Stub: Performing food semnatic map & Venn diagram

Association of class: performance; food

Association of property: display, food, kitchen, cooks, theatre, performance, experience, performer(s), audience, presentation, perception, reception, body, entertainment, act, substance or material, hunger, biological, aesthetic, food preparation, tradition, phobias, process, culinary art, restaurant, nutrition, wow factor, props, event, public, demonstration, nutrient, acting

Examples:
Tv cooking show
Whiskey tasting
Poddacha
Live performance (eg. Bobby Baker or Max Frey)
Cabaret
Dinner party
Guéridon service
Cooking contest
Flair bar tendering
Food street vendors
Cutting the wedding cake

Performing food Venn diagram

Let's have a bite! Making (some) sense of the performing food concept

The goal of this article is to take a first bite from the performing food concept. After some talks, books, videos and blog articles, basically after beating about the performing food phenomena it's finally time to dig in (while it's still hot). What came out is a matrix that puts in relation and can encompass any kind of PF (PF stands for performing food). This matrix, at least for now, does not solve bigger issues such as why is PF important or what does PF produce but it is important because it validates a specific performance or food type as being part of this PF continuum and puts in in relation to other performances or food types.

The food - performance – performing food matrix
This first attempt to formalize the performing food phenomena bases itself on a performing food matrix. Basically the goal of this approach is to present how varied in shape the performing food manifestations are and also to put in relation or proximity some of these.

The matrix I am talking about is a Cartesian xyz system that supports tracking and determining qualities of food performances on three axes:

• performance,
• food
• and the connection degree between food and performance

on three especially alloted separate value scales, graded from one to five.

On the food axis one means just referring to food, two means serving food (no cooking involved) and five means creating a dish with nutritional value, healthy, tasty, pleasing to the eye, all using professional means

1. Referring to food
2. Just serving
3. Paring and serving
4. Paring simple treatment and mixing and serving
5. Paring, heat treatment, mixing and serving

On the performing axis one means misinterpreting something as performance and five would means deliberately creating a representation for a specific purpose (esthetic, commercial, entertaining, religious, educational etc) professionally using an array of instruments (light, sound, tone, props, words, movement, music, sound effects, stage scenery etc.)

1. Nonmatrix performance: acting performed onstage which do not involve role playing
2. Symbolized matrix performing onstage actions which the spectator recognizes as belonging to a character, even dough the performer continues to behave as herself
3. Received acting onstage behavior in which the performer makes no attempt to impersonate a character, but it is nonetheless viewed as part of the situation of a scene. Extras practice received acting.
4. Simple acting when a performer simulates the speech and behavior of a character
5. Complex acting when the performer’s entire physical mental and emotional capabilities are involved in the portrayal of a character. (Schechner: 2006, p 175 -176)

On the ``Connection between food and performance axis`` the lowest connection degree stands for accidental, unintended paring of food and performance where the two evolve independent of each other while as five stands for a strong interconnection between food and performance where food is used at the same time both as an ingredient but also as an expression instrument.

1. No connection what so ever
2. Connected in meaning but running in parallel
3. Some of the actions are common for performing and cooking
4. Almost all actions are common for cooking and performing

The matrix would than look like this:





The study subjects
Varying in function, a performance using and referring to food aims to:

• entertain
• make something that is beautiful
• mark or change identity
• make or foster a community
• heal
• teach, persuade or convince
• deal with the sacred and / or the demonic (SCh p 46)

One of the things that I have understood in setting up this initial research is that it is best to refer to a specific and as precise as possible subject in order to be able to analyze it. Basically you have to refer to a performance in particular and not a certain type of food, or performance food, in general such as ``TV cooking shows``. From an analysis point of view it's not even wroth to refer to ``Jamie Oliver’s type of TV cooking show``. The study subjects can be performances (with one resulting dish or not) created by an author on a certain date. (For now at least because if you travel through a system long enough you undertaken it's shape and functions and you can describe it more general terms. So later some theory about performing food could emerge or about a certain type of performing food)

I have chosen ten types of performing food that I thought would, first and foremost, prove how diverse the field of P-ingF is:

• TV cooking shows
• Flair bar tending
• Latte art
• Religious rites (Theophagy)
• Social rites – birthday cake
• Gueridon service
• Social rites - entertaining guests
• Performance piece
• Social rites – the Russian podaccha
• Performance piece

All of these performances were firstly investigated from different perspectives to create a performing food certificate. The perspectives that the performances are consider under refer to both structure and function. About all this in one of my next posts.

