowtorch the bitten peach.” –Heather Phillipson
When Filippo Marinetti published The Futurist Cookbook in 1932, the world was in the grip of the Great Depression. “We propose as an antidote to this panic a Futurist way of cooking, that is: optimism at the table,” he wrote. For our cookbook, nine artists have created ‘recipes’ in various formats. Though not all are edible, they each bring optimism to the table.
Also featuring
Jennifer Higgie speaks to artist Vivien Sansour about food, farming, heritage and healing; Jesse Connuck thinks about the systems of knowledge, colonialism and power that are embedded in common foodstuffs, through the work of four artists; Anna Maria Maiolino discusses hunger, displacement and the power of repetition with Fernanda Brenner; and Pablo Larios interviews sociologists Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre about the emergence of the luxury sector—from art crossovers to tourism and gourmet food.
Columns and Reviews
In search of the future of food, Chris Fite-Wassilak swallows a dark-green, faecal looking square of algae goo; Fritz Haeg discusses the food systems that have inspired him—and which offer a model for the future; Fanny Singer looks at the conceptual feasts of Laila Gohar, asking how social media has shaped how we eat; artist Dena Yago considers affective labour and corporate cafeterias; the curators of the next documenta, the collective ruangrupa, explain how the Indonesian lumbung, or rice barn, has inspired their curatorial model; Julia Langbein reckons with the complicated legacy of Jim Harrison, whose popular writing about food was often as sexist as it was sweet; and Dan Fox exposes the intricate politics of art world dining, with a seating plan by Amy Sillman.
Plus, 41 review from around the world, including two major exhibitions by the pioneering German artist Rebecca Horn at Centre Pompidou-Metz, France, and Museum Tinguely, Switzerland, and Luc Tuymans’ four-decade retrospective in Venice.
Answering our questionnaire is Allen Ruppersberg, whose conceptual restaurant, Al’s Café (1969), served such delicacies as “three rocks with crumpled wad” and “simulated burned pine needles à la Johnny Cash.”