Hard To Tell If It’s Going Well
I have, of late, been starving you of artistic sustenance. Here, let me fix that with a big dollop of the stuff. Specifically, some “performance documentation” from Manhattan’s Grace Exhibition Space. The mighty talent featured in the following video is artist, educator and “community organiser” Alex Romania, whose work teeters on the edge of profundity, as will doubtless become clear, via juddering and convulsion, and the strategic deployment of 25 pounds of powdered cheese.
Come, sup ye at the teats of creativity.
Yes, I know. It’s a lot to take in.
As Mr Romania reveals during the subsequent ramble-cum-interview, the piece above is but part of an even more staggering trilogy. He is, we learn, “interested in exploring, like, substance.” When not “investigating bodies of cultural debris,” and being showered with atomised dairy products, Mr Romania teaches those less gifted than himself, at New York’s Centre For Performance Research, and other places of learning.
Should your inner being have been suitably moved, the Grace Exhibition Space is seeking “significant financial support.”
Update, via the comments:
Captain Nemo notes the resemblance with numerous children’s TV shows – Fun House, Tiswas and the like – in which “dumping food or gunge over someone’s head was de rigueur.” Well, yes. And it’s hard to see who, exactly, all this alleged transgression is aimed at. The handful of socially and mentally uniform poseurs who turn up, at least if it isn’t raining, or the general public that doesn’t care?
Consider this an open thread.
Please continue starving us.
There’s just no pleasing some people.
As I type, after two and a half years of being available to the art-loving community and the wider public, the video has attracted 25 views, zero comments, and zero likes.
So, niche.
*strokes chin* I think I prefer the thing with the hand-dryers.
…the Grace Exhibition Space is seeking “significant financial support.”
One would be remiss not to donate and become a member because admission is free and one certainly wouldn’t want to miss “Climate” by Raegan Trueax and GOODW.Y.N.
How the world can go on without a genderfull aerosphere is indeed a pressing issue.
There is also Jamie Funk’s masterful “The Myopia of Desire“,
I noticed they have been on Winter Rest for the last couple of months as having someone
act a foolperform deathless art one day a month is exhausting, so won’t you give generously so these important works may continue?*(Naked, of course, and as this is art, there is an obvious joke there I won’t stoop to)
**(Clinical pearl: myopathy refers to muscle disease, and has nothing to do with myopia, an vision problem)
Ah yes, Ms Sandrine Schaefer, the creative titan whose output is “amazing,” “compelling,” and yet “inexplicably underfunded.”
Hard to top, really.
“Performance Artist”
A Title assumed by people with no real artistic talent – so they can be included in all the right parties.
Usually, all they draw is government assistance. And with good reason.
The Cheese n Ladder Minions really made it, for me anyway.
Who knew powdered cheese was such a versatile substance?
We don’t deserve these aesthetic feats.
Other offerings include London-based Martin O’Brien, whose “work is concerned with physical endurance, disgust, long durations, and pain-based practices, in order to address a politics of the sick queer body.” Which sounds like a fun night out. And Miao Jiaxin, a creative powerhouse originally from Shanghai, and who has “made live-feed erotic performances on an interactive pornographic broadcasting website, and dressed as a Chinese businessman for an entire year.” He has, you’ll be thrilled to hear, “blended his naked body into the bleak streets of a midnight New York City.”
It’s all terribly exciting. Sorry, “visceral and challenging.”
Hardly groundbreaking. I grew up in the 90s and early 00s, when dumping food or gunge over someone’s head was de rigueur for pretty much every children’s TV show. At this rate, they’ll be showing re-runs of Fun House in the Ashmolean Museum any day now, given this is what passes for “art” these days.
Well, it’s hard to see who, exactly, all this alleged transgression is aimed at. The handful of socially and mentally uniform poseurs who turn up, or the general public that doesn’t care?
i firmly believe that rather than identifying with one particular character Terry Pratchett used several of them to express his personal philosophy. As an example take Sergeant Fred Colon’s views on art:-
“He knew in his heart that spinning upside down around a pole wearing a costume you could floss with definitely was not Art, and being painted lying on a bed wearing nothing but a smile and a small bunch of grapes was good solid Art, but putting your finger on why this was the case was a bit tricky”.
and
‘Fine Art. It’s just men paintin’ pictures of young wimmin in the nudd. The altogether,’explained Colon the connoisseur. ‘The caretaker told me. Some of them don’t even have any paint on their brushes, you know.’
