Futurist Feast, Encultured Eating @ Concordia University

Futurist Feast from natalieecuad on Vimeo.


The Futurists was a group of Italian artists working together during and after World War I. 

Despite their ageism, sexism, ablism, classism and Fascist war-mongering, they did have some redeeming qualities. For example:

1) They promoted art that encouraged a celebration of the everyday. Their manifesto of Futurist cooking urged an awakening from complacency through a stimulation of all the senses. Eating was treated by these artists as a cause for celebration, instead of a mundane utilitarian act.

2) Their art was absurdist and playful. Their "polyrhythmic salad" was served in a music box that was cranked with one hand while the eater grabbed lettuce leaves with the other. Waiters danced to the music as long as it played. Another element of the "tactile" dinner experience involved guests burying their faces in a bowl of vegetables to enable a textural sensation of the foods they were tasting. When they rose to chew, waiters would spray their faces with perfume to enhance their olfactory stimulation.

3) Their art existed beyond gallery walls, creeping into spaces of leisure and entertainment. Poets, architects, painters, dancers, chefs and restauranteurs worked together to create The Holy Palate restaurant in Turin, nourishing publics with this affirmation: "we think, dream and act according to what we eat and drink." (Marinetti, The Futurist Cookbook, 92)

November 26, 2014
FFAR 298C — Encultured Eating
Instructor: Natalie Doonan
Concordia University

Students collaborated to create a Futurist Feast, using recipes from The Futurist Cookbook. 

Here are some of the dishes they made:

Equator & North Pole, interpreted by Elodie Bruton-Cyr

Vegetable Patch (in the making), interpreted by Sarah Scribner and Audrey St.Vincent

Green Rice (with some alterations), interpreted by Sarah Mianoor and Neha Chaudhary

Dates In Moonlight, