In this episode of Vanilla Club Podcast, we are joined by visionary artist and teacher, Allan Wexler, to explore the groundbreaking Farm is Table project. With all the distress in the world at the moment, we couldn't think of a more welcome time to go "back to the country." In this case, with a small dose of wryness (we love it!) Allan takes us "into" the country, or, the farm, so to speak, quite literally.
Allan, whose corpus of work spans architecture, fine art, and visceral, experimental culinary experiences, takes us mise-en-scène of a dining concept that's rather "earthy," shall we say. This is a loaded word "earthy;" is it earthy in the sense of "crunchy" and "granola" sort of au naturale? Or is it earthy the way that "tu" is suggestive of in Chinese parlance: base. Allan challenges all of these notions, and with a righteous, and hard-earned absurdist touch. Farm is Table has caught much attention on the interwebs, and spawned a number of copycats in the flesh.
Co-created with architect Michael Yarinsky of Tangible Space, the project is a playful reimagining of the farm-to-table experience. Farm is Table literally integrates the table into the earth, with diners seated in a trench carved between rows of trees, and hand-picked wildflowers serving as the table centrepieces. This immersive design transforms a simple meal into a multi-sensory exploration, both playfully jousting with and seriously interrogating conventional notions of dining and art.
Allan's work reminds me so much of Walter De Maria's New York Earth Room, which I visited in 2001 as a student at Tisch. The Earth Room was a gallery space with white walls, displaying a pile of dirt--- and here is the key---and displaying nothing but that pile of dirt (maybe it was more like a bed of dirt, as it was spread relatively evenly). It was "found art," it was so natural, but marrying a $0 commodity to $$$$ commercial-residential Manhattan property constraints was so ludicrously unnatural; it was so simple, but so improbable; so real (what is realer than a pile of dirt?), but so abstract. I was enthralled. It is my favourite installation ever in NYC. Allan's work harkens back to this tradition, and in the episode you will see that Allan can effortlessly place himself and his work into a much broader critical context. He poses some of the same questions as De Maria, and from the first moment I encountered Farm is Table, I'm like whoa!
Allan also situates the project within a particular lineage, linking it to F.T. Marinetti’s 1932 Futurist Cookbook, which was all about merging culinary and fine arts through provocative and absurdist meals. Farm is Table is, in many ways, a modern update of this avant-garde spirit. We also touch on some of the other project's from Allan and Michael's New Futurist Cookbook, which they are hoping to release in the near future.
Simple vs complex is a recurring theme on Vanilla Club Podcast. It seems that the virality of Farm Is Table has a lot to do with making the ordinary into something extraordinary. And as Allan reminds us in the podcast, "You don't need to use expensive materials or complex construction. You can work small. You can work from a corner of your apartment and make amazingly important work."
We hope you enjoy.