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New York Times
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Updating ‘The Futurist Cookbook,' One Meal at a Time
In 2019, the artist Allan Wexler moved from the Manhattan brownstone where he had lived with his wife and collaborator, Ellen, for 40 years. While packing up, he uncovered a black bicycle among the detritus of a decades-long conceptual art and design practice. At the time, Mr. Wexler, who is now 76, was researching a new version of 'The Futurist Cookbook.' Published in 1932 by the Futurist Italian poet and theorist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, this collection of satirical recipes revolted against traditional Italian cuisine. It took dead aim, for instance, at pasta. Marinetti's book consisted of manifestoes and news articles he and others wrote tracking the campaign to revolutionize Italian dining at a time of rapid technological change. Among its proposed meals was a dinner of black olives, fennel hearts and kumquats with a side of sandpaper, red silk and black velvet that the diner was meant to stroke with one hand while eating. Other sections called for meals in pills and powder form. Suggested locations for proper Futurist consumption included the cockpit of a Ford Trimotor airplane. In his career, Mr. Wexler has often returned to the objects and rituals of dining. He has connected shirts to a tablecloth for diners so they can tuck themselves literally into a meal, and designed coffee cups connected by tubes, requiring multiple imbibers to act in unison to take a sip. He manipulates artifacts to the point of absurdity, shaking audiences out of their routines and inviting them to consider why they unthinkingly do what they do. For his own 'Futurist Cookbook,' he and a collaborator, the Brooklyn designer Michael Yarinsky, envisioned zany dinner parties held around New York City, which would ultimately be documented and presented in book form. Last October, the men set up the first dinner, 'Tea with Strangers,' at a permanent installation Mr. Wexler designed in 2006 for Hudson River Park. 'Two Too Large Tables,' as that work is called, features large, stainless steel tabletops with portions cut away in which sitters wedge themselves into configurations that invite interactions with one another. The second dinner took place in February, with Mr. Wexler publicly consuming a meal at the Jane Lombard Gallery in SoHo. Seated at his 'Light Table' (2021), whose lightbulb-embedded top illuminated the glass tableware sunk into the surface, he helped himself to translucent Vietnamese food prepared by the chef Phoebe Tran. This performance cast light on (and through) assumptions of normality granted to Western conceptions of dining. And the black bicycle? It was the centerpiece for the third project in the series, 'Bicycle for Picnicking,' staged last month in a grove of willow trees in Highland Park, at the border of Brooklyn and Queens. On a cloudy Monday afternoon, Mr. Wexler affixed 19 black-painted plywood boxes to the frame of the bicycle, each big enough for a specific component of a picnic, from a corkscrew to a cooler. Filling the remaining boxes were interpretations of classic American picnic foods — sandwiches, cured meats, crudités, a vanilla cake layered with rhubarb jam and rhubarb buttercream — prepared by Natasha Pickowicz, a pastry chef for the New York City restaurant Altro Paradiso. The team brought on a model, Aly N'Diaye, to be the picnicker. Dressed all in black, he walked the bike down a hill into a hollow. Workers cleaning up the mess left by Easter celebrations glanced over as Mr. N'Diaye unpacked the requisite red-checkered picnic blanket, Tupperware containers, utensils and a bottle of wine. 'It's incredibly fun, the discovery of what's in each box,' said Ms. Pickowicz, as she watched foods and implements emerge. 'The act of eating should be joyful and exploratory.' Mr. Wexler's idea was to dismantle the components of an experience — the picnic — like someone taking apart a car engine to figure out how it works. 'It makes us look closely at everyday phenomena,' the artist said as he adjusted the windshield/table that swiveled up and down from the handlebars. 'It turns the everyday into theater.' As he directed the action, Mr. Yarinsky noted, 'These are performances of ways people could live, but generally don't.' The men compared 'Bicycle for Picnicking' to the movable feasts and grand picnics of the Victorian era, but stripped down to conform with the do-it-yourself ethos associated with bicycles and plywood boxes. In opposition to the automation and speed Marinetti prized, the multiple, discrete components were meant to encourage picnickers to slow down and think about the different aspects of a casual and often spontaneous meal. Today, the future the Futurists dreamed of has arrived, with its synthetic foods and technological processes — though maybe not in the way imagined by Marinetti, who was an early supporter of the fascist Italian leader Benito Mussolini. World economies have developed around complex refrigeration systems, transportation, genetic modification and a slew of other technologies. People can eat meals on foot or alone in their cars. 'Now it's possible not to think about food, for a lot of us,' said Nicola Twilley, who recently published 'Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves.' 'And I think that's a mistake, because it is our most intimate relationship with the planet, short of breathing.' Unlike 'The Futurist Cookbook,' with its tirades against traditionalism and pasta, Mr. Wexler and Mr. Yarinsky's project offers many ways to think about dining today. Their alternative vision for the future is not sleek: It's kind, clever and full of artistic intent. Next, the pair plan to affix acoustic horns, similar to those found on a gramophone, to a table so that the usually concealed source of sound that creates ambience during a meal becomes visible. 'It's a new 'Futurist Cookbook,' an inversion of the original,' said Mr. Wexler of his tome to come. 'We're talking about democracy, a humanist future.'
