Stomachs on legs are proud to present

The good people over at Shift have published an interview with Koshi Kawachi to promote his current exhibition Tasty Buddha - The Snack Age.

The title THE SNACK AGE represents as it means, and reflects how I felt: "this age is fribble, flimsy, and unhealthy, just like snacks are." Then, you can also read "AGE" as "a-ge", which I infused a meaning for audience to uplift their feelings.

Gutfeelings member Nalika comments that this refers to the verb ageru 上げる　- to uplift, as he put it. The recent colloquial Japanese speech has expression 'agaru' (feel uplifted) and 'age age' (uplifting).

An umaibo is a deep fried snack, so ageru 揚げる(deep frying) could work as a double pun.

Embalming Potato Chip:
Cracked pieces of a potato chip are "embalmed" to be restored by a traditional technique, kintsugi.

More pictures + interview.

Tasty Buddha - The Snack Age exhibition
April 1st - 16th, 2010
pARa:siTe Gallery
Ne 24-1 Matudera-cho, Kanazawa

As a seasonal post, I'm throwing up some photos from a visit to our Munich office last week. Sausages and snow have a certain charm.

Below, a poster for an exhibition in Munich over the holiday period.





My bosses' weber grill languishing in the snow: you can tell there is a general reverence for meat around here



A hot plate on which Many simmers lamb stew to go with his famous crispy persian rice. Just offscreen, a carton of Hornig Bio Pfefferminztee teabags - the best mint tea I've tasted. Buy it if you can.



Ubiquitous Red Bull fridge. There are also at least two crates of apple juice at all times.



Nearby: Lonely but polite dog waiting outside the organic supermarket.



Maybe he is hoping for some kind stranger to gift him 'leberkäse' (literally 'liver cheese'), that very southern (Bavarian & Austrian) snack. A soft spam-pink meat loaf with an inviting crust, eaten sliced & warm, I like it best with hot mustard on a whole grain roll. On this trip I sampled a tasty rendition from the little shop that also sells the best pretzels, for one euro twenty cents.

I seem to be collating virtual food experiences for Gut Feelings: the German iphone sausage simulation and now, slapping a guy with an eel. This is the most eel-related fun you'll have today, short of eating an elver.

We've showcased potato-inspired modern dance on this blog before. Today I got to wondering: why didn't Merce Cunningham ever choreograph a dance about food?
(I'm not convinced his deli comedia piece is really about a deli).

The seminal avant-garde dance choreographer, who passed away on July 26, 2009, was the life partner of experimental music figurehead John Cage.

Cage may have had a very pleasing minimalist hot dog created in his honour, but he and Merce Cunningham were more into steamed fish and strange breads made from vegetable gruel than street meat.

Still, it seems they weren't mercenary about their macrobiotic diet. They carried peanut butter sandwiches in paper bags, stole mint-yoghurt dips when they weren't supposed to, and occasionally crash-dieted or binged on creme fraiche. According to this society article in the New York Times in '81, Cage would serve his favorite Scottish single malt whisky at dinner parties, in Japanese tea cups.

The two gents, known for their somewhat cerebral artistic creations, enjoyed baking cookies (see Cage's own recipes recipes here), eating surreptitious slices of chicken carried in Merce's briefcase, and doing modern dancing to handbag house at the age of 85.

One of Merce's dancers, who has a food blog, commemorated him with musings on grief-stricken quinoa salad and Top Chef Masters escapism and a recipe for ancho & guajillo enchiladas.

Today's electro youth aren't content with choreographing their own Merce Cunningham-inspired dance routines. They make it a signature to bake fish for their cats and hang around disconsolately in supermarkets trying to choose a flavour of UHT chocolate milk.
And other times they just feast on human carnage on the beach.

"A Light Breakfast" by artist David Sykes, no photoshopperry, just one shot on 5×4 transparency. His Obsessions series looks increasingly like my obsessions.

Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany is currently showing off its new collection of found art: street food vendor stalls from around the world. I love the look of delectation on the curator's face when he says "It is so dirty".

NZ visual artist Ben Buchanan (who moonlights as rap-thug Erik Ultimate) has long been an inspiration to me. Not least due to his skills with a knife. As well as making fantastic artwork with spliced adhesive tape, his knife has been put to good use in many of Wellington's so-hip-it-hurts kitchens.

A life lived by the knife is not without its hazards - when we visited NZ's capital city to eat rendang and roti with him two years ago, Ben was fresh out of hospital with a cast on, due to an unfortunate incident with a mango during the brunch rush. (The exact words of his text message at the time were: "currently in hutt hospital after accident with a mango!!" Apparently there were at least two other chefs in the emergency room that day, also with knife wounds).

Here's an excerpt from a Q&A with BB after his Sleeping installation, hosted by the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

You are quite a dab hand in the kitchen. What do you prefer to cook: risottos, rich reductions and masculine proteins, or deconstructed frozen sushi?

