A Dinner for Humans+@/=&Machines (2022)
A performance for solar-powered beings
“Cyborg life: life as a worker who flips burgers, who speaks the cyborg speech of McDonalds, is a life that the workers of the future must prepare themselves for in small, everyday ways. My argument has been that colonized peoples of the americas have already developed the cyborg skills required for survival under techno-human conditions as a requisite for survival under domination over the last three hundred years.”
Chela Sandoval
This performance-dinner was held in October 2022 at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin as part of the AI Anarchies autumn school, a programme conceived and implemented by writer, editor and curator Nora N. Khan and technology theorist, researcher and writer Maya Indira Ganesh.
Responding to the themes of the school, I developed the concept of a dinner for beings — humans, androids, cyborgs, as well as others — powered by sunlight. At the time, I had just moved into a new studio, across the road from an Amazon warehouse in Berlin; the perimeter of the warehouse is covered in solar-powered cameras and sees a never-ending traffic of delivery personnel, whom I often noticed waiting outside in all kinds of weather, from baking sun to rainstorms.
Reflecting on questions of surveillance, labour, and the changing weather patterns caused by the climate crisis, I decided to develop a menu inspired by the Northeastern part of Brazil — a region drenched in sunlight, affected by droughts and extreme heatwaves. Starting in the mid-twentieth century, a migratory pattern that brought labourers from the Northeast into the newly industrialised metropoles of Rio and São Paulo was established; these labourers would come to form a significant portion of the working class in these cities — a story that resonates in my family, with the migration of my grandfather from the Northeastern state of Alagoas to Rio in search of better job opportunities.
Underscoring the whole meal is one element: cassava. This tuber is one of the most important ingredients in Brazilian cuisine; moreso in the Northeast. The versatility of this starchy root allows it to be transformed into many forms: made into tapioca pearls, coarse, ground into fermented cassava flour, its liquid dried to make cassava starch, boiled plain, boiled and then fried, mashed, fermented with water to make the alcoholic drink caxiri, boiled and fermented to make tucupi broth. A cheap, filling staple present everywhere, from small farmers markets, large grocery chains; in the food baskets distributed by the government to vulnerable populations; in the tables of high end restaurants, and in the pots and pans of every home kitchen.
“Fungible tokens” (appetizer) — glazed mushrooms; tofu and black garlic cream; crispy cassava cracker; chili; cilantro
“Jabá com Jerimum” (main) — jerked jackfruit; hokkaido squash mash; toasted cassava flour; grilled okra; roasted tomatoes.
“Blue Screen of Death” (dessert) — tapioca and coconut pudding; blue pea flower, coconut, and tonka bean sauce; edible flowers.