The Dinner
I studied fine art, and our university organized art camps every summer for each department. As a painter I was also able to take part in the art camp organized for the Intermedia department. Their program was to organise an own canteen for two weeks (hommage á Gordon Matta-Clark’s FOOD projekt) where we cooked together each afternoon, and then spent the evenings feasting together, with other guests from the art camp.
I loved the idea, but i did not cook anything. Like all courses, we also got a theme that had to be worked out during the time we spent there: "Nature and My Relationship to it". I thought I'd hook up the two.
We always chase animals (like wasps, flys , ants… etc) away from our food, so I served them a dinner as an apology. For this, I collected fallen fruits and various carcasses for days, and then served it for them. I made some video documentation and pencil drawings about this dinner.
During the days I got the hang of drawing insects. So one night I went to the kitchen, which - as the light was on and the door was open and the whole camp was located near a forest - was overran with insects: spiders, mosquitoes, flies, moths, ants, earwigs, etc…
I carefully draw a similar one next to each of them with a pencil. Crusader spider next to the light switch, daddy-long-legs in the corner, ants next to the bin, mosquitoes on the ceiling. By the morning the kitchen was overwhelmed by many living creatures, and at first glance it was not possible to distinguish the living ones from the drawings. It was funny when someone got scared of a spider I draw at the switch. Fortunately, I did not have to repaint the kitchen, only the caretaker was angry a little bit.
