Taste-Makers: Colors on Your Palate

Alvina Krause StudioNorthwestern University

Menu for Monday, March 16, 2015
Supper offerings beginning at 2:00pm

First Course
A Tasting - Eddie Gamboa
Often responding that I have never drank alcohol because I am afraid of falling off the wagon for the first
time, this performance puts into conversation the drinks that I have avoided with the medical history that has
led to such an avoidance. A long standing indifference to the taste of alcohol will clash with a deep rooted
desire to maintain control over mind and body, situating the mouth as a battle ground, not only because of
what comes out of it, but what goes in. I am thinking through taste, both as a sensorial and aesthetic
experience, to come together in order to experiment with my own fears surrounding libation. While the
purpose of this performance is not to watch me get drunk for the first time, it is worth discussing the ways in
which certain tastes are acquired, and how much such a process of learning to let go may be a crucial site to
experimentation in regards to what one fears, what one believes, and what it even means to let go.

To Taste - Grace Overbeke

One of the most commonly quoted maxims from the classical canon is de gustibus non est disputandum,
or, in matters of taste, there can be no disputes. Taste in this sense refers to the broader spectrum of a
persons individual preferences, which the maxim holds are so subjective that it is useless to argue them.
Theorists like Fred McVittie would assert that it is no coincidence that in English, the word for a persons
preferencesin furniture, men, weather, etcis the same as the word for the physical sense of taste. For in
The Poetics of Performance Knowledge, McVittie distinguishes taste as the sense that operates on logic
that is individual, interior, and inaccessible. Theoretically speaking, then, we can conclude that taste
transcends dispute because it is so private an experience that it would be impossible for two people to know
what it is they were arguing about. And yet, in spite of maxims and theories, arguments occur. Recipe
websites such as thekitchn.com and seriouseats.com host a number of debates prompted by the vague
instruction add [X] to taste. Several of these disputes on the proper level of salt became quite personal.
To taste is an interactive performance piece that uses found text from internet taste-debates, as well as
coffee (with milk and sugar added to taste) to divide the audience into taste-based factions, in order to
explore how this indisputable-but-disputed sense impacts peoples sense of interpersonal connection.

Milk for Gall - Elizabeth Hunter

For a play in which edible items loom largethe witches brew, two state dinners, Lady Macbeths regular
invocation of milk imageryShakespeares Macbeth includes just one instance of the word taste: I have
almost forgot the taste of fears, which Macbeth proclaims as the English army advances, and moments
before he learns Lady Macbeth is dead. In Milk for Gall, I interweave my preoccupation with the Scottish
Play with other cornerstone elements of my Performance Sensorium work: the unreliable, uncanny valley
narrator, the evocation of sacred ritual, and the reveal of a personalized token. By inviting audience
members to taste fear, I suggest the colonization of the body by canonical text, a foundational element of my
dissertation work that I have thus far accessed primarily through the other senses. Simultaneously, I expose
the sensorial dissonance expectation creates between vision and taste, interrogating with visceral response
the overwrought preconceptions of Shakespeare I seek to counter in my theatrical and video game work by
serving interactors by/ite-sized portions.

Have Your Other and Eat It Too! - Amy Swanson

Have Your Other and Eat It Too! questions the ethics and sustainability of the commodification and
exploitation of superfruits. Audience members will be among the first to taste the newest superfruit,
projected to imminently hit the big time in the United States: baobab fruit from Africa. Known for its wideranging vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and stomach-soothing capacities, baobab fruit has long been an
ingredient in various local dishes throughout sub-Saharan Africa where the infamous baobab tree grows.
With recent FDA approval for use as an ingredient, some predict baobab fruit to be the next hottest
nutritional trend in the US. As resources from the Global South become deployed in global industries under
labels such as superfruit, what local needs, labor, and voices are masked and silenced? How does mass
marketing of baobab fruit further reduce and exoticize notions of Africa.

Tubes: My Wait is U - A.C. Leone

Sarah Ahmed, conceptualizing phenomenology within Queer Studies in terms of orientation, considers the
potential for object-oriented studies as a project that emphasizes the importance of lived experience, the
intentionality of consciousness, the significance of nearness or what is ready-to-hand, and the role of
repeated and habitual actions in shaping bodies and worlds. This performance explores how the human role
of user/owner often automatically conceives of proximity, mindfulness, and intention in terms of ones own
perspective. Its audience is asked to question the polysemic possibilities of a taste of power exploring the
addictive flavor of dominion, and the affective hunger wherein the non-human develops a need for renewed
energy, and the meals in which such relief and renewal are cyclically offered.