There’s another one which I can’t immediately find where Fred states that it’s Art as long as the scantily clad young woman is holding an urn.
That. 🙂
New category tag! Yay.
I spoil you, I really do.
In other art news…well not so much news but been a thing apparently, my wife ran across this. She’s Polish so…
If you start with the premise that civilization is evil and oppressive, and beautiful art just supports the patriarchy blah blah blah, then the only direction you can go is cheese. Plus, if you lack talent…cheese.
You had me at naked, which itself was rather disappointing…yet not surprisingly, but why is she wearing shoes?
Pre-grated Parmesan cheese, with cellulose added to prevent caking. Ugh.
Once again I’m a little shocked by the amateurishness. This reminds me of when my kids were little and wanted to do a puppet show. They’d make a puppet, invite everyone to watch the show . . . and then have no story to tell because they didn’t think beyond making the puppet. So the puppet would flail about and maybe hit another puppet or talk in a weird voice until the audience got bored and said “that was very nice.” My kids, however, got older and developed their abilities. This dude’s stuck in the second-grade puppet stage.
I don’t mean to boast, but I’d been blissfully unaware that powdered cheese was a thing that existed. And outside of the realm of performance art, I’m struggling to think of a use for it. Perhaps it could be thrown in the eyes of one’s enemies.
It’s a convenience thing: Many people don’t want to have to grate cheese as needed onto their spaghetti dishes. Hence canisters of pre-grated cheese (Parmesan or Romano) that can be shaken onto your food are much easier to find than wedges of cheese. [ Grumble. ]
Band name.
Well, savages do walk among us. I’ve seen pre-grated cheese, and even bought a bag, once, for feeding the birds. But the, um, material being used above is finely powdered. As if ready to snort.
You know what else is hard to find? Wensleydale. Red Leicester. Cheshire. And when you can find it, it’s very expensive. Cheddar, Colby, Monterey Jack, Emmentaler, Munster, and Gouda comprise 99 percent of cheese in supermarkets.
[ Grumbling intensifies. ]
Point taken, but the pre-grated cheese is more like powder than like grated. Presumably that is partly a consequence of how the grating machines work, but it means the cheese loses its flavor even faster.
When Karl hears about this, he’ll be fuming.
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Karl, don’t read this thread.
But the, um, material being used above is finely powdered. As if ready to snort.
If I have the bright orange-yellow color right, isn’t that the stuff in the really cheap boxes of Kraft Mac n Cheez? Or Kraft Dinner in Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraft_Dinner
BUT…you can buy that bright orange powder in a shaker now, apparently, thus the “artistic” performance our dear landlord so graciously provided. https://www.myrecipes.com/news/kraft-mac-cheese-powder
You seem to know way too much about this.
[ Peers over spectacles. ]
You seem to know way too much about this.
It’s in the kulture. A North American thing. If you grew up in the US or Canada you ate at least a ton of the stuff by the time you were 30. A ton-and-a-half if you went to Uni, two if you went to grad school.
I’m not sure if there’s an English equivalent.
“I have of late — but wherefore I know not — lost all my mirth …”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WnNL67PEKU
Not me: My mother cooked healthy, and I avoided all those dubious convenience foods during university and after. I mostly know about these things second-hand, partly from friends who did live on ramen noodles and Kraft mac-and-cheese…although I suspect that beer was a significant part of the diet too.
And I never saw convenience as a legitimate excuse for [glares] Kraft mac-and-cheese, as it was just as quick to cook up some whole grain pasta, drain the water, and throw some slices of cheddar or colby into the sauce pan to melt–and microwave some green vegetables on the side.
Yes. It’s called English cooking.
[ Ducks out door before David can reach under bar. ]
OMG. This pretty much nails it. I’ve been somewhat subconsciously bothered by what it is about this stuff that seems familiar. It wasn’t just the childishness per se but how the complete lack of a plot is reminiscent of small child’s play.
Jokes aside, America is slowly recovering from a horrible sixties experiment (fad?) with “convenient” foods: Remember TV dinners? Edible but awful. There was a time when Chef Boyardee and La Choy comprised almost the totality of Italian and Chinese food in American supermarkets (unless you lived near an Italian or Chinese neighborhood.) Now you can find various brands of quality pasta sauce, not to mention jars of Italian vegetables, and many supermarket produce sections have pea pods, bean sprouts, bok choy, etc.
Obviously this dude never went to high school. Food fights were a daily occurrence in our lunchroom. It eventually got so out of hand, we would take TWO lunches to school…….one to eat and one to throw.
[ Peers over spectacles. ]
[shuffles further into the corner]
I’ve spent a good portion of my life in monetarily impoverished circumstances, and yes, I have eaten my share of Top Ramen, Kraft Mac n Cheese, canned beans with rice, etc. I doctored the cheap stuff where possible with fresh ingredients, like making egg-drop soup with ramen, eggs, and thinly sliced cabbage, but it was still starving student fare. On occasion I get the Kraft Deluxe now, with the packet of cheese sauce, when I’m feeling lazy. Eggs used to be my go to cheap protein, but they’re not cheap any more.
ComputerLabRat: For a number of years I made use of a local food coop, where one could get such things as brown rice, whole grain pasta, bulgar wheat, and granola, in bulk at very good prices. When they started out as a little hole-in-the-wall their prices were very moderate. Prices went up as they grew, became trendy, and moved to larger quarters.
like making egg-drop soup with ramen, eggs, and thinly sliced cabbage,
Sometimes the only way to get the one veggie-phobic child of mine to eat anything green was to jazz up the ramen with eggs, shredded carrots, peas and finely chopped green beans. Great way to use left-over chicken or ham when the leftovers just weren’t enough for a full serving for whole family.
Kraft Mac-n-cheese out of the box is my canvas. The spice rack and anything leftover in the fridge, especially various cheeses about to expire, are my colors. When your Mom grew up in a single parent household with two other siblings during the Great Depression (I’m wondering if we will have to change what we called that, like we did with World War I), it’s a matter of skill, cunning, and pride.
My parents and grandparents didn’t talk much about it, but I do remember that Uncle’s brown bag school lunch was usually a couple of lard sandwiches (which sounds much like Terry Pratchett’s bread with pork drippings.)
with cellulose added to prevent caking. Ugh.
Cellulose? ZOMG, not cellulose, the tasteless and odorless polysaccharide?
Next thing you know they’ll be putting that stuff in the cell walls of fruits and vegetables!
That is why I never buy cheese from stores and make my own with rennet only from the stomachs of free range, cruelty free, organic grass fed cows raised by blind nuns in Peru.
No, it’s a non-food-derived cellulose. I remember looking at the ingredients list once upon a time. Remember the high fiber bread that contained powdered fiber from wood?
Cellulose from any fruit or vegetable or in your cheese is the same polysaccharide as in wood, cotton, pectin, or any other source except maybe made in a high school chem lab.
Where it comes from is irrelevant, being tasteless and odorless, the only effect, other than keeping the cheese from clumping, it has is adding a little fiber to a meal. Nobody is sitting there with a Buck knife whittling oak into a vat of cheese.
pst314: Aye, growing up as an impoverished youngster in New England, I remember my dad scavenging food from the local hole-in-the-wall food co-op, and sometimes, actually buying bulk whole grains there, as their prices were reasonable. This was in the 70s, and the 80s brought an influx of hipsters and wealthy aging hippies with their Volvo station wagons and Bernie Sanders bumper stickers into the rural villages. So our co-op, like yours, got bigger, trendier, and prices went up as little food co-ops became big Whole Foods-type stores without the name.
Interestingly, Kraft boxed Mac n Cheese with the powdered cheese was developed and launched around the time of WWII, and you could get 2 boxes with one ration coupon. The National Loaf might have been better for you, but I think Kraft Dinner/ Mac n Cheese probably tasted better – it’s still around.
sounds much like Terry Pratchett’s bread with pork dripping
Only sounds like! Pork dripping is a gourmet food for the cognoscenti. Mere lard is simply uncooked grease.
