October 1 presentation (12.5 mg, updated for presentation on October 8)
See ppt, Goldfish in Blenders, Hudson River Project. Relevant to smaller, more immediate shopdrop project: Eva Strohmeier, "Enchanted Aisles" and iKatun, New American DictionaryBring drafts of / proposal, CV, narrative bio, artist statement, & contextual statement. Have grant and exhibition/distribution proposal sources identified.
Revised proposal due, review of DANM workshop contents/approach and development of project specifications
Development of grant applications. (I am so swamped with fellowship apps for the dissertation I cannot face another hour of grant writing until those are sent off--11-9 and 11-15 respectively--So stay tuned for this, I promise, I'm thinking about it but I cannot act on it this week.) Five interview questions should be finalized. (see cluster page).
Started a website for the project: http://xddp.performative.com/
Based on last week's really productive prototype conversation (plus some talking w/Warren about my first chapter draft of the dissertation) I've decided to take a more participatory approach with this project, and use some of the time alotted to our cohort in the faculty gallery to make a relational kitchen environment that asks some of the same questions as XDDP. And XDDP will still be the identity instigating those conversations. I've changed the literature for the project to reflect this. See latest draft: November 26 draft.
Situated between family history and ethno-botanical inquiry, my current work engages with global food politics and colonialism's impact on our gastronomic heritage. I use food commodities, chocolate in particular, to explore the disturbing fact that my family proudly claims conquistador ancestry. Central to my work are questions of identification and desire in colonial narratives. The problem of “claiming the conqueror” pervades many postcolonial conversations, whether this takes the form of identifying with conquering characters in books and films or real conquistadors, as with my family. In the case of chocolate marketing and consumption, shoppers are often asked to feel virtuous for having purchased fair trade, organic, eco-friendly products, but are simultaneously encouraged to think of these same laborers as exotic others. People and cocoa beans collapse, with both workers and chocolate entering discourse as treasures to be discovered and consumed.
I make both altered products and participatory performance spaces, modeled on public kitchens, free sample stations, and advertising booths. Whenever possible, I situate these objects and performances in everyday sites, like high-end supermarkets and shopping malls. Natural food markets sublimate the effects of colonial aggression, transforming latent colonial desires into high-end gourmet marketing campaigns. I value subtle interventions that interrupt the marketplace, questioning how indigenous culture becomes a commodity on the supermarket shelves. My current work, the Xocatl Desire Distribution Project, creatively disrupts chocolate products by introducing alternative modes of interacting with cocoa beans and workers. XDDP's interventions range from adding subversive text to tea boxes and chocolate wrappers to creating sample shows complete with video testimonial from unlikely sources.
In the future, I intend to continue exploring chocolate politics by intervening in participatory spaces, including supermarkets, art spaces, and online spaces. I am also researching the cocoa plant, asking how historical shifts in human-plant relations have brought us to our current space of fascination with cocoa in its many forms. 21st century shoppers must find a way to consider cocoa's globalization from the perspective of contemporary Mayan producers without making those same producers into mythical figures or noble savages. The complex systems of desire and identification at play in many advertising narratives demands multiple re-readings, challenging consumers to reposition themselves within narratives of desire and conquest.
Several existing approaches inform both my shop drop work and my participatory kitchen installations. The best-known shop drop of our era was produced by the Barbie Liberation Organization. Artist activists switched voice boxes in Barbie dolls and GI Joe dolls, causing GI Joe to say things like "Let's go shopping!" while Barbie said things like "Vengeance is mine!" The Xocatl Desire Distribution Program effects a similar detournment, but I am interested in overturning assumptions about class and narrative desire rather than gender issues. The participatory kitchen is directly influenced by the work of the Critical Art Ensemble, Christine Chin, and the National Bitter Melon Council.
These artists use food to engage the public in everyday spaces. CAE makes participatory installations that ask specific questions about food and biotechnology. For example, Free Range Grain tested grocery purchases for DNA markers that would indicate genetic modification. Christine Chin makes "human vegetable hybrids." These sculptures are designed to illustrate invisible technologies. Chin has made "toothy lychee," "finger carrots," and vegetables and fruits with eyes, ears, and lips. Together, these ingredients appear The New Genetically Modified Foods Cook Book and its companion cooking show. The National Bitter Melon Council promotes bitter melon in a variety of participatory ways, usually involving samples of raw bitter melon accompanied by literature about bitter melon, recipes, surveys, and the opportunity to share a bitter story.
My kitchen incorporates elements from all of these performances, asking people to engage with taste and flavor, as with NBMC, while simultaneously making invisible narrative forces visible, as with CAE and Chin. Chocolate tasting will be juxtaposed with activities similar to those practiced by NBMC (surveys, stories, and recipes), with two goals in mind: first, illustrating the complexities behind narrative identification with conquering figures and second, illuminating the divide between the celebration of fair trade labor practices and the exotification of those same laborers' ethnicities in advertising imagery and copy.
The Xocatl Desire Distribution Program)
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