Food, food culture, food as culture and the cultures that grow our food

Shorts in Bra
Slow Food on Film

April 15, 2006

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And by shorts I mean short films. And by bra I mean Bra, Italy, where the short film festival, Corto in Bra will host a programme titled Slow Food on Film. How fine it is to see one's sensibilities well represented, in a country that no longer has a vile mo fo as elected head of state.

As the Slow Food Movement's spokesperson and founder Carlo Petrini promised at this year's Berlinal Talent Campus, a number of short films at the BTC would be chosen and placed prominently within the Corto in Bra programme. This is great news, also because culiblog found quite a few of these films to be well worth watching. Nice to see my cinematic tastes reflected in the message of the Movement.

Although there's nothing short about them, both the Future of Food, by Deborah Koons Garcia, and Taggert Siegel's the Real Dirt on Farmer John will also be screened. Ms. Koons Garcia is the Slow Food on Film documentary jury chairperson and I'm pleased that this festival doesn't even pretend to be non-partisan like the big film festivals do. Amen.

You can start brushing up your conversational Italian by downloading the Corto in Bra Film Festival programme here.

The culiblog selection from the Slow Food in Film programme is here:

By the way, the festival passes are a bargain, so you can really forcus on enjoying this 'citta slow', which is ironically pronounced cheetah slow.

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Lace, about face
Ander Kant

April 06, 2006


image of white chocolate lace detail, © Katja Gruijters, courtesy of the designer

Aren't these edible lace tiles by food designer Katja Gruijters exquisite? She makes them out of caramel, white and milk chocolate and sand tart. They feature prominently in an exhibition on contemporary lace design titled, 'Ander Kant', (literally 'other lace', or 'other side') at the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam.


image of a milk chocolate tile, © Katja Gruijters, courtesy of the designer

The collection is on sale at the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum shop but you can also find out more about them at Katja's website.


image of a sand tart tile, © Katja Gruijters, courtesy of the designer



image of a caramel tile, © Katja Gruijters, courtesy of the designer

Please read more... "Lace, about face
Ander Kant"

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Food-related film at the 4th Berlinale Talent Campus

February 23, 2006


'Doña Ana', watercolour and collage that inspired Marlon Vasquez Silva's animation film Strawberry Eating Woman. 'Doña Ana' © Marlon Vasquez Silva, digital image courtesy of the artist

Apparently the director of the Berlinale International Film Festival, Dieter Kosslick, is obsessed with food and cooking. This explains why one of the six programmes had as its theme Food, Hunger and Taste. The 4th edition of the Berlinale Talent Campus (BTC), a section for young-ish filmmakers (when young means under 40), was dedicated to a heavily-worked relationship between food and film. Aside from my interest in the subjects, this was the most coherent and well-organised programme within the Berlinale. The Talent Campus offered young filmmakers a chance to meet, show their films, attend presentations, workshops and in general become indoctrinated I mean introduced to the film industry.

Although the evenings' big-screens at the BTC lamentably included worn out choices of food-related film like Babette's Feast, Eat Drink Man Woman, (how to ruin great films with unimaginative programming) and the dreaded 'Food + Romantic Comedy' genre piece, 'Bella Martha' by Sandra Nettelbeck, the programmers were wise enough to screen historical gems like Marcel Pagnol's 'Harvest (Regain)', informative documentaries like Hal Erickson's 'Alice Waters and her Delicious Revolution' (2003) and the most sensual cinematic food chain and materials exploration ever made, 'Drawing Restraint 9' by Matthew Barney.

This year, thirty-two young filmmakers were spotlighted in the Berlinale Talent Campus and divided into a five part programme titled unoriginally, 'Food for Thought'. From the selection, the films on the subject of hunger tended to suffer most from ill-research and moralist pedantics.

