THE HOST:
Kitchen Studio
Video and animation: Chris Howlett / Sound: Anna Whitaker
A collaborative project commissioned by Kitchen Studio, co-commissioned by Metro Arts and Brisbane Festival.This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body and Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.
KITCHEN STUDIO
Kitchen Studio is a place where sculpture, food and ideas are interchangeable and digestible. During the day we open our doors to those who are curious to explore the sculptural dining room. And when the sun sets, the artist steps into the kitchen to host a provocative sensory journey for an intimate group of guests.
Kitchen Studio was an artist restaurant open for two months from 30th August to 28th October 2024. Kitchen Studio is presented by Metro Arts and Brisbane Festival. Director/creator: Elizabeth Willing, Sound: Anna Whitaker, Creative Producer: Maisie Crosdale, Video Art: Chris Howlett, Architecture and seating: Dirk Yates, Video footage by Nevin Howell, photography by Charlie Hillhouse.
FOREWORD
The creation of these animated sequences was made possible through many different discussions I had with Elizabeth Willing in relation to the ideas for Kitchen Studio. During the two years of negotiation and revisiting the evolving courses, what became clear was that the design of the environments had to come first, before the narrative was clearly established. These virtual sets played a large role in forming the narratives for each course and what the animated sequences could possibly become. Each montage would enhance and hopefully move beyond the sit-down experience of eating and digestion.
The Host: Video excerpts, Kitchen Studio, 2024, HD, (9:16, Portrait), 31.17mins, looped. Sound: Anna Whitaker.
In addition, The Host was just one component to a larger whole and in many ways is out of context shown in this online format. It was created specifically for a participatory experience and sits in close proximity to the actions of performers, the audience, sound art, architectural design and installation. The online video here is a preview of selected sequences that make up the courses, rather than the entire video. In short, each course had its own sequence which used the software QLab to activate each video to coincide with the start, midway or ending of a meal. Kitchen Studio would not have been possible without using this piece of software to choregraph the content of the moving-image to the experience of each course.
The Host: Introductory Sequence (excerpts: still images), Kitchen Studio, 2024, HD, (9:16, Portrait), 31.17mins, looped. Sound: Anna Whittaker
COLLABORATIVE AIMS OF THE VIDEO
To produce The Host, an Introductory sequence was created along with five separate montages for each course of Tea, Shortbread, Chocolate, Cocktail, and Gum. The video pieces (not including the introduction) were divided into two stages, the first an action sequence which was designed to activate each course, and the second, a still or ambient sequence to coincide with the serving of the courses. This second stage was not meant to interfere with the performative and interpersonal processes of each course. Instead, the ambient or still montage functioned as a mediative facilitator for digestion. In this part of Kitchen Studio the interpersonal and interpretation of each course was an important guiding principal for how the sequence transformed.
INTRODUCTORY SEQUENCE
The creation of the work moved away from an instructional approach to each montage which forced connections between the animated sequence and each food element within their respective courses. It relied on a playful and open-ended model to form meanings, rather than an overly didactic approach to hosting. For instance, the introductory sequence does not show the gut or digestion but an observable pink sphere negotiating thresholds such as a dark villi-like passage, a membrane of a starfish or to disappear into a flowers’ bloom.
In this introductory scene a particle precariously moves through an ocean shoreline zigzagging between a vast mix of plant and rock material until it vanishes. I tried to design an unbelievable place of abundant life, an interstice between the land and the sea, where life thrives and is in a state of flux where the particle could explore then vanish down another pathway such as into the throat of a flower. This threshold between the flowers opening or the morsel moving across into the mouth was another way to frame the processes of digestion which happens automatically and beyond our control. And by inviting the participant to sit on this pedestal in the gallery they become a subject on view, exposed as if they are sitting on a strange futuristic commode with leg warmers. No real faeces are passed here, they’re entirely absorbed through an invisible particle system, between body and seat. An effortless, unremarkable and abjectless approach to excretion.
Kitchen Studio: Install detail. Chair designed by Dirk Yates, Speculative Architecture. Photograph: Charlie Hillhouse.
Furthermore, the video was never meant to be an instructional video on how to react to the courses, unlike the traditional host of a dinner party who is there to inform, assist, respond to comments and help with the experience. These digital narratives try to explore the metaphoric and awkward potential of the experiences of hosting a “meal”, sitting next to unfamiliar guests, and questioning the unfamiliarity of ‘food’ or ‘non-food’ within the performance. The video experience as an initial focal point, similarly to the hearth of the fireplace, down low, which was to prepare the audience for the upcoming ‘dining and performative experience’. Similarly, when staring into a fire many different thoughts can play on the mind, and operate as a trigger, the opposite is also true where the experience of the flickering flames become all-consuming, even meditative where thoughts are diminished, allowing other sounds and ideas to come into play.
The various food elements cut within the introduction such as the banana lying underneath the sky with island vegetation in the background represents the beauty of their forms, colours, shapes and their capacity to give life, but also their throw away potential. This was not to make it strictly about excesses within the food industry and our proclivities for wasteful eating, but to present an affecting image. The Unreal generated banana under the sunsetting sky which could move from comedic associations of the phallus or slipping, with alternative meanings of rotting and the debris of existence. We are all bananas.
In addition, the parathesis of the Microscope ascending and descending which contains the entire sequence of all the works is the only life-action sequence, whereas the rest of The Host is built entirely within a virtual world environment. 3D Animation and post-production programs along with the Game Engine Unreal have all been heavily used to generate all of the environments throughout The Host. To return to the microscope, which on one level is always about making the invisible visible, instead here the idea of the microscope is also about self-introspection, and to pose the question of what does it mean to digest, to consume, to think of the unseen, or to imagine the gut in all its microbial soupy mass playing its part in the everyday processes of digestion. And for me, digestion in this context is not just a bodily process, but a metaphoric process. The digestion of politics, ideas, or the phenomenological experience absorbed by the mind/body, rather than simply the ingestion of material matter.
