I’m up in Norwich continuing a project I started last year with Critical Practice called Waste Proposal Unit. I was invited here by Outpost Gallery as part of their series of short residencies this summer for CAN ’09 entitled Outhouse.
One first action on Thursday was to document the Outhouse space by filming a walkthrough of the building before it is occupied and transformed. It really is an amazing building and I’d like to show it as it is now, full of potential soon to be realised.
My aim for the week is to seek out local producers, food retailers and restaurants and to develop recipes based on these interactions. The research over the first few days will culminate with an event offering free food to the crowd as a means of documenting these conversations and recipes and making them live.
Thursday has been a day of setting up (see my quite pompous ‘office’ setup above) and first forays into the city looking for interesting people and produce. One of the first things I encountered was a small stall of home-grown produce outside an antiques shop. In particular the beetroot looked great. Later at Penita’s Deli I learnt about a local goat’s cheese made at Jacmar Dairy. I think this will pair well with the beetroot. I start to think about modes of presentation; in particular I’d like to try to make a beetroot jelly of some sort, which will mean finding something like agar agar so that I don’t have to use gelatine, meaning that vegetarians can’t eat the dish.
Something that has been bugging me recently is the question of how the process of sketching functions for live artists and those working with the broad model of relational aesthetics. This practice is surely still necessary for artists working in those areas, and I think these days of research could be a great opportunity to play with what this means for me. I hope to cook each evening as a way of sketching the forthcoming food and live environment that I’ll be presenting on Tuesday. Tonight I’m glad to be able to cook for Cutup Collective who are also staying in the Octagon Court flat for Outhouse – they will have left before Tuesday’s event. I’ll be testing out some ideas for the beetroot and cheese, perhaps with a fennel seed sugar syrup, and certainly incorporating the beet tops in some way. Additionally I’d like to play around with two of my favourite flavours with lamb – rosemary and lavender – as these are both growing in the gardens around our flat.
Tags: Outhouse, outpost, waste proposal unit
