FOOD LABYRINTH
Art installation | 2012
LOCATION NEW DELHI PHOTOGRAPHY ANAGRAM ARCHITECTS
Food Labyrinth at the UnBox Festival 2012 was an anchor event aimed at creating voyages that challenge the way one experiences and consumes food. Held in New Delhi at the Goethe Institut on 3 February 2012, it attempted to curate a special social space, which lends a quality of discovery and exploration to the act of consuming and thinking about food. Co-curated by the Grey Garden and B.L.O.T (India), the Food Labyrinth was partly a modern day ritual feast and partly a gastronomical social experiment. A playground of whimsical gastronomic adventures, it was all about using off-beat methods to experience food in a multi-sensorial environment. At a deeper level, the mandate was to investigate the very nature of food, its creation and consumption and attempt to temper the exploration with questions of sustainability and waste. The participants were exposed to new-age culinary practices such as molecular gastronomy and mixology, as well as traditional family recipes and street-food techniques to create new forms of consumption and tasting that were aimed to intrigue and engage.
Local treasures from the ever bustling Old Delhi street markets share space with an assemblage of fresh organic produce (even edible soil). Inventive live cooking stations where invited dreamers-meet-cooks whipped up recipes both traditional and modern, telling guests stories about their genesis and evolution.
The challenge to design the venue for the Food Labyrinth was to be fundamentally grounded in the principals of sustainability while creating ample infrastructure for laboratory-like experimentation that was to take place at the venue. The design collaborative of Anagram Architects, CellDSGN and Mia Morikawa responded to this challenge by choosing to restrict themselves to a vocabulary of wooden cargo pallets and uncut plywood boards. By combining these basic components an elaborate set of ten different types of work counters and consoles were devised.
These were then fitted with custom made light fixtures and display structures made with used, softwood fruit and vegetable cases. Ingredients and implements were arranged in “shelving” and “slots” formed in the recesses of upright counter pallets. Inspired by Japanese bonsai moss-balls, garnishes and herbs were provided through kokedama hangings from the tree on site. Special attention was paid to creating tasting plates out of leaves and vessels out of terracotta. Both these were lined with banana leaves which could be changed and disposed after every new creation.
All the organic waste generated was meticulously collected in custom fashioned gunny-sack receptacles. Simple ponchos were made out of plain cotton fabric to act as aprons to protect the clothes of the participants. The space was also enlivened by an audio-visual installation by B.L.O.T. screening food diaries – video stories on food and eating from all over the world.
