2015 - 2016
Taste Your Taste is a concept of Performance in the form of a Dinner party around the theme of the five senses: touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing.
TYT brings together a group of contemporary art professionals, the culinary art and that of science to deliver to the participants a very personal experience directly through their body by the conscious act of eating. For each Performance-Dinner I created a distinctive ambience, always in an unusual and different venue. The artist Andréa Mastrovito, the sponsor for TYT, created a special illustration, graphite on paper, to be sold in a limited edition at each event. TYT also invited other pertinent artists to participate in these themed salons.
To date, three senses have already been explored with the curator Flaminia Scauso: taste, hearing and smell.
TASTE
The performance plays on the double meaning of the word itself: the physical taste of food and taste as a moral judgment— good taste and bad taste.
The performance unfolds in three distinct atmospheres, from starter to dessert; three “Last Suppers” echoing Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, in which I guide participants through their own journey from paradise to hell, and finally to resurrection.
HEARING
Participants are placed in conditions similar to an anechoic chamber, a “deaf” space that absorbs 99.9% of sound. Their ears thus become more sensitive to perceiving noises. The experience revolves around becoming aware of the interplay between attentive listening and peripheral listening, which is often unconscious.
My performance consists in embodying peripheral listening for each participant and noting all the auditory information I receive — sounds that remain unconscious to them.
SMELL
According to the research of psychoanalyst Vittorio Bizzozero, a mother smelling her baby creates a first olfactory imprint that allows the child to develop. The performance consists in welcoming participants into the vulnerable safety of a maternal cocoon, offering them this intimate act of reconnection.
Dressed in a decontamination suit, the audience is first guided into an experimental laboratory, where they are confronted with the dogmas of mass consumption — an industry that often uses scent as bait.
