Food Facility.

Based on digital search engines Food Facility is symptomatic of the change in analogue thinking and acting after the emergence of internet. Meet the FOOD HOST, the FOOD ADVISER, and the FOOD DJ and order your take away with a twist.

FOOD FACILITY: Food Facility is a working prototype restaurant where the central kitchen is replaced by kitchens of existing take-out restaurants in the area. You are invited to make a choice from the menu of these take-outs and consume your order at Food Facility.

FOOD ADVISER: In a comfortable and social ambiance a food adviser will advise you on the quality and estimated delivery time of the different take-out dinners available and will place the order for you.

FOOD DJ: A food dj receives the order from the scooter delivery boys and will do away with the abundance of wrapping materials before the food adviser will serve it to you at your table.

FOOD SERENDIPITY: Food Facility is a real restaurant but it’s also an experiment and a performance. We invite you to participate, enjoy yourself, and research the possibilities this concept may have. With a little negotiating with other guests it should be possible to have Tom Ka Ka as a starter, spareribs as a main course and Tiramisu for dessert. Although naturally it is impossible to forecast exactly what possibilities the evening may present.

CONCEPTS IN THE DIGITAL SLIPSTREAM: In the slipstream of digital technologies and the Internet, customs and needs developed with profound effects on the configuration of our material environment. Food Facility is the physical realisation of the virtual possibilities promised by search engines like Google or Yahoo.
By culinary, culturally and socially linking itself to the local take-out network Food Facility becomes a platform with limitless possibilities to change its form.

EX-DESIGNER: Food Facility is a concept by Marti Guixé, the Catalan ex—designer infamous for his immaterial approach to a material profession and his taboo-breaking food designs like IBM sponsored beans and a gin and tonic fog. In Food facility he deconstructs yet another solid foundation of our cultural and culinary environment, the traditional restaurant.

A SHORT HISTORY OF PRIVATE FOOD IN A PUBLIC SPACE: The relationship between the locative restaurant and the non-locative kitchen is firmly based in history. Inside as well as outside of the art world.

Just a few examples from the Netherlands: In 1990 the legendary Supperclub and its chef Thor Vos organized an evening where the food was ordered from take-outs, including Mac Donalds.
During the conceptualisation the Lloyd Hotel in Amsterdam considered not opening a kitchen and having their guests choose from various take-out menu's in its vicinity. The idea was finally abandoned for its 24 hour à la carte restaurant.
Dutch artist Eric Wie was the first to ccreate a take-out food restaurant in a public space during the 1996 Kunstvlaai he created Arie Vederci, a restaurant where you could have pizza delivered.
In Groningen between 1998 and 2003 an artist collective named MPD Export organized similar evenings under the name No Kitchen United in different locations, one evening serving up to 150 guests! a selection of take-out foods.

Also well known is the way millions of lunches are delivered every day in the Indian city of Mumbai through a system of Dabawallas that very closely resembles the ideas unlying these various projects.

In China certain street corner vendors work excactly in this style, selling food that is ordered from little take-out kitchens in the neighbourhood. The only thing they provide is chopsticks, a small plastic kitchentable and chair.

OPEN CALL: This is an open call for people to include their project into the archive of non-locative food initiatives. Please send your project with digital photos, short description and dates to mail@mediamatic.net.

Food Facility is open on Fridays and Saturdays from 6 - 10 PM between November 4 - December 11 2005
For reservations call 06 33768810 or send an email to mail@mediamatic.net

related items:
guixe.com
buyguixe.com The Marti Guixe Store.
Useful + Agreeable http://www.usefulandagreeable.com/guixe.html Useful + Agreeable