Now you can find various brands of quality pasta sauce, not to mention jars of Italian vegetables, and many supermarket produce sections have pea pods, bean sprouts, bok choy, etc
Back when I was a wage slave and had neglected to pack a lunch, I picked up a couple of samosas in a supermarket in [Small City]. They weren’t terribly good, but then I realized that I’d just bought samosas in a small city grocery store. We are luckier than we realize!
And I never saw convenience as a legitimate excuse for [glares] Kraft mac-and-cheese, as it was just as quick to cook up some whole grain pasta, drain the water, and throw some slices of cheddar or colby into the sauce pan to melt–and microwave some green vegetables on the side.
To someone who spent 18 years eating whole grain, vegetarian, no sugar, no salt, home-made everything, that brings flash-backs more than mouth-watering. But – to each their own. I still can’t stomach oatmeal porridge made from steel-cut rolled oats, or much short-grain brown rice, or mashed rutabagas (swede), or powdered milk, or National Loaf-style wholemeal bread, mostly because that is what I had to eat daily for my entire childhood. I’ll eat brussels sprouts now, but oatmeal still makes me gag.
I have tried to eat Healthy after leaving home, but without a little hole in the wall bulk food co-op around, whole grain pasta (or anything like that) is not cheap! I did learn to doctor stuff though, and frozen veggies are a godsend to a strapped budget. But yes, Kraft Mac n Cheese Deluxe [shields self from glares] is a treat now and then. I’ve done my time in the Macrobiotic Diet and Health Food trenches. I’ll enjoy some tasty processed convenience food on occasion now and enjoy it.
My mother cooked healthy, not vegetarian: Meat was always a valued part of the diet, and there was none of that salt-is-evil, sugar-is-satan foolishness. She merely recognized that highly sugared foods should be eaten in moderation (she grew up in the time when it was still universally understood that the road to obesity was paved with excess carbs and sugar.) So lots of vegetables, preferably fresh from our garden, etc. (I wish my grandmother could have lived to see the vindication of her rejection of all those health food fads and panics, with their demonization of eggs and butter and the promotion of high-carb diets.)
Ouch, my sympathies! I never was involved in that, although I encountered the attitude in that little health food coop (some of the angry rants posted on the bulletin board were…amusing.) And I did read Diet for a Small Planet, but never gave up eating meat.
Remember “Junk Food Junkie“?
Well, it was the Depression.* You had real pork drippings? Posh bastards! Envy! Resentment! Hurling of insults! Incitement of class hatred!
* Grandpa never psychologically recovered: Even in the sixties, when they were financially secure, he remained, deep down, very insecure and fearful, which was reflected in his habits.
You had lard? We had to wait years to get lard….
I still can’t stomach oatmeal porridge made from steel-cut rolled oats…
Every now and then, I cook up some ‘Scottish Risotto’ (or polenta, if you wish). Your favourite risotto flavorings, but with steel-cut oats. Yummy with lamb.
Remember “Junk Food Junkie“?
YES! Heard that for the first time on Dr. Demento late one night on an AM radio station. My dad had Diet for a Small Planet and made my mom cook recipes from it. He had a gift subscription to Rodale’s Prevention magazine, eschewed Western medicine – yes we were whole hog into that 70s hippy health food craze. But the real reason we didn’t eat meat was because Dad was also a lazy barely-employed commie dreamer and we couldn’t afford it. Welfare still had a stigma back then – better to grift and scrounge than go on the dole.
Dad would try anything but work to get money, including trying to promote artist friends of his, who unfortunately were of the Classical persuasions. Just think what riches could have been had if my dad’s friends had dumped powdered cheese on each other, or turned hand driers on and off, or stuck their rumps in the air while squeaking their feet in their shoes.
For those who were puzzled by the reference.
Romania has nothing on Diana of Ephesus.
For those who were puzzled by the reference.
Some things cannot be unseen. I know, credit note only.
I am not sure why that particular one of all the “art” served up here over the years should have stuck with me, but it did.
Ever since that Goose Thespian, feasting on such cruel negativity keeps me coming here (Sigh!) even if it is only doled out in tit bits.
