Collective cooking & artist talk with Davide Christelle Sanvee, Antoine Guay and School in Common, on interrogating and protesting the institution from within
March 6 2019
Residence Botkyrka,
Botkyrka Konsthall, Stockholm
In this cooked talk Davide and Antoine offered the opportunity to work together on a meal, chat, drink, laugh and share references.
The starting point of this cooked talk was the project Tiramisu (2019), which formed a huge inspiration to Dissident Business, in Tiramisu the artists opened a hidden grocery store in response to the strict no food policy at the Sandberg Institute (MA art program) in Amsterdam). The store was secretly built in a ‘non-space’ under the stairs of the assembly hall in the school. Through camouflage, the work blended in perfectly with the surrounding structures, making Tiramisu a secret space to satisfy students unfulfilled needs and desires. Operating without fixed opening times the store was activated by late-night events such as concerts, dinners and parties. It became a meeting space where students got an opportunity to interact without the representatives of staff around.
In Stockholm, the artists continued this practice in the site specific installation Dissident Business at Candyland. The work expanded on Tiramisu by responding to the specific context of Sweden, as well as through the inspiration gathered from the written and visual statements from self-organized and critical school projects gathered by School in Common through the publication project a school (is a school, is a pamphlet).
In this cooked talk, Davide and Antoine discussed their artistic practices, sketched the trajectory from Tiramisu to Dissident Business and exchanged with participants over a shared and collectively cooked meal. In this way, a traditional artist talk (with a service oriented, top down approach) became a communal experience where everyone could share or be involved otherwise, and hierarchies were lessened.
Davide-Christelle Sanvee
is a performance artist who focuses on spaces and staging. Investigating public space, she hunts for architectural, behavioural and gestural elements to create scenographies that fully surround his spectators. In order to activate these new spaces Sanvee uses fictitious elements and performative actions built around political and social realities.
Antoine Guay Antoine Guay
is an interior architect who focuses on redefining existing spaces. His main interest is to concentrate on how subversion and alternative appropriation of space is organised and - as a result - forces the public sphere to redefine itself. This has led Antoine to focus on practices, rituals and self-defined limits taking place in forgotten territories.
Residence Botkyrka is Botkyrka Konsthall’s context-specific residency programme active within the interdisciplinary field of art, architecture, food and social practices. The programme encourages new forms of artistic research and art practices that engage in a local context.