Taking the Smart Museum’s Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art as inspiration,
yesterday’s Symposium of Hospitality at the University of Chicago featured an
entire day of lectures, discussions, events, and performances of “hospitality.”
Immediately upon our arrival, we were greeted with spoonfuls
of slatko, a syrupy, sweet strawberry
jam traditionally served in Serbia as an expression of welcome. The brief
interaction of sampling the slatko was part of Ana Prvacki’s The Greeting Committee, a piece that
immediately introduced symposium participants to the roles of host and guest,
greeting and hospitality.
After sampling the slatko and perhaps overstepping our own
welcome by gorging ourselves on the breakfast pastries, the day’s program began
with a panel on Radical Hospitality.
Hannah Higgins, of University of Illinois Chicago, discussed the role of
pasta and Italian food through history and culture, from its depiction as peasant
food in Strega Nona, to its
association with Bohemian life in early 20th century America. Erika
Dudley continued the discussion of food and its varied meanings, speaking about
the Dorchester Projects and repurposed abandoned houses becoming pavilions for
discussion. The Dorchester Project, which aims to bring creative renewal to a
south side neighborhood, serves watermelon, chitlins, and other soul food in a
revived space, encouraging conversations “over the food of black people.”[1]
This theme of food-propelled dialogue was continued in the next speaker, Amy
Mooney’s discussion about Potluck: Chicago, another project designed to bring
Chicagoans together over meals. Mooney, too, spoke of shared space, advocating
for reciprocity, and the social imagining of the city.
Despite the morning panel’s inspiring and wonderful examples
of community and shared eating, the afternoon would remind the audience that
it is wrong to assume that hospitality is inherently open and positive.
Following Alison Knowles’ debut of Identical Lunch Symphony and lunch from Michael
Rakowitz’s Enemy Kitchen and Eric May’s “E-Dogz” Mobile Culinary
Community Center, the afternoon progressed with a panel on “Being Bad.” The panel
featured videos by artists Ana Prvacki and Michael Rakowtiz, in addition to
remarks by art historian Matthew Jesse Jackson, MCA curator Dieter Roelstraete,
and artist Laura Letinsky. In an eloquent, amusing, and haphazard video shot on
a handheld camera in Afghanistan, Michael Rakowitz spoke of the inherent
antagonisms present in his work, revealing the complications of eating delicious
food that is fraught with political turmoil. What followed Rakowitz’s video all
became very confusing. Letinsky walked the audience through her compelling
photography practice, but hardly referred to the panel’s theme as well as
hospitality. Matthew Jesse Jackson cynically suggested that art is futile in
the current state of the world (while Letinsky nodded along). Roelstraete, who
forewarned the audience of “rambling” before he even began, discussed the
political roles of the enemy and the friend, using theorist Carl Schmitt as a
point of departure. While each panelist made insightful and interesting
remarks, we became increasingly confused about the topic of the panel,
exchanging puzzled glances and whispering “what is going on?” to one another. By
the end of the panel, we had decided to briefly excuse ourselves from the
symposium to hear Hannah Feldman’s talk at the MCA instead.
What the Being Bad panel did embody, was the murkiness of what
contemporary art is today. By the Q&A session at the end, I realized that I
no longer knew what contemporary art was,
and the innumerable contexts and lenses through which it is discussed were too
convoluted to discern. Letinsky, too, hinted at this amorphousness, when she
commenced her talk with a slide composed entirely of random words used in
graduate art critiques earlier that week.
The symposium also made me aware of the latent problems of
hospitality. Although the word implies warmth, reception, and neighborliness,
the symposium highlighted the issues of class and categorization that are still
embedded in hospitality. This problem of exclusivity was especially apparent in
the symposium events that were designed to bring people together. During Alison
Knowles’ performance, the audience sat in quiet reverence, before quickly
tasting single-serving cups of her blended Identical Lunch and moving on to the
real meals located outside. There was no sense of conversation or camaraderie.
Later in the evening, when we returned to attend the symposium’s conclusion of
Soup and Bread, a weekly tradition at Chicago’s Hideout bar, there was
similarly little sense of community and togetherness. The gallery directors sat with their peers, the
professors with the professors. Being the youngest attendees, no one took
initiative to speak with us, and did not offer much warm reception when we
tried to insert ourselves into conversations. (We also unsophisticatedly
discussed the best way to beckon Dieter Roelstraete over to our table for an
embarrassing length of time, but he chose to stand by himself, before
eventually joining a table of gallery directors.) While the food was delicious
and the event extremely hospitable and enlightening, there still existed a
dilemma of restriction and social boundaries.
By the time Soup & Bread had started dwindling down, the
courtyard of Logan Center had been overrun by well-dressed undergraduates for
UChicago’s annual FOTA launch party. Homemade soup and bread were replaced by arty platters, everyday attire with cocktail dresses, Alison
Knowles’ symphony with bright lights and a makeshift runway. Where a figment of hospitality had existed moments earlier, nothing remained but the provisional
canopy erected earlier in the day to shield participants from rain.