On July 25th, the artist Laura Ginn staged an
exhibition called “Tomorrow We Will Feast Again on What We Catch,” at the
Allegra La Viola Gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. While I did not
attend this event, I experienced it vicariously via a review in the New York Times. After doing so, I felt compelled to share my own assessment of the
concept, execution, and reception of this exhibition.
(I should note here
that all quotes from the artist or the event’s attendees used in this post are
drawn from the NYT review, which treats the exhibition as a whole. An article in the New York Observer provides a more complete course-by-course description
of the meal, along the lines of a restaurant review. More photos can be viewed
here. I highly recommend perusing both articles and the photo gallery before reading this review.)
First, a quick rundown of the basics of what could be termed
a participatory happening: The artist, Ms. Ginn, skinned and gutted dozens of
rats, had them prepared in various ways by a gourmet chef, and served them to a
group of people who each paid $100 to attend the dinner, which took place in a
downtown art gallery. Apparently, according to the Observer, this took over a
year of planning. By doing so, Ms. Ginn was attempting to simulate or evoke the
conditions of a possible future, in which individuals will have no choice but
to subsist on the sustenance offered to them by their immediate surroundings. For
New Yorkers in this hypothetical future, rats, by their ubiquity, are a likely
option, but one made all the more ironic and disgusting by their current status
as uncontrollable, seemingly indestructible vermin. In addition to its title, the
exhibition was promoted as a “post-apocalyptic hunter-gatherer feast.” The
artist stated, “To have these sorts of skills [such as skinning and preparing
an animal carcass], it’s very empowering. It makes me feel like I have more
control over my world.”
Conceptually, I suppose the exhibition has its merits (even
if they are fairly obvious and hackneyed). It is undoubtedly useful to take
note of the ease with which we in this country obtain a wide variety of
foodstuffs, despite climactic and geographical obstacles, and to wonder what
courses might be taken were these luxuries to cease. It can also be productive
to question social norms regarding what is and is not considered appropriate to
eat. Furthermore, I agree that the learning and use of so-called “survivalist”
skills (the word choice of the NYT’s reviewer), while not likely to be employed
in everyday life as anything other than a novelty, can be a gratifying
experience.
However, as executed, this project reeks more than Ms.
Ginn’s hideous rat-gown. For one: “The rats were shipped from a United States
Department of Agriculture-approved West Coast processor that supplies pet
owners with humanely killed, individually flash-frozen rodents” (from the NYT
review). The artist did not catch these rats; there was no hunting or gathering
involved. In fact, she couldn’t be bothered to go to a local pet-supply shop
and pick up a bunch of rats herself. Ultimately, by having flash-frozen rats,
which were deemed safe by the federal government, shipped across the country to
her doorstep, Ms. Ginn participated in the practices that her exhibition sought
ostensibly to banish. Indeed, she did so to a greater degree than those of us
who actually venture to the grocery store for our victuals, which could at
least be considered a form of “gathering” food.
Secondly, while Ms. Ginn did apparently employ “survivalist” skills
(that I feel compelled to note can be learned from instructional videos found easily on youtube) to dress the rats herself prior to the preparation by a
gourmet chef, they were then PREPARED BY A GOURMET CHEF. I don’t know about
you, but after the nuclear apocalypse, I sure as hell am not eating any
three-eyed fish that wasn’t personally prepared for me by Eric Ripert in Le Bernardin’s new zombie and radiation-proof location.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have a go at this point too hard, as the event was
unapologetically labeled a “feast.” In my opinion, however, the terms
“post-apocalyptic” and “hunter-gatherer” are incongruous with having a chef
with a $400+ grocery allowance (for one meal) at one’s disposal. In an attempt
to give Ms. Ginn the benefit of the doubt, I sought to rationalize her choices
regarding food preparation, service, and ambience: Perhaps, I ruminated, she is
attempting to create a darkly humorous, askew look at the possible post-apocalyptic
lifestyle of the 1%, to use current political parlance. It is indeed amusing to
imagine Mitt Romney dining on meticulously prepared pests while his wife
competes in dressage competitions on her two-headed, six legged mutant horse.
