Eat or be eaten

The exhibition "eat or be eaten," initiated by me, took place in Tahliastrasse. A friend of mine, Fritz Arlmonovsky, provided us with the premises and supported us financially. Hans Ahnert and Stephan Schwarz collaborated with me both in terms of content and organization to realize the exhibition. The concept was relatively simple, as it aimed to bring together 10 artists, including ourselves, with works ranging from sculpture, painting, performance, photography, and video, all centered around the theme of food. For the preview, Hans Ahnert organized a food performance, laying out approximately 6m2 of floor space with white tiles and scattering a mixture of oysters, lobster, fine sauces, and bread rolls, inviting attendees to dine. The performance was a great success. Following that, there was a seated dinner on the 9-meter-long table constructed for the exhibition, featuring food associated with scarcity, such as ingredients commonly found during times of shortage, particularly in wartime. Guests dined on my plate series "Salonfähig" (link). The juxtaposition between Hans's performance of fine dining and the meager meal created a sense of astonishment among the invited guests. As part of the exhibition, I presented the light installation "Dining Room Neuschwanstein." Food was transported from the kitchen to the dining room via a dumbwaiter, allowing Leopold 2 to avoid direct contact with people. Additionally, I created lists of researched metaphors describing sexuality, including acts like intercourse and masturbation, along with descriptions of genitals, using food-related terms only for this exhibition. I cut out the words, each centered on an A3 sheet, and sprayed them onto another A3 sheet with a fox-pink color. I then pressed the freshly sprayed stencils onto a second A3 sheet, creating a triple execution of the word list, each filmed from a bird's-eye view. The three films played asynchronously on 12 TVs, with the intense sound of paper rustling accompanying them.