Hmmm...would have to go with rich reductions and masculine proteins. Definitely slow cook comfort stuff. I spent a year working in kitchens in Dublin and was kinda looking for the Irish cuisine. Aside from gaining a fondness for skate wings and Guiness, the best thing I found was at the chippers: chicken curry and chips, which is like deep fried chicken with chips and this awesome gravy with lots of curry powder in it. Sooo good... So my fave thing to make at home is to joint a chicken, marinate it in special crispy chicken coating from the Asian grocer [you gotta leave it in the flour stuff for a couple of hours]...then fry it with as much oil and butter as will fit in my or your pan [hey this is kind of a recipe], then roast with plenty of spuds... Whilst this is goin' [you wanna put the spuds on first]... Fry onions, garlic and mushrooms in butter. Add gravy powder from the dairy (get 2 packets, it's like 80 cents) and curry powder and dried chili, then boiling water, and stir etc. God damn, then yummo. So good....

What music genre best describes your culinary style?
Maybe Venga Boys doing a Van Morrison track.


.....Read the rest of the interview and see pictures of his latest artworks here.

It's been a couple of years since we've blogged about Nagi Noda (who passed away in September last year). So with Kat!Heath!'s cake hats as inspiration, it seems like an appropriate moment to throw up a few more Nagi Noda pictures
...in tribute to food stylists everywhere.

I like the commercial where all the fruit is stuffed inside the model's clothes.

Kat!Heath! is a London-based DJ and Central Saint Martins-trained theatre designer. Her interests include "Earl grey, long hot baths, supermarket reduced sections, pimping shit up," and making hats (she majored in millinery at the Wimbledon School of Art).

I was reading about Kat's latest sound installation/guerilla theatre performance, and came across these great Nagi Noda-esque cake hat photos. I asked if I could blog them and she kindly obliged: what's more, she suggested that next time we catch up she might make some barbeque millinery for the occasion! Kind of like a dream I had once - but better!

About these photos, Kat says: "This was such a fun shoot. I spent hours and hours baking before hand without having slept much the night before though and forgot about the condensed milk I was boiling for the banoffi pie which exploded all over the kitchen. I had to wake everyone up and get them to help me mop the ceiling. Niamh and I are starting a clubnight in August and after I told her this story we have decided to call it 'Hot Toffee'."

The lemony cake in the foreground is intriguing - probably pieces of lime rind on top, but also looks quite a lot like strips of jalapeno chile, which could be a very good idea indeed.



Millinery, Styling, Set, Baking - Katharine Heath katheath@gmail.com
Photographer - Emily Barnett emilymarybarnett@yahoo.co.uk
Hair and Make-up - Clare Elizabeth
Models (L-R)- Kay Sayer, Fiona Albrow, Eleanor Wdowski
Kay's World-famous Victoria Sponge (centre) - Kay Sayer

Hats made to order katheath@gmail.com

If you're ready for a sugar rave rush, listen to Kat's radio show.

See, they try to look nice for you once a year! Happy Chinese New Year!

A few syndicated photos & quotes today from China-based almost-top-model Elyse Sewell, whose Live Journal blog yields tasty tidbits from time to time: rather like a bowl of mystery congee.

I had dinner at a popular fast food restaurant. There was a picture menu; I recognized the character for "porridge" and ordered this stuff thinking it was going to be yumi zhou, corn porridge, northcountry cousin to my good friend congee. Dismay! It was regular rice congee, just wack and sweet with pieces of lycheeish fruit in it. Not satisfying. I saw a savory congee on the menu doe, so XiNet.Life and I will definitely tangle again. ("XiNet.Life"? Also today I saw a shopping center called "Email Fashion.")

For Christmas, Elyse says she'll take "pretty much anything from Aisle 21"

Bacon Scarf



Link

Bacon Wallet



Link

So I may have quibbled in the past with the general precepts of veganism.

In my view its moral philosophy, claims to ecological superiority and overall social value remain contentious.

But I sure do love their shoes....introducing the "Vegan" wrap around boot from Tom's Ethical Shoe Store




Not loving the dried pig ear bracelet so much

Strolled past this the other day.


.

The village pet store and charcoal grill

By definition a refrigerator stands alone in its corner and, withdrawn from the world, it controls its atmosphere and protects its contents. Its door must be kept closed, otherwise it looses its cool. This withdrawal explains the isolation of refrigerators.
Is it possible to envision the encounter between two refrigerators? In this installation, two solitudes unite through a canal connecting their inside worlds. This unusual encounter produces a mist on the surface that binds them together.

Michel de Broin

Pita Pocket

Source


Toast Ring


Fish Flip Flops

Wong bok bondage. By Makoto Azuma. NRW Forum, Düsseldorf, last weekend.