Intermission

Second Course
SPAMerica is in the Heart - Jonathan Magat
In March 2014, Hormel Foods disseminated a press release titled SPAM Tocino A Filipino Love Story,
announcing their limited edition SPAM product allegedly catered to the Philippine taste palette. Describing
the new luncheon meat as truly Filipino, the Hormel press release posits, Its no secret that there is a true
love affair between the Philippines market and SPAM brand.
Noting that Spam is a luncheon meat originally used as rations by the U.S. Armed Forces during World War
II, this performance meditates on the circulation of Spam across countries within the Asia-Pacific region, with
particular attention to the Philippines. With heart disease cited as the leading cause of death for Filipina/os
within the U.S. and Philippines, this performance reflects on the ways in which the taste of Spam courses
through Filipino American bodies, memories, and culinary imaginaries.

Kimchi-Making - Kelly Chung

This performance explores the process of making kimchia fermented spicy Korean side dish made of napa
cabbage, radish, red chili peppers, shrimp paste, and vinegar. Kimchi not only takes anywhere from a week
to a year to be ready but is also labor intensive. Despite being described as bloody, disgusting, smelly, and
fishy, in recent years, kimchi has become an upscale culinary treat, serving as either a side dish or key
ingredient in US and global restaurantsa necessity for any cosmopolitan palate.
From palate to politics, kimchi-making in large groups is now folded international events, most notably when
South Koreas president and Japans First Lady made kimchi together to make amends between the two
countries. Additionally, in 2013, United Nations incorporated kimchi-making as an international heritage.
Kimchi-Making is a five-minute participatory performance, juxtaposing the backstage of making kimchi to
making kimchi center stage.

A Spot on the Table - Liz Laurie

The website of The Society for the Preservation of Irish Soda Bread makes a plea for modern day Irish and
the descendants of those who left Ireland during the Potato Famine, to save a spot on the table for Irish
soda bread to remember how far the Irish have come from the days when it was the only thing on the table to
today when our tables are filled with good things to eat and thoughts of the Famine years (An Gorta Mor) are
long forgotten. Irish soda bread purists argue that a bread containing anything but the following four
ingredients, flour, salt, baking soda, and buttermilk, isnt traditional. And yet recipes for traditional Irish soda
bread fill recipe books, websites, and cooking shows, full of fancy additions like orange zest, cranberries,
walnuts, raisins, and any number of other ingredients. Nowadays, any loaf of bread with baking soda and a
cross cut into the top can be called Irish soda bread.
If the taste of traditional Irish soda bread is that of suffering, what does it mean when the recipe changes?
What does it mean if traditionalists dont agree on the correct original recipe? And how do the cultural
associations with food change over time? My piece plays with these questions, as well as my own memories
of growing up with soda bread as a holiday food.

Amazing Grace, How Sweet The Sound - Bonnie Bright

In this performance, I share with the audience my expression of a visceral experience through the sense of
taste. Recalling some of the feelings I had during my first Kizomba demonstration, I use foods that leave
different taste in your mouth. The audience will be guided through the performance with instructions to
consume a certain food at certain times while watching the performance. This performance highlights the
sacred space of social dancing that occurs between partners and how this space is unattainable from
spectators. Yet, in an attempt to capture the mood of a dance performance, spectators rely on sensual
information to convey the happenings of a dance floor. Tasty words, like sweet, hot and spicy, are often
used in these descriptions. How do these descriptors align with the experience of the dancer herself?

I dont care about butter. I care about oleomargarine. - Didier Morelli

In politics you learn to always smile. -Eliot Spitzer
If the first president of the U.S.A. George Washington had both a type of pie and a French sauce containing
corn named after him, what would an item of food bearing the name of disgraced former New York Governor
Eliot Spitzer taste like? I dont care about butter. I care about oleomargarine is a five-minute performance
that takes into consideration both the tastes of scandal and dieting in the American political arena. With
March 16th (the day of the performance) as a point of inspiration, the piece combines the first publication of
Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter in 1850, the 1950 vote by congress to remove federal taxes on
oleomargarine, and the 2008 scandal involving Eliot Spitzers patronage of an elite escort service that lead to
his resignation as Governor. Intrigued by the ways in which taste and tasting are politically, culturally, and
socially regulated, this series of gustatory actions looks to condense the religious and dairy-free lobby with
Spitzers hypocrisy for partaking in illegal activities he had prosecuted throughout his career. The
performance addresses the complex and unpredictable flavors that emerge when sex, sin, and dairy are
mixed in together.
*Consuming raw or undercooked performances may increase your risk of provocative conversation.

Please join us afterward for refreshments and talkback in the seminar room.