A thousand and one disguises of flesh

Tactical cooking with Oliver Vodeb, Manfred Huber & Darren Tofts

“Herodotus, Athanaeus and Plutarch have recorded that in order to stimulate the guests to enjoy earthly pleasures to the full, a coffin was sometimes brought in at the end of the meal with a skeleton in it so that they should appreciate more highly the good things in life.” – Larousse Gastronomique


Curriculum for the excitation of taste and the euphoria of the mind

After all is said and done, after the comestibles are complete, the dishes washed and the appetite sated, this will not, after Marcel Duchamp, have been a cooking class. Nor will it have been a seminar de cuisine, in the manner of the debauched tangle of Epicureanism, sex and death in Marco Ferreri’s 1973 film La Grande Bouffe. Rather it is a collective exploration of the possible, of what can be done with little, enjoyed and remembered with so much pleasure.

The bricolage of cooking, of trying out what ingredient goes with another, is about pushing the boundaries, mixing liquorice and pate, lark’s tongues and aspic. The excited piquancy of that first taste, the olfactory pleasure of consumption and the afterglow of feeling different than you did before, sated and joyous, is an experience to which you are invited.

Gourmands, gluttons, epicures, snackers and all manner of nibblers are invited to participate in a one-day cooking event in which you will prepare and consume a bespoke dish invented by anti-celebrity Chefs Oliver Vodeb, Manfred Huber and Darren Tofts. But leave your table manners and your kerchiefs at home. Think instead of washing spinach with the Sex Pistols, chowing down with the Ramones and cleaning up with Iggy Pop. More punk than perfection, this event is about the simple joys of trying it on, of seeing what happens and making something sublime out of very little. The ancient alchemists manufactured gold from base metals. You can turn offal into an olfactory sensation.

So get your pinnies on and pump out the jam!

The Process:

We will invite ten Memefest event participants to be part of the tactical cooking session, which will happen on Saturday November 26th from 1.30- 5 pm at the CERES community kitchen. Your participation is free. We will cook and eat- the rest is secret. In order to participate write in few sentences why you would like to be part of this and send it to memefest@memefest.org till November 16. We will contact the chosen participants with more details. You are kindly invited.

Register for the Memefest event here: http://tinyurl.com/jb6bl7g