I just want to say – I’m bloody fuming!
That’s a bit like claiming that all hydrocarbons are just molecular chains of hydrogen and carbon. And no-one is pumping crude oil into your cornflakes.
Cellulose is a macro-molecule of bundles of glucan chains – glucose molecules. The distinctiveness of the various forms comes from the length and configuration of the chain bundles. Which is why eating fruit or mushrooms doesn’t resemble eating trees.
When I were a lad we used to get dripping sandwiches to take to school after the Sunday Roast [praise be]. The fat and, more importantly, jellified juices that dripped off the pork or beef roast (heart, if you were really lucky – though not so much for the drippings; it’s a very lean organ) were smeared on cheap sliced white bread for a delicious and nutritious lunch. Or, as it is called in my neck of the woods, “dinner”.
As I recall you could also buy pots of pork dripping from the local butcher (long replaced by another fucking nail salon) which had a layer of fat covering that unctuous salty jelly that made it so very tasty. And healthy. Possibly.
Oh, and another thing.
When I first moved to the States I was horrified by my first bite of a sandwich proclaiming itself to contain “Muenster” cheese. This appears to be a wedge of orange packaging material, carved and sliced into a cruel caricature of a French cheese called “Munster”.
Unfortunately, unlike the French version, it tastes of flip-flop.
Imagine my disappointment!
As to what food-related atrocities might be being perpetrated in the video above – I couldn’t bear to watch!
This is not my first visit to the site.
The local butcher’s, owned by a burly Yorkshireman who calls me duck, sells dripping.
It’s next to the nail salon.
It’s only a matter of time…
Er, I had to watch the bloody thing. Don’t see why anyone else should get off lightly.
Remember when Velikovsky somehow thought that carbohydrates and hydrocarbons were they same thing? Saying that the manna the Israelites ate in the desert could have been hydrocarbons fallen from a passing comet?
“Ever eat a pine tree?”
–Euell Gibbons
My personal objection was focused on how such “processed” cheese would not taste like freshly grated Parmesan. Plus a dislike of the increasing use of artificial ingredients to extend shelf life or as cheaper replacements of flavor-enhancing ingredients. I recently bought a few cans of chicken soup and was very disappointed in the flavor–grossly inferior to fresh-made soup is like, although I don’t know exactly why.
The former. The general public will just roll their eyes and move on because, as mentioned, they’ll have seen this sort of thing when they were children, and often in a more entertaining setting. When I came home from school, I wanted to watch Fun House and the like. (I wanted to appear on it too, but it ended before I was old enough to go on, and anyway, that’s not the point.) Whereas I never want to see the above “artwork” again.
Well, that’s why you get the big bucks!
Oh my, yes I do. When I was young I collected all those mad “aliens visited ancient earth” books. Even age 12 I was amused by Velikovsky’s ignorance. My favourite was one I can no longer quite recall that purported to have surprisingly detailed alien spaceship designs gleaned from Aztec temples. Might have been a Zecharia Sitchin?
I’m uncomfortable with the modern, hip, rejection of “processed” foods by which they mean “cooked”. As if they were an improper intrusion into the sacred markets of kale and quinoa. But there’s little doubt that many commercial products are pretty poor quality. Like real food – you pay for what you get.
[ Slides tip jar to more prominent position, adds tinsel, glitter. ]
Erich von Daniken?
That reminded me of a 1950’s juvenile novel that I read in grade school, in which the protagonists contend with a crackpot school official who imposes a raw foods diet for the kids. Had forgotten all about that book.
Erich von Daniken?
Someone even more batshit I’m afraid (I know!). I probably still have it stashed away at the back of a cupboard but I now can’t remember enough about it to even
GoogleDuckDuck it.Isn’t that the tinsel from the spittoon?
You mind your own business.
[ Adds more glitter. ]
Better take this opportunity to settle my bar tab. Ping!
Heh. Bless you, sir. May the screen timeouts of your various devices not occur at the precise second you want to use them.
See, I knew tinsel and glitter was the way to go.
[ Drags enormous sack of glitter up from cellar. ]
[ Speculates about possible prior career as rock musician…or roadie. ]