Describing the five senses and a dream of the sixth sense (Rimbaud) provides the inspirational alibi and chimera for experimental approaches to cooking. Francis Ponge’s “thing poems” are like imaginary meals and especially his description of bread offers a unique evocation of the culinary/literary staff of life. Almond soup and various savoury pastes or condiments will be made with passages of Rabelais and Cervantes in mind.
The English phrase “cooking the books” implies being involved in fraudulent and deceptive processes or actions. Such processes or actions also play an important part in developing truly divergent, imaginative and original approaches to making art. This goes for cooking as much as for any other artistic field or area. This series of workshops will draw inspiration from both the literary and the metaphoric implications of such a phrase, and, as such, set about investigating essentially laterale and errant, but always “healthy”, ways of preparing, cooking and experiencing food. Each workshop will adopt a set of literary references or perspectives for re-imagining and rethinking various basic culinary processes or recipes. For example the making of a simple broth or salad might be influenced and designed according to the readings, and even mis-readings, of certain ancient and modern literary works (François Rabelais and Georges Perec for instance). Participants will be encouraged to search out and bring their own fresh and wholesome ingredients to the workshops.
Information and registration to the workshop leader Marcus Bergner: marcusbergner@hotmail.com
Workshop fee: 100 CZK
Marcus Bergner recently completed a PhD project that reconsiders experimental film in relation to new approaches to the discipline of art history and with regards to the practice and exhibition of contemporary art. He has worked in a wide variety of different restaurants and kitchens in Australia, Europe and the UK. But the apotheosis or defining moment of his somewhat peripatetic and disparate cooking career occurred when working for a number of years in a traditional French bakery as the “boulanger” or bread-shaper. He is a long-term collaborator and member of the Australian sound poetry and experimental literary group Arf Arf.