But when the films were good, they were very very good. Here is the culiblog selection of the eight best films on Food, Hunger and Taste from this year's Berlinale Talent Campus (in alphabetical order):


EviannaÏve image still © Verena Vargas, used courtesy of e|x|il Film

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Tiny Katerina serves food to the dogs, image still © Ivan Golovnev, used courtesy of Golvnev Film


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When fish fall in love

February 13, 2006

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film still from When Fish Fall in Love, shows main character Atieh, her daughter and sisters preparing orange syrup in the garden. Image used without permission

When it comes to food-related film, I couldn't have made a better start at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Drawing Restraint 9 had me reeling for days. Good for Drawing Restraint, bad for all the others that I saw directly afterwards. I had all but given up hope for finding a new approach to the genre, when I went to see the last film on my list.

When Fish Fall in Love saved me from being mired in bourgeois feel-good movies, films that are little more than romantic comedies with chefs and kitchens, gratuitous food porn, films that make audiences twitter at the thought of eating bull's testicles. Fish Fall in Love is Iranian theatre director Ali Raffi'i's first feature about two lovers being reunited after a twenty-year separation, and a new generation of about-to-be lovers, about to be separated.

Ex-political prisoner and Iranian émigré Aziz returns to his home at a Caspian Sea coastal village, where he finds that his former beloved Atieh, her daughter and two sisters have appropriated his family home and turned it into a restaurant. The film is shot like an old postcard from your grandparents' seaside holiday, complete with long images of regional specialities. In this film, no dish leaves the kitchen without making a cameo. Can you imagine jewelled rice doing the red-carpet walk at Cannes?

Ali Raffi'i spoke to the audience before the screening, explaining that this film was about the difference between the way his and the generation now in their twenties, express love for one another. His intricately developed characters convey the complicated situation of a generation (Aziz and Atieh) whose political passion (may have necessarily) precedes their passion for each other. This contrasts sharply with the generation of Atieh's daughter Touka and her Teheran beloved Reza, who are even driven to criminal acts in the hope of supporting their love.

Admirably, Raffi'i endeavoured to show a different view of woman than what he described as 'ordinarily portrayed in Iranian cinema'; a woman whose destiny is not dependent on the presence or hope for presence of a man in her life. Not being sufficiently familiar with Iranian cinema to judge, I had to think, 'Heq, come on over here, that's a hole in the market!' Until now, the art installation videos of Shirin Neshat and the British documentary filmmaker Kim Longinotto's Divorce Iranian Style were until now, my sole influences.

While Atieh is a strong character, supporting her daughter, two of her sisters and herself by running a small restaurant, she is also always really nervous about this role. Preparing lunch and dinner for only twenty, though she's been doing it for years, seems to be a monumental feat for her. Among the many kitchen shots of brilliantly presented 'home-style' cooking, the viewer is treated to beads of sweat on noses and upper lips, the wiping off of sweat from brows and the drenched backs of clothing. I'm thinking, 'Sister, what you need is a smaller menu.' But Atieh's unwieldy menu seems to represent traditional culture and her uncomfortable relationship with it.

The film's ending is deliciously open, giving few clues as to how Aziz and Atieh will give shape to their deep love and respect for one another in the future.This combined with Raffi'i's rich characters have given me room to identify completely with love's consequences for Atieh and Aziz. All that I am willing to give away, is that there is a cottage involved. I know that the next time I make orange syrup, this film will be the first thing on my mind.

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Food-related film at the Berlin International Film Festival

February 09, 2006

Berlinale logo
Pack up your yurt, we're moving to the steppes of Berlin for a week, where it's much colder than it was in Rotterdam, and where a yurt will come in handy. The craziness begins today at the Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival. Culiblog will be attending the madness for an entire week, from Saturday the 11th until the 19th, reporting on all food-related films and presentations.

This year there is a glut of food-related film because aside from the regular programme, food, hunger and taste are the subject of the Berlinale Talent Campus, a platform within the Berlinale festival. The Berlinale Talent Campus creates opportunities for young filmmakers to meet with les eminences grises from the film industry and the folks from the more active side of food and food culture as well. Alice Waters, Vandana Shiva, Carlo Petrini will all be there.

