SHORTBREAD COURSE
Infused shortbreads awaited the audience served on scented wooded plates, four to be exact. This accompanied the current tea course in play. The logic of Design was at the forefront of my mind when I was creating the animation for this sequence. To design a chair or perfume bottle is metonymic, a chair is a chair is a chair and so on, the making of such a thing again and again, over and over without end.
The Host: Shortbread Course (still image), Kitchen Studio, 2024, High Definition, 1080×1920 (9:16, Portrait), 31.17mins, looped. Sound: Anna Whittaker
The spinning of the monstrous glass perfume bottles feeds into this dilemma, what I would call looping vertigo that for me sometimes feels over-whelming – do we need more time spent on designing new chairs, perfume bottles or perfecting cookies? How much freedom is in the repetition of the thing in question? But as we all know our bodies and personal tastes are obviously not all the same, so it makes sense that there are thousands, if not millions of different designs of chairs, bottles and cookies in the world to accommodate all of our cultural, ethnic, aesthetic, and gendered bodies, not to mention our desire for change and continual renewal.
So, the shortbread cookie rolls and traverses on a terrazzo floor through and around all the spinning glass without an endgame in sight. Once the action scene is over it dissolves into a spinning cycle, endlessly rotating on the spot without slowing down, limitless free energy inspired – maybe this is what design is?
