A front yard dining experience at Articule photo: Esme Terry

Welcome to Live Dining. Since 2005, performance artist Nicole Fournier has acted out disparate harvesting and food-preparation rituals in public spaces. This odd superimposition seeks to cultivate awareness of the disconnect we have about where our food comes, all the while turning food and dining into an engaging work of art.

In addition to the symbolic reflection that Live Dining offers, Fournier believes that such a space has transformative potential. "Not many people think of food as political," she explains. "Especially in terms of who controls production and who has the power to determine what we're eating. By bringing people closer to the soil and plants that produce what they eat, it opens up all those social, political and environmental questions around food and how it relates to their own health and well- being."

As performance art, Live Dining bridges the gap between artist and audience by enticing the curious off the asphalt and into the artist's welcoming urban polyculture and dining space. Once inside, you become part of the performance and the life cycle: picking beans growing to the right of your shoulder or squash flowers growing by your feet, and then tossing your personal harvest into a hot frying pan lightly coated with olive oil. This synthesis of such disparate actions engenders an almost visceral thrill, and it's that excitement and engagement that Fournier believes can take Live Dining beyond the stage and into people's realities. "Food production systems do not have to be large-scale or only in rural areas. The more people get excited about this, the more they can act and want to participate to have more agriculture in their lives."

Find a seat at the table when Live Dining makes an encore performance tonight, Sept. 20, at the Edible Campus Garden located at McGill as part of Santropol Roulant's annual Harvest Festival.

Live Dining
At the Santropol Roulant Harvest Festival
At the Edible Campus Garden, in front of the Burnside Building, McGill University Sept. 20, 5-10 p.m.
livedining.blogspot.com
 
 

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