Once again, I've created a culiblog food-related film selection culled form the entire Berlinale programme for those willing to move beyond Babette's Feast. Oh dear, it's 2006 and they're actually showing Babette's Feast!

The culiblog selection at the the 56th International Berlinale Film Festival:

And what will I be doing in my mornings and on Wednesday and Thursday? Lolling about and slacking off? Why I'll be re-viewing the thirty-two (32!) short films on food, hunger and taste at the Berlinale Talent Campus, chit-chatting with the directors, watching the odd non food-related film.

You'll be needing these links as well:


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Drawing Restraint, dragging ambergris

February 05, 2006

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Occidental Guest (bride), production still from Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9, copyright Matthew Barney, used without permission

Filled with expectation unsuitable for the company of friends, clutching a fat wad of tickets between fingers reeking of quickly eaten, mediocre sushi, it is unwise to view the best film of the festival first. It just ruins everything, and this is exactly what happened to me on January 30th when, in the exquisite 'old' Luxor cinema in Rotterdam, I saw Drawing Restraint 9.


Shimenawa, production still from Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9, copyright Matthew Barney, used without permission

Drawing Restraint is artist Matthew Barney's 2006 film entry in the International Film Festival Rotterdam and as well the Berlinale Film Festival, where he is a member of the jury. Avant-pop artist, composer and girlfriend Björk composed the soundtrack. Their collaboration is astounding on all levels; the film will make you cry, it is that beautiful. Aside from being culiblog's favourite at this year's festival, the film is exemplary of food-related film in the culiblog sense of the word; food, food culture, food as culture and the culture that grows our food.

Matthew Barney is the Lance Armstrong of contemporary art. In my opinion, no chef can yet lay claim to this position. Drawing Restraint 9 is also the best food-related film ever made, a lavish display of sensuality and ritual.


Barney on the left, Armstrong on the right

Drew Daniel of Matmos wrote this stellar description of Barney's art practice on Björk's DR9 website:
Barney is a visual artist whose ambitious, rigorous multimedia work encodes esoteric meanings while providing lushly immediate aesthetic rewards. Best known for The Cremaster Cycle, the sprawling sequence of five films made over ten years which was the subject of a recent Guggenheim retrospective, Matthew Barney's work is multimedia in execution but singularly focused in conception: tightly unified fusions of sculpture, performance, architecture, set design, music, computer generated effects and prosthetics, Barney's films deploy the full range of cinematic resources in the service of a hermetic vision rich with densely layered networks of meaning drawn from mythology, history, sports, music, and biology.

This is a sexy way of saying that Barney's work is based upon his own elaborate and logical cosmology. In Drawing Restraint he playfully turns materials, forms, geometries and processes (e.g. petroleum jelly, silicone, whale blubber, ambergris, other marine excretions and accretions), cultural-historical narratives and geographic trajectories (e.g. the architecture, interior and machinery of a whaling ship, the culture of whaling, the history of a specific ship) and the experience of time (e.g. pearl oyster divers holding their breath under water, the migration of whales, a Japanese tea ceremony), into a luscious weave of deeply connected meaning and narrative.

This is where chefs tend to slack off.

But this is Barney's demarrage, an escape or breakaway that gives him an advantage over the rest of the 'field'. Whereas it is common for a chef to create a 'richly organized set of aesthetics' (as Drew Daniel describes Barney's approach to making art), I know of no example within the culture of contemporary haute cuisine in which a chef recontextualises elements on this level to form a total experience beyond the formal boundaries of restaurant culture. Perhaps I'm not going to the right sort of parties. I long for an haute cuisine that is less 'applied' and more autonomous.

