Page 8 - Free Soup — Daniel Pravit Fethke

ARTIST/
FILMMAKER/
EDUCATOR/

Projects

Food as Care Cookbook
Tree of Heaven
Untitled Graduate Thesis
Pratt Public Sphere
Cannon Café (Café Bustelo)
Culinary Performances
Ox-Bow Pad Thai
LaTerre Realty Trust
On the Line

Bio
Curriculum Vitae

Email
Instagram

UPDATES

CULINARY PERFORMANCES

2021-Ongoing

Dimensions: Variable
Form: Culinary Performance
Materials: Food, To-Go containers, Cooking equipment, mobile soup cart, apron, neighbors.

CULINARY PERFORMANCES

Food can be an incredible way to tell stories, and I have explored cooking as form as a response to the past years of pandemic precarity. I draw inspiration from the food we eat, the recipes we pass down, and the places that remind us of home. I often place myself in my work as a facilitator of dialogue, as a provocateur asking critical questions, as a host creating space for people to come together. I use food—in particular the act of cooking, gathering, and sharing meals—as an entry point into new discursive and public spheres.

As such, I have devised a series of happenings that I call “culinary performances”: a loose collection of site and time-specific cooking sessions that all hinge around the centrality of shared dialogue in public space. Each performance follows a particular formula that privileges the location and the dish served while keeping room for growth and flexibility with each iteration. The first culinary performance was in November 2021 on Flushing Avenue in front of my MFA studio building. Often times, I cook chicken soup — a dish that embodies care and reminds me of home.

As a perpetual student of social practice art, I am indebted to the visual language of practitioners like Rirkrit Tiravanija, whose use of food, gatherings, and “a lot of people” opens up new possibilities for contemporary relational aesthetics. Like Tiravanija, I seek to interrogate the systems we find ourselves embedded in as a way to open up space for the social, the restful, and the hopeful. As I continue to create socially-engaged artworks, I intend to investigate hopeful futures that are in direct conversation with artists like Tania Bruguera or Theaster Gates. Bruguera’s concept of “Arte Útil” (Useful Art) provides a positive framework for thinking of my practice as a tool that can be positioned as a means to create real social and political change - shaping collective futures that center community, resistance, and joy.

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DANIEL

PRAVIT

FETHKE

Projects

UPDATES

CULINARY PERFORMANCES