Dinner Party

The installation Dinner Party serves as an experiment in relational aesthetics. Participants are handed a set of rules by which to comply during a structured meal setting. They are served very small amounts of low calorie foods arranged in meticulous formations on a fully set table. The rules and dinners are inspired by pro-anorexia websites. What Dinner Party aims to explore is the relationship between people and food under extreme conditions. The behavior of participants is challenged by the rules they are inclined to follow. By placing restrictions on multiple people in a social setting, questions are asked about eating disorders and eating habits in general.

Dinner Party

invitation front

invitation back

Rules For Eating handed out to participants

Plate #1

Plate #2

Plate #3

Plate #4

  

Food Arrangement Inspiration

jk

Fluxus Happenings

I'm constantly asking myself the question "What is art?" and I'm just generally interested in any art that asks the same thing.
Since I'm struggling with the concept of a dinner party as a sculpture installation (and it's taken a very psychology-based turn recently), I did some research on Fluxus happenings and their blurred art-social structure.

They were frequently performance-based and often required the participation of a spectator. They evoked gestures and actions constituted from an individual's everyday experience. In a way it's considered anti-art, but it could also be considered as a boundless form of art.

Fluxus Art Amusement: Manifesto by George Maciunas


Cut Piece by Yoko Ono:

and WOW this is so perfect for my research:
Eat Art by Daniel Spoerri:

pro-anorexia research

Search "pro-anorexia" and find websites devoted to "thinspiration" in the form of photos, quotes, sets of rules, and ways to conceal symptoms (see previous post), but search "pro-anorexia research" and find a whole new set of information about these destructive sites.

Since deciding to include some information from the websites in my installation, I've been plagued with the words that I saw. Images of them literally flashed in my mind like a '90s movie montage. So today I devoted my research to the pro-anorexia websites and their effects.
Girls (or anyone really, but the forums I read were mostly girls) who use these websites view eating disorders as a lifestyle choice rather than a disease. It's correlative with the idea of a dinner party; strange that they're just on different spectrums of social gatherings. The support and admiration gained from these websites could be compared to any celebratory gathering.

One research paper I read discussed the political content- as if there is some  hidden agenda to purposeful starvation. I think that's where the set-up of my installation comes in.. and why I chose to use nice plates and glasses to signify that the cause of hunger was far from poverty.

Even completely sane and mentally healthy people shouldn't read these disturbing and delusional websites.

It's good because I finally figured out what my project was truly about, but it's bad because this kind of thing even exists at all.

sources:

https://bir.brandeis.edu/bitstream/handle/10192/24532/BeliveauThesis2013.pdf?sequence=1

http://www.ucs.ac.uk/SchoolsAndNetwork/UCSSchools/SchoolofAppliedSocialSciences/Virtually%20Anorexic.pdf

http://www.sirc.org/articles/totally_in_control2.shtml

things that should be banned from the internet

I've been putting off researching this because I knew how dangerous it could be- but I was unaware of the disgust I would feel when reading these websites. I've been looking for foods to serve and wanted to use an anonymous online food diary for meals... like I had the idea to find someone who posts their meals online and serve that to my dinner party guests.

I found a lot of online food blogs and also found a set of rules to follow; rules that would surely kill anyone who responded sincerely. I just can't believe this is online at all.

I'm considering reading or having them listed at the dinner party to increase shock value.

Please NO ONE click these. I used them in research but highly recommend NOT reading them:

Rules

Safe Foods

Food Diary

hosting a dinner party

As a few more elements of dinner parties have been brought to my attention than originally foreseen, I've been researching "how to host a dinner party" on search engines.

Since the theme is pretty fancy, I thought this article was really helpful. (Yes, it's from the website of LC from Laguna Beach.) I'm thinking maybe of playing music and making name cards for place settings? Also this one was helpful in my research of what would normally be expected at a dinner party.

Dinner Party

Google image search dinner party inspiration:

I want the setting to seem extravagant and contradictory to the food being served. I like the idea of extra utensils and unused plates.