Please read more... "Drawing Restraint, dragging ambergris"

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Rural design conference scheduled for September 2006

January 21, 2006


(above: Wheatfield, a large public work by Agnes Denes, image copyright Agnes Denes)

Chapeau to John Thackara at the Doors of Perception blog who reports today about a rural design conference scheduled to take place September 4-7 2006 (somewhere) in the UK. Just have a look at what's being developed for the programme! I am pleased to see that it is all about establishing and strengthening real connections between (urban) cultural producers and rural agriculture producers to the benefit of both.

In a conference forerunner in July of 2005, this is what they were talking about: farmers as curators - an international Rural Biennale for 2007, sustainable farm diversification, rural tourism, food marketing initiatives and staging the Rural Biennale as an integral part of a European Region of Rural Cultures and Farmer Creativity celebration.

To the list of interesting subjects already discussed and in the planning for September 2006, I would like to add: 'rural farmer to urban farmer advisory partnerships for urban gardening/farming initiatives'. I can't help but wonder if the experience and knowledge of the rural farmer can help urban farming inititives such as this wonderful urban farming project in East L.A from being under threat of closure due to urban land-use issues. Injecting (cultural) life into family farms suffering brunt of (European) Agricultural Policy might be just the ticket for rejuvenating a way of life under threat of extinction. Might not the urban farmer benefit from being part of this discussion and network?


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Food-related film at the Rotterdam International Film Festival

January 20, 2006


Petrolatum Spirit, film still from Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9, copyright Matthew Barney, used without permission

Pack up your yurt, we're moving to Rotterdam for a little more than a week. January 25 - February 5, 2006 is the Rotterdam International Film Festival. The programming is dazzling, but I've created a short food-related film selection for anyone that believes it's time to move beyond Tampopo. Having not yet seen these films, I am hoping that their content can be interpreted as food-related, in the culiblog sense of the word: food, food culture, food AS culture, and the culture that grows our food.

Tickets are available from Saturday January 21, 2006 at 09.00 hrs until Saturday February 4, 2006 at 21.00 hrs at the Festival Box Office located in 'de Doelen' (entrance Kruisplein), Rotterdam and, by telephone through +31 0(10) 890 9000

The culiblog food-related film selection for the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2006:

Sunday 29.1
10.30h - Kitchen
14.30h - Fish Fall in Love, culiblog review of Ali Rafi'i's When Fish Fall in Love

Monday 30.1
19.00h - Drawing Restraint, culiblog review of Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9
21.45h - Eden

Tuesday 31.1
16.00h - Poulet poulet
17.30h - Mother of the Mother and also the Mother of the Mother's Mother and Her Daughter


film still from Mother of the Mother and also the Mother of the Mother's Mother and Her Daughter, copyright IFFRotterdam, used without permission

From Wednesday 01.2 until the festival's end, I shall attend as many films as I please regardless of their food-related content. If you're coming, drop me a line so that we can meet up and tuck into some excellent Rotterdam food.


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Madrid Fusion, only one more day, and you can't go

January 18, 2006

Because this gastronomical summit is all sold out. Tomorrow is the last day of the three day event, Madrid Fusion IV, International Summit of Gastronomy. The programme is filled with restaurant industry pomp and poodle, showcasing valuable marriages between top chefs and industry giants like Nestle, Knorr and Maggi. There is an all-star, all-male lineup of superchefs, save the lone Elena Arzak, but her blurb only blurbs on about her father Juan Mari's fathomless imagination.

Enough bitching and moaning, if I had gone, I would have been absolutely interested in the designer tapas competition, because frankly, many of the conference presentations are just camouflaged sales pitches. Example topic: 'Cheese trolleys and trays in restaurants, the last rage.' Yeah, that's the last rage allright, just not in my world.

My 'last rage' is the presence of the angelic Alice Waters, there to accept a tribute on behalf of the Summit of Gastronomy for being a 'Founder of New American Cuisine" (Waters is above all blame) when there are such uncool conference topics about the newest recipes for serving up a fish that is widely considered to be an endangered species. Although I'd be the first one to say that a restaurant is not a home kitchen, and therefore doesn't have the same responsibilities in terms of teaching or practicing good health and consumer behaviour, I do wish that the designers of such events would moderate their sponsors (content) and take a stand against bad practices by bad boys.

Because in the name of wishful thinking, if I had to name one food trend that I would love to see spread like wildfire this year, it would be that the world's league of exemplary chefs exclusively associate their names and restaurants with the best artisanal and local producers, producers of sustainable products. And maybe that IS just what the good folks at the Gastronomic Summit talked about today after the 'Cod: new recipes, a thousand flavours' presentation. Maybe there will be brilliant debate tomorrow during the Q&A after the 'Canned Fish in Haute Cuisine' discussion. Heq, I won't be there to check, but I'll ask Alice how it went when I see her at the Berlin Film Festival Slow Food Symposium next month.

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Culiblog nominated in Gridskipper's weblog awards

November 30, 2005

How cool is it that I regularly read all of my competitors!

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Culiblog nominated in Gridskipper's weblog awards

How cool is it that I regularly read all of my competitors' blogs!

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Food-related film, art, design and culture in Amsterdam

November 17, 2005

Starting next week culiblog is feeding itself with food-related films from the Shadow and IDFA documentary film festivals. Themes such as the family farm, food distribution, foodstore owners, olive trees, Japanese home cooking and of course globalisation, feature prominently in my selection.

The Netherlands has two film seasons each year. In November and December it's documentary season with the Shadow Film Festival and the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). In January it's the International Film Festival Rotterdam. I have known couples that, when they broke up, had to decide who would get to go to which film festival. Seriously. Big stars like artist Allan Sekula, who presented his documentary Fish Story at the Shadow Festival in 2002, show up for these events in our dark but cosy Polar Circle villages.

The culiblog programme of food-related documentary film (Nov 25-Dec 03, 2005, Amsterdam NL)

Friday 25.11
12.30h Film Museum: Meat Vegetables and Dessert
14.45h City 7: My Dear Olive Tree
18.30h Calypso: The Real Dirt on Farmer John
20.20h Cinerama 1: Profils Paysans (Profiles of Farmers: Daily Life)

Saturday 26.11
12.00h City 1: Bullshit
21.00h City 1: We Feed the World
22:00h Uitkijk: Autumn

Sunday 27.11
16.00h Melkweg: Taimagura Grandma

Monday 28.11
11.00h Cinerama 1: The Real Dirt on Farmer John
14.30h City 7: Het is een Schone Dag Geweest (It's been a lovely day)
21.45h Cinerama 1: Our Daily Bread
22.00h Uitkijk: Alimentation Generale

Tuesday 29.11
20.00h City 5: Bullshit
21.30 City 1: We Feed the World

Wednesday 30.11
19.00h City 1: Our Daily Bread

Thursday 01.12
10.45 City 7: My Dear Olive Tree

Friday 02.12
20.15 City 3: Meat Vegetables and Dessert

Saturday 03.12
12.45h Calypso 1: We Feed the World
14.15h Film Museum: Profils Paysans
17.30h City 2: Our Daily Bread
19.00h City 3: Bullshit
19.15h City 7: Het is een schone dag geweest

The Shadow Film Festival
IDFA

For IDFA reservations:
IDFA +31 (0)20 4277452 (open from 12-17h)
http://www.idfa.nl/

For Shadow Festival reservations, contact the locations:
de Melkweg +31 (0)20 53 18181
Lijnbaansgracht 234/A

de Uitkijk +31 (0)20 6237 460
Prinsengracht 452

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Culiblog dot org is one year young

November 05, 2005

Museum Night 2005 marks the one year anniversary of the domain culiblog dot org and the ladies were there to celebrate with me at the restaurant that incorporates this domain name the most into its interior design. For the time being this is could only mean Food Facility, but lord only knows what the future will bring! The Ladies Debra, Julie, Renée, Helena, Quirine, Klazien and Aya especially enjoyed our bubbles with croquetas d'amour, presented in an inside joke of absorbant Dutch design.