Watani
18-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Watani
Italians of Egypt at Bibliotheca Alexandrina
'Mostra Italiani D'Egitto' ('Italians of Egypt'), an exhibition that opened at Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) in Alexandria on 16 February 2025, features selected items from the archival collections of both institutions that highlight two of the most prominent figures of 20th century's Italian literature: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Giuseppe Ungaretti. The event was jointly organised by the BA and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma (National Central Library in Rome). It featured selected materials from the archival collections of both BA and the Italian library on two of the 20th century most prominent figures in Italian literature: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Giuseppe Ungaretti. Italian Minister of Culture Alessandro Giuli, and BA Director Ahmed Zayed opened the exhibition. Michele Quaroni, Rome's Ambassador to Cairo attended the opening ceremony. Mr Giuli emphasised the depth of the historical friendship that unites Italy and Egypt as two Mediterranean countries. He pointed out that cultural relations between them have continued uninterrupted over time, extending from the ancient world to our contemporary era, thanks to the testimony of many Italians who lived in Egypt. 'This exhibition focuses on two outstanding figures who were born in Egypt and found their inspiration there: Marinetti, founder of the most important avant-garde movement of the 20th century; and Ungaretti, one of the most important Italian poets of all time.' The exhibition showcased the first editions, posters and texts of the two great writers. 'This,' the Italian Minister of Culture stressed, 'allows us to reconstruct the years they lived in Egypt, which were crucial for both of them in their education, writing and subsequent literary production.' Mr Giuli said that the Italian Ministry of Culture was donating a collection of books to the BA, as part of its 'Bibliotheca Italia' project. 'I am pleased to present to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina today with 550 books donated by the Italian Ministry of Culture through the Bibliotheca Italia project, a project that aims to provide a collection of books from the world's leading cultural institutions to encourage learning the Italian language and culture in other countries.' He said that the collection of books includes general culture works such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, texts, books and publications that cover various topics including history, art, customs, and classical and contemporary literature. He expressed his hope that Egyptian youth will enjoy this collection to bring them closer to Italian language and literature. Last year, Mr Giuli pointed, witnessed the celebration of the bicentennial of the foundation of the Egyptian Museum in Turin, Italy, which is the oldest in the world and the second largest after the Egyptian Museum. For his part, Dr Zayed, BA Director, reminded of the cultural and artistic partnerships that brought together the BA and Italian institutions, including the inauguration of the Egyptian-Italian Science Year in 2009; the launch of the book 'Italy in Alexandria'; and the international symposium to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death. 'I am confident that the partnership between Egypt and Italy in cultural aspects will continue to flourish and expand in many areas to achieve greater successes that benefit culture and humanity as a whole,' Dr Zayed said. He expressed his gratitude and appreciation for the valuable donation of 550 books on various and diverse topics to be added to the valuable resources in the BA and enrich its collection. 'We look forward to continuing this type of cultural exchange that is vibrant with thought and enlightenment, which promises a future based on cultural and civilisational communication,' Dr Zayed said Mr Quaroni, the Italian Ambassador to Egypt, thanked the Italian Minister of Culture and the BA for organising that important event, noting that the exhibition aimed to highlight the depth and impact of the Egyptian experience in enriching and shaping the lives of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Giuseppe Ungaretti, their writings and literary production. Comments comments