Book review - Performance Art. From Futurism to the Present. RoseLee Goldberg. Thames and Hudson World of Art, 2010

Not always books get to be both erudite and life affirming. Performance Art by RoseLee Goldberg is one such book. It speaks both about performance art and critical concepts related to it and also of the life and motivations of performers work and how it affected different contexts: ``The goal of this book remains – to raise questions and gain new insights –it can only hint at life off its pages`` (2010: 9)

If you travel long enough through a system you will understand how the whole looks like. And you can draw a map. This book does just that through giving as many exemplas as possible we understand what performance is by ``travelling`` through the history of performance. Giving examples is probably the best way to define performance and what a performance artist is. From Marinetti to Mathew Barney the art of performance is a continuously developing creative flow: ``As the extraordinary range of material in this long, complex and fascinating history demonstrates, performance art continues to defy definition and remains as unpredictable, and provocative as it ever was.``(2010: 226)

The book provides also insight and understanding into how things were happening simultaneously in different parts of the world and how they were interrelated or not related to one another or to previous events.

Performance art is a way of indicating new directions and researching. I remember in school teachers telling me about different theater practitioners: ``He/she experienced for several years before coming back to the theater world``. Rarely did I give any thought to what these practitioners actually did during those years of secluded experiences. Some were concerned with performance art.

A performance piece has a lot to do with making art fit in the every day life and getting a reaction from every day people. Almost all performance is militant of something. Sometimes by resorting to shocking and aggressive practices.

Also specific is the little concern for technique and esthetic discipline. Some of the results are quite poor if not undistinguishable from a non-art type live action. If the ``Great European Art`` is concerned with the object performers are interested in the process and certain actions. For instance for Cabaret Voltaire only one performer – Emmy Henings - was an actual trained professional performer. But this not stop the rest of the group – painters of poets - to get up and devise and star in their own shows.

The text is vivid and the pictures serve their purpose of supporting information by clarifying and bringing new insight. Too bad all (with the exception of the cover) are black and white.

As an easy conclusion RosaLee Goldberg`s book defines for us performance as the sum of it`s parts: a live action part of a series of live actions that become clear as a phenomena when seen from a distance. And when performing art has a clear(er) contour so do individual performances who are finally laid at rest as recognized art history landmarks.

Book review - Performance Studies. An introduction by Richard Schechner, Routledge, 2006

The volume presents over 300 pages about performance studies, about performance, ritual, play, performativity, performing, performance process and performance in the global world.
The first thing we have to know about performance and this book is that: ``Performance (is) a major site for knowledge and power`` (p. 26). Therefore performance is an engaged process, a tool, just like the study of performance, it does not happen just for the sake of ``art``.

Every chapter is followed by three theoretical and practical applications: ``Talk about`` - containing quotes or questions meant to incite discussions or thinking moments, ``Perform`` - practical exercises meant to help surface aspects of performance or performance studies and ``Read`` - further references. Another important feature of the book are the text boxes scattered around inciting to though and dialogue or adding an extra nuance to some of the ideas. These boxes along with numerous dictionary articles of terms and personalities from fields of theatre, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy etc, make the book a good history of culture guidebook.

One way to understand performance is using is or as. Considering things as performance we one can look at the process or ask performance questions of events (How is an event deployed in space and disclosed in time). ``Is performance refers to more definite, bounded events marked by context, convention, usage, and tradition.`` (p. 49) But the distinction between is and as are blurry and life seems to be more and more a ``connected series of performances that often overlap`` A possible way of analyzing this field would be ``to arrange the performance genres, performative behaviors and performance activities into a continuum: play-games-sports-pop entertainments-performing arts-daily life-identity construction-ritual``.
Performativity is the large category including performative and performance. There are several ways to apprehend performativity: ``Performative may be a specific speech act such as a promise, bet, or contract.`` (p. 167) or it may deal with constructed social realities or a pervasive moor or feel ``I smell something funny going on``. Just as there are no theoretical limits to the performativity there are no limits to performance. But as an academic discipline there are some specific questions and also specific study subjects.
``Performance process can be theorized in as an orderly sequence of training, workshops, rehearsals, warm-up, performing, performance, contexts, cooldown, critical response, archives and memories.`` (p. 261) or ``it can be understood as a complex relationships among four types of players – sources (writers, researchers, composers), producers, performers and partakers.``(p. 262) with one persons filling in for more than one role, at times.

One interesting application of these notions is the short analysis of ``surgery as performance``. In an operating theatre there are several performing elements: there is an audience, there are costumes differing the roles doctor, nurse and patient, there are star surgeons. Besides this showing of a doing the surgery performance also ``involves a coordinated team working at an extremely high level of skills``.
The greatest quality of the book is that it is more than an introduction to concepts dealing with the fine line dissociating theatere from life. It is a great invitation and support for exploratory thinking and reality examining work outs. Including cooking and serving food and all suffusing activities.