Please read more... "Culiblog dot org is one year young"

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Guixégasbord Food Facility

October 29, 2005


(image © Marti Guixé 2005)

If you haven't already made a reservation for the opening of Marti Guixé's Food Facility at Mediamatic (Post CS) this Sunday evening, you are plum out of luck because I just made the last one. You can still make reservations for every Friday and Saturday evening between the 4th of November and the 11th of December. This is one conceptual restaurant you could never visit too often.

Food Facility, the title of Guixé's working prototype restaurant, has no kitchen. Instead the central kitchen is replaced by kitchens of existing take-out restaurants in the area. Talk about locative eating! As a guest you can choose menu items compiled from Guixé gleaned take-out restaurants and consume the order at the glammy Food Facility. Of course there are already existing restaurant hubs on the web. Waiters on Wheels representative Sharad Agarwal told me that although it is possible to order one entree from one take-away restaurant and desserts and entremets from others, Delhi's Waiters on Wheels customers never seem to do this. Food Facility marks the first time that diners can experience their urban menu in performance format at one dining location. (Rectification: the above statement is wholly untrue! Read about it here.)

Food Facility open Friday and Saturday from 18.00h - 22.00h
November 4 - December 11, 2005 at Post CS, Amsterdam.
Read Mediamatic's announcement here or call +31 (0)6 3376 8810 for reservations.

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Juliano's Raw

October 28, 2005


Image of Juliano and friends courtesy of Juliano Brotman's Planet Raw website

Loyal culiblog readers know that I like my bacon fried crispy and that I never pass up an opportunity to eat most forms of smoked pork. But I also like to expand my culinary and nutritional repetoire with raw food kweezeen. Everything in moderation, including and especially moderation. This weekend Juliano Brotman, chef proprietor of the Hollywood restaurant Raw is in Amsterdam giving a workhop together with ashtanga yoga instructor Caroline Klebl.

Saturday October 29, de Loods/Prinseneiland 20G Amsterdam
13.30-15.30 Ashtanga Yoga workshop with Caroline Klebl
16.00-19.00h Raw Vegan Cuisine: drinks, desserts, hors d'oeuvres

Sunday October 30, de Loods/Prinseneiland 20G Amsterdam
11.00-13.00 Ashtanga Yoga workshop with Caroline Klebl
14.00-16.30 Raw Vegan Cuisine: salads, soups and entrées

For reservations: +31 (0)6 3377 1014

Of course I'll be attending the entrées preparation 'block' because I think I can just figure out how to make a raw salad but never seem to get around to making Juliano's Raw Chili. One sad discovery is that, in terms of mise en place, it's difficult to combine preparation for raw and cooked foods into one meal. Raw food, however delicious and wholesome, is labour and ingredient intensive. My hope is that Juliano's workshop will increase my facility enough to eradicate the technical glitch that is influencing the success of my dinner parties.

There is a glut of food-related events this Sunday but a nice thing about Raw Food (and other low glycaemic diets) is that within hours of eating one is RAVENOUS. (Who was the hippy that said you should always leave one third of your belly free for Shiva?) Right after Juliano's pizza emerges from the dehydrator, I'll be tucking into something else delicious at the Guixégasbord at Mediamatic that selfsame evening.

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Oh to utter the words, food design...

September 28, 2005

Well it's about bloody time! Coinciding with all manner of design events going on right now in Amsterdam, the Stedelijk Museum hosted a symposium titled Food Design at the ubiquitous Club 11, featuring three speakers and three completely different interpretations.