But then I continued to think for an additional ten seconds and I realized that,
in a post-apocalyptic world, current social and financial stratifications would
almost certainly be meaningless, rendering moot my previously proposed
possibility. Consequently, my impression of the exhibition returned
to the form in which it struck me initially: a bunch of high-rent hipster doofuses
mistaking pretension for profundity.
Even worse, once stripped of its flimsy conceptual façade, the
exhibition descends into outright hack-ery. Essentially, it is an obnoxiously
dressed-up version Fear Factor, with Ms. Ginn as Joe Rogan.
To be slightly more generous (if, for some reason, I felt like doing
such a thing), the exhibition might also be compared to those annoying television
shows in which some jerk-off “foodie” blowhard travels
around the world on someone else’s dime to eat things that are characterized as
strange and exotic because they aren’t customarily consumed in America. (Because
it’s SO CRAZY that people living in different parts of the world eat things
that you and I would not eat normally.)
The reactions of the hosts and participants in such shows call
attention to those of the diners at the exhibition. According to the NYT, the
performance artist Clifford Owens (never heard of him, by the way) declared,
“This is about risk.” No it’s not, you twit. Were you not aware that these
animals were inspected and approved by the US Department of Agriculture and
prepared by a highly trained chef? If you were and you still said such a thing,
you are a self-important moron (and, as a performance artist, that’s highly
likely). If not, you must be simply oblivious. Another diner asserted, “I don’t
care about it as art. I care about it as something that makes me a more
interesting person.” The flicker of insight contained in the initial sentence
is extinguished immediately by the second. This is the equivalent of my brother
claiming that he is a more interesting person than I because, on a dare when we
were younger, he was able to chew and swallow a dog biscuit, while I could not.
While he may very well be a more interesting person than I, it is not for that
reason. Put plainly, how interesting a person is does not depend on the amount
and variety of disgusting detritus that he happens to devour.
In sum, a contemporary artist set out to explore well-tread territory
and call attention to the ease with which we are able to obtain a wide variety
of food, as well as the arbitrariness of the social mores concerning what we
eat. To do so, Ms. Ginn attempted to stage a “post-apocalyptic hunter-gatherer
feast” that decidedly did not live up to its billing, notwithstanding that it
was indeed a feast. By all accounts, the event was oozing with the
inconsequential trappings of contemporary high society that would not exist
after an apocalypse, in addition to the fact that the food consumed was not
hunted or gathered. “Tomorrow We Will Feast Again on What We Catch” professed
to offer to return to basics and provide glimpse of possible future hardships,
but failed miserably. Ms. Ginn, Allegra La Viola (the gallery owner), and company
apparently couldn’t be asked renounce any of their usual comforts, apart from
substituting traditionally consumed proteins for rat, an act that they seem to
think transformed them into self-sufficient survivalists, traversing with
impunity the margins of polite culture. Instead, they revealed themselves to be
a group of people characterized by excess: possessing too much time, money, unkempt
facial hair, and stupid glasses. Tragically, the initial luxury on that list
was not employed by the artist and her cohorts, or by the diners, toward a
carefully considered examination of the exhibition. The plethora of un-critical
media coverage surrounding the exhibition emphasizes further the mutually
masturbatory nature of the contemporary art world.
On that note, I will close with my final assessment: out of five
stars, I give Laura Ginn’s “Tomorrow We Will Feast on What We Catch” a scornful
eye roll accompanied by a dismissive wanking motion.
*A note on the title of this review: The phrase “get your rat out” was
introduced to me by some Welsh friends. Taken literally, it means to expose
one’s genitals. However, it is most often used figuratively as a euphemistic
exhortation to party hard; excessively, even. While this doesn’t have much, if
any, relationship to the topic of the review, I couldn’t help but shoehorn in
one of my favorite expressions.
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