<nettime-ann> Beggar' s Food : Foodpower Performance

["Redazione Digicult" <redazione@digicult.it>]

.
Sorry for any crosspostings

Digicult presents:

Beggar' s Food : Foodpower Performance
I'm hangry / Are you hungry?

Milan, Tuesday the 2nd of February 2010 at 5.30 PM

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Media partner and press: Digicult (www.digicult.it). Critical text: Antonio
Caronia.
Video, directing and editing: Franca Formenti

http://www.foodpower.it/English/Index.htm
http://www.digicult.it/en/2009/beggarsfoodfoodpowerperformance.asp

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Tuesday the 2nd of February 2010 at 5.30 PM Dissapore presents Beggar's Food
| I'm Hungry / Are You Hungry?, a performance developed by the artist Franca
Formenti and created in collaboration with the director of Dissapore,
Massimo Bernardi.The event was triggered by FoodPower, a project created by
Franca Formenti in 2007 and developed into a series of actions and
performances through which to re-think about food, intended as a core
instrument of power mechanisms.

t's not a coincidence that at the beginning of the new century food has
become, as did happen at the dawn of modernity, a cultural phenomenon. We
are going through a phase of social transformation, of adaptation to a new
form of capitalism, the capitalism of knowledge. In this new phase food
becomes a central cultural object.

"We are idealistically used to the fact that culture is in the high ranks of
our life, that's it's a bit above us, that it is the highest and most noble
product of our brain, often forgetting about our stomach. In some moments of
transition food becomes "food for thought". Food reminds us that our body
keeps being the privileged instrument of our thoughts, and even some of the
more immaterial, noble and vile things that human beings can produce".
(Antonio Caronia)

FoodPower is a work in progress of actions and situations that involve the
audience and professionals of the world of food, creative incursions that
act on the various ways of experiencing food and the behaviour that it
creates.

At the same time with the 2010 edition of the Milan congress of Identità
Golose (Gluttonous Identities) , a meeting of international importance
dedicated to authorial cuisine Beggar's Food | I'm Hungry / Are You Hungry?
In Milan, in Piazza Argentina, will have a food stand , where the public can
buy food prepared by exceptional chefs. Beggar's Food will be an occasion to
taste dishes prepared by some homeless immigrants, who, after having been
trained by the Dissapore staff, which is a reference point for the world of
food in its various meanings, have acquired a high level of competence and
professionalism in the restoration field. The chefs will give the public
that take part in the performance a bowl of soup, a dish that is connected
to the tradition of "poor" cuisine. An example of social diet, soup is
capable of seducing taste, nurturing healthily and protecting from the cold
weather of winter in a genuine and economical way

Beggar's Food is an event connected to food and the pleasure of the palate,
but at the same time it is a prototype for the creation of a new economical
model, an inversion of the mechanism of supply/demand for those who live in
difficult social and economical situations.

"I'm Hungry" is a statement, but at the same time a question, which crowds
around the streets of Milan in a problematic way: on sidewalks, in the
underground, on streetcars, these places are stages for increasingly
pressured requests from those who are hungry, those who do not have a roof
over their head, those who do not even have the bare minimum to be able to
survive. The demand for food passes through the cleanliness of a car
windscreen at a traffic light, the gadgets of street sellers, the roses
given at restaurant tables, the petulant echoes of a question that
multiplies uncontrollably. The answer is often detachment toward those
requests, and in many cases, exploitation of them. The problem of the
question "I'm Hungry" and its consequences are at the core of the concept of
Beggar's Food . The performance takes its title from Berthold Brecht's
"Three Penny Opera", which was inspired by the satirical comedy "The 
Beggar's
Opera" by John Gay in 1727. In the original text, Gay makes the poor people,
the beggars, into the pariahs of society, heroes of a world turned upside
down. Gay triggers an overturn of the values of his contemporary London to
represent the image of corruption and immorality of the political system of
high society as a reflection.

In the same way, the performance Beggar's Food isolates the social
phenomenon of the excluded, the poor man, and makes him a street action, a
situation where he can take part, provoking an overturning of the rules with
which to play. Beggar's Food inverts the burning question of the poor man by
transforming it until it becomes an offering: "I'm Hungry" becomes "Are you
Hungry?". Thanks to the competence and experience of Massimo Bernardi and
the staff of Dissapore, the poor man enters into the world of food, becoming
a person who offers something instead of a victim of his own question. An
offer that creates an economical offer, seeing as the public will be able to
give money back. A donation or the umpteenth hand-out, and a symbol that is
firmly in the "space" of the performance is the relationship between
food-money that is at the base of the liberal economy.

Dissapore was founded in 2009 by Massimo Bernardi in collaboration with a
series of associated editors, with the objective of creating an informative
and thought-provoking space on food and wine and to give an impression in
real time on top gastronomical news. Designed by Tiziano Fogliata with the
graphics of Antonio Tomacelli, Dissapore wants to be an encounter between
the traditional editorial model of a magazine and the innovative one of a
blog. A editing team of dynamic collaborators who mix text content with
multimedia, thanks to the video contributions, to propose an antidote to the
daily dose of gastronomical journalism that is insipid and servile,
lightened by the pleasure of discovering, cooking, eating and sharing good
food. Beggar's Food is an event created by Franca Formenti, developed in
collaboration with Massimo Bernardi and Dissapore (www.dissapore.com).
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