Marije Vogelzang (Proef) is doing some very interesting work from her studio slash catering laboratory and counts the stars of Dutch design (such as the Ladies Hella Jongerius, Marlies Dekkers and Li Edelkoort) amongst her clients. After a stunning portfolio presentation, I can't wait to visit Vogelzang's restaurant in Rotterdam Proef and get down to the business of tasting and nibbling. (Proef means 'taste' or 'taste it', in Dutch.) Vogelzang's work is all about engaging the eater in the underlying concept of the food and its presentation. I loved her daring in a recent catering project in which she used WWII ration ingredients to invoke memories about this bleak period. She elegantly walks the fine line between being thought provoking and utterly disarming when she stated, 'It's design that someone puts in their mouth, and absorbs into their body. It's all very intimate'. That's what I call a laudable attitude!

Although it wasn't the most pleasant message to hear, I can't stop thinking about the corporate presentation by Hans van Trijp from Unilever. Food design according to the multinational means designing the market context in which a food product exists, and has very little to do with actual food. Van Trijp described Honig's SpongeBob pasta as the perfect marriage of food design and marketing. Predictably, I found van Trijp's take and food and food design extremely disturbing, but I am so very eager to get in touch with him to hear more of what he has to say about how multinationals, even when we wouldn't dream of buying their products, influence our every day life right down to the iggly niggly bit of designing a country's infrastructure. This means that while Marije Vogelzang is designing a lunch using 'forgotten vegetables', Unilever, by the very virtue of it's market share, is determining which races of grains farmers will be growing and how food will be manufactured and distributed in decades to come. I just can't help but think it's a wise idea to keep in close contact with the suits. I'm just as much a stakeholder as the next Lady, right?

Ex-designer and unwitting stand-up comedian Marti Guixé as per usual wowwed the audience with a portfolio presentation of more than a decade's worth of food-related projects. He is the well-known Catalunian ex-designer that has worked extensively with shoe brand Camper, and ultimately designed their flagship restaurant, Foodball, in Barcelona. Balls are something of a leitmotif in Marti G's gastro-design as you can see from this author's review. It might have been just the unfortunate lighting, but while presenting images of his 'corporate sponsored food', (in this case an omelette with a sauce-stamped Calvin Klein logo), Guixé claims to have noticed van Trijp's lip twitch.

Although I'm not willing to spill the beans just yet, I am looking forward to Guixé's collaboration with Mediamatic in just a few week's time. Guixé and Mediamatic will be opening up a temporary restaurant in the basement of the former TPG builiding where you'll... read about it in culiblog.

images from l to r: Vogelzang's salad course of city leafy greens (served with grilled pigeon breast), hanging etagères made of 2nd hand plates designed by Vogelzang for Dutch fabric producer de Ploeg, Gin and Tonic Fog Party by Marti Guixé (artificial indoor fog made of gin and tonic at Casco, Utrecht). The above images are from the (ex-)designers' websites, © and hopefully also courtesy of Vogelzang and Guixé.

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Frozen

March 06, 2005

It's like this... No excuses. Yes excuses. I am leaving for India in 3 days for a Nomadic Banquet! I wasn't joking about the bad eating habits 2 entries ago. The urban mapping workshop that I will be leading for the Doors of Perception and the Dutch Art Institute is about street food.

Please forgive and forget and stay tuned to this blog.

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Sunday Tea, Fruit Boom

November 14, 2004

We can all use a bit more para so a visit to the Witte de With Paraeducation Department was the order of the day, this Sunday. The salon-format programme titled Facts of Chance (authored by artists Anne Schiffer, Marcel van den Berg, and Frank Koolen) was satisfying, like when the cookie tin stays open; an interesting collection of videos, slideshow, film and included a performance by Koolen. Pictured above is an inadvertent recipe featured in the slideshow titled Fruit Boom or in English, Fruit Tree. Now is that fruit + balance or fruit + skewer + time?

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(images courtesy of Frank Koolen)

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42 looks good on you...

July 27, 2004

Today Kristi has turned 42. She wants to keep a low-profile today which is why I have posted this image of her low-profile brunch in my blog. I always fake sour dough pancakes by using joghurt, lemon and lemon peel.

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