Alejandra Alarcón’s performance Edible Playscapes:An Embodied Dining Experience took place between 23 of April and 3 of May in Mediamatic’s Sluiderenloods in collaboration with TestTafel - a foundation supporting DeSerring’s community based action through experimental vegan food.
Cake as an Artistic Medium
“Let them eat cake” as falsely attributed to the French queen Mary Antoinette, showcased her poor understanding of poverty before the French Revolution. Historically, cake has never been just another type of meal but rather considered a luxury food, used often to encompass all varieties of sweets. Nowadays, it is still strongly associated with celebration where the dessert serves as a reward of an achievement. Now, food is taking this label again due to climate change and future disappearance of main ingredients. Alejandra is fascinated with all the layers of cake whether political, socio-cultural and/or visual.
To Alejandra, cake is deeply personal. Growing up in Mexico, she witnessed the dessert’s significant role in the culinary culture: the widespread presence of pastelerías (bakeries specializing in cakes), the cultural importance of events like quinceañeras, and the influence of both Spanish colonial and American culinary traditions have made cake a central element in Mexican festive rituals and social gatherings. Alejandra grew up making cake and soon turned into a family tradition where she would bake for her closest ones. It was through personal experiences - making sugar-free cakes for her father who had to restrain for health reasons - that she began experimenting with alternative ingredients. Later on, she adopted plant-based recipes. As much as it is personal, cake interests Alejandra also for its cultural familiarity amongst different cultures of the world even if it doesn’t take the shape of a cake, there is often something sweet to celebrate with. At weddings for example, the dessert is not only on the menu but is attributed to a whole ceremony - the cutting of the first piece, the newlyweds smearing it on each other’s faces and all the photos capturing it as a core part of the celebration.
Reimagining the Table: Play, Performance, and Participation
The experience begins with a three course menu prepared by TestTafel, consisting of an experimental amalgam of flavors tickling the senses of smell, touch and taste. After that, participants join Alejandra for the performance where the dining table is reimagined as a playscape - both visually and conceptually. Low round table, reminiscent of a kids’ table, enclosed by dark curtains much like a theatrical performance. Participants are given an introduction to the performance, after which are left to explore what is on the table by themselves. But is it a performance then? But what is a performance?
As a relatively new medium, artistic performance has constantly been subject to change by makers from different backgrounds. Often twisted, stretched to the extent that is no longer easily definable. Edible Playscapes encapsulates some of the characteristics attributed to artistic performance. Using the framework of play, Alejandra offers an interactive and sensory experience where the stage is given to participants. Drawing from classical ideas of play as voluntary and imaginative, Alejandra subverts the roles of performer and guest, leaving room for experimentation and reflection of traditional dining behaviour. Performances such as John Cage’s 4’33 concert has been considered a pioneering work in experimental performance as it could not meet the definition of a musical piece. 4’33 consisted mainly of the silence and incidental sounds made by the audience, waiting for a concert which never began.
Alejandra’s practice coming from the field of design makes a significant statement on the possibilities of merging two fields- performance and food design, in an intriguing playful way. By encouraging us to be playful as kids, it reminds us of the importance of taking a break from seriousness and embraces creativity. Each performance as much as individuals engage to different levels with the food or amongst themselves. In reframing the table as a playground, Alejandra tapped into a lineage of participatory art often associated with relational aesthetics, but her emphasis on tactility added another dimension. The hands became the primary tool, and the act of exploring how to behave on the table, interact with the different tastes and amongst guests themselves became a performance in itself. In this way, Edible Playscapes questioned not only how we eat together but also how we feel together.
There is a high contrast between the TestTafel dinner and Alejandra’s table. At the official dinner, you are gathered by strangers at the table which creates an awareness of one’s self and behaviour. Common in Western dining culture are the set of unwritten rules which come with sometimes an unnecessary dose of rigidness. Am I eating too fast, are my elbows off the table, which fork do I use for the starter?
Invitation to Reflect
After the introduction, Alejandra gives pieces of paper with prompts written on for participants to keep in mind throughout the experience. One question from the prompts you give is: “Was there a moment when you felt self-conscious?” At a time when eating together is increasingly mediated by convenience and speed, Edible Playscapes insisted on slowness, presence, and on the raw beauty of shared mess-making.
At Alejandra's table especially, it is not only the concept which invites you to throw all the norms through the window but also the design itself. You reach for the jam across the table, you peek at your neighbour’s piece of cake and share it - something you wouldn’t do at traditional settings, let alone with strangers. But at Edible Playscapes you embrace all of this exploration through touch and curiosity. And most importantly - you do it so collectively which turns the dinner into a ritual, embracing togetherness as people share personal memories harken back to our childhood.
"I think the main thing about playing with food is curiosity, and that's something I want people to feel during the performance - to really reconnect with food. It's very different when you're using your hands, compared to when you're using cutlery."
Perceived as one of the lower senses, touch is not also the first sense that comes to mind at the dinner table especially in Western culture. But in many parts of the world, eating with hands is an intricate part of eating and is an aspect Alejandra tries to highlight. To her, touch closes the full circle of sensorial experience when eating with first seeing the food, smelling it and before taste, touch gives important information such as the texture and temperature of the food before we indulge it.
Edible Playscapes challenges the rigidness of dining norms, typical for Western cultures, by using cake as a playful, tactile medium. It invites us to our relationship with food and shared experiences. Currently, based in Helsinki, Alejandra continues to create at the intersection of food design and performance, drawing inspiration from themes of commensality, embodied knowledge, and the politics of belonging.
