Nose to Tail, 2018
artist's menu, performance
‘Nose to tail’ is a performance that marked the 12th Manifesta Finissage, which took place in one of the rooms of the Palazzo Trinacria in Palermo. Palazzo – likewise Palermo Manifesta itself – is pretty much intertwined with the sea, both from the outside, as Palazzo faces the sea, and in the inside (since its interior outplays ship’s nose). Nose to tail is a phrase that represents a way of eating and cooking with every possible part of an ani- mal being used. This was the basic principle of the menu, tailored specifically for the reception and somewhat reflecting the idea of the performance in its core. Much in parallel with the “Stomach it” performance, shown for the 2017 Venice Biennale, the artist dwells upon several situations: the typical bourgeois reception that marks every exhibition opening, the opposition of the servants and masters and the politics of food, that in this case involved the typical Palermo recipes.
What triggered the artist was the opening reception of Palermo Manifesta: as the artist claims herself, the reception was so much out of the context, so much irrelevant and out of place, that she wanted to see what happens if she reverses the situation by changing the roles of servers and the guests. For this, throughout the whole 2,5 hours of reception the servers would break the plates, spill the wine and pour it back into the bottles, set a minimum monthly income fee for the certain dishes and so on. Inspired by Italian Marxist philosopher’s Antonio Negri passage “Service with a Smile», where he describes an event during the June days Uprising in Paris when the smile of a waitres caused her a discharge, Taus tries to repeat the situation in the context of contemporary art receptions. An unpredictable shifting of the roles is marked by the smile – not a sign of a server’s failure, but the hint of rebellion. A provocative poem “Ugly” (2013) of the famous UK-Kenyan poet Warsan Shire was whispered in the ears of the guests, whereas the other servers would play the extracts from the Chilean playwrights’ Marco de la Parra’s absurdist play “Lo crudo, lo cocido, lo podrido” (The Raw, the Cooked, and the Rotten, 1978), that itself dwells upon the problem of politics of food, the politics of a «rotten» state and the decadent expression of an unexpected uprising. Not only the texts evoked the rebellious notion of servants taking over the masters. Indeed, the menu was no less provoking. Tuna sperm sack and tuna hearts, prepared in the shape of stones, swim bladders with the most exotic taste and traditional Palermo beccafico, neonata in bouillon and risotto with the black rice, sausage made of of pork and tuna, fried swordfish eyes – some of the dishes were almost impossible to eat. And this was exactly the artists’ goal – to turn the high-brow art reception into a unobvious battlefield between the art lovers and the waiters. As a elegant last stroke, fish scales were thrown at the viewers as the lights were turned off.
Medeya Margoshvili
1. Antonio Negri, Uprising as Event, essay, 2017.
2. Sara Ahmed, Living a feminist life, 2017, Duke University Press, Durham.
3. Mental1, “I just got fired for not smiling enough...WTF?!?!?!” from the “Mental Health Forum”, March 2014. www.mentalhealthforum.net/forum/thread83107.html
4. Marco Antonio de la Parra, Lo crudo, lo cocido, lo podrido (The Raw, The Cooked and the Rotten, 1978). Translation by Catherine Boyle.
5. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859.
6. Warsan Shire, “Ugly”, 2013, from Teaching my mother how to give birth, Flipped Eye Publishing, London. 7. Anthony Bourdain, Medium Raw, 2010, Ecco Press, New York.
Chefs: Daria Corso, Vito D’Anna, Alessandro Giglio
Performers: Mario Barnaba, Alice Canzonieri, Martina Cassenti, Maziar Firouzi, Claudia Di Gangi, Quinzio Quiescenti
Menu design: Martina Motta
Special thanks to Malika Alieva, Francesco Bellina, Chiara Cartuccia, Maria Elena Ciullo, Maziar Firouzi, Fabio Gatani, Daria Khan, Oleksandr Kutovyi, Michela Lareddola, Gabria Lupone, Medeya Margoshvili, Giovanni Mazzola, Martina Motta, Rosario Perricone, Vladislav Shapovalov, Kseniya Skorytchenko, Tatiana Tarragó, Maria Chiara di Trapani and Mirjam Varadinis
Commissioned by the 12th Manifesta Finissage, production supported by V-A-C Foundation
Photo: Simone Sapienza
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