if you can't make dinner - here is the kindof toast that will fill the room to get things rolling - it will be less cardboardy and pretentious when i shout it out to the room - i would love to have your digital submissions as well - creating a kind of digital bumbershoot table - add them as comments - or email them to hebberoy@gmail.com - we will add them to the site.
The kind of toast i might make on saturday, sunday, monday night:
greetings - you are here at one pot at bumbershoot so that i can feed you - but also so that i can get something from you - the basic request is one of reciprocation – I cook you dinner and you bring me something – it seems to be that this basic exchange is the root of most culture. money is an unfortunate substitution for basic reciprocity – it is silent, and generally rather dirty, "it don't sing and dance
and it don't walk" - many cultures have (had) great ritual in the matters of the table and the guest/host relationship – the greeks in the classical era were famous for long treatises on the importance of proper exchange – the table was central to this – the collapses of this code often resulted in calamity. take for instance when paris decided to take more than food from the the table of menelaus (he slipped helen of troy into his pocket) the result was the most mythologized war if all time. so don’t steel my woman – I will burn down your village.
restaurant tables do not offer this kind of currency. this table was built as a kind of modern agora for an exchange about a very important time – 68 changed our world – I don’t profess to be of high knowledge about this era – this year – in fact I wasn’t even born – but I launched this project to learn about how it came to pass that all the way around the globe thought and ideas turned into action – the world is filled with ideas – and yet the world has arguably never seen as much action as it did in 1968. why?
so you are here – I offer you a simple stew – and bread – a proletariat meal if you will – hopefully you drank heavily prior to arriving. clink your glass and tell me something about ’68, or civil disobedience, or social uprising, or the basic magic of thought turning into action… be it a song – a piece of writing, a reading from one of the texts that clutter our table, an artifact, a story, a sound. or just leave here and tell of the experience – in a matter that will be just as powerful.
(the sound of glasses clinking - and bowls filling with stew)
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2 comments:
I attended on Sunday evening. Dinner was delicious. The sharing (mutual entertainment & monologues) was surreal: some folks were processing their stuff, others were "rising and falling," literally, from table to floor and back again. I went because I'm intrigued by the idea of sharing food and stories with complete strangers. I like to hear of, or be in, spaces where this is staged. But the stageyness took over, rather, and real connections seemed lacking. There has to be more to this than a living art installation. Can we do it again?
Hi...I was there... (Saturday night!) and I love the concept.. I was a bit shy... (bad excuse I know) and there never seemed a lull long enough to interject.. so here goes.. I was born in 68... so I brought myself... I have always been passionate about social justice... Coincidence? perhaps not... Perhaps it is my birthright!!! What I bring to the table is this... It is not so much that other countries are underdeveloped....we are overdeveloped... we need to address that.. (overdeveloped financially..certainly not socially or spiritually!) I loved the dinner.. I am charged and inspired...thank you for sharing your concept..your idea... I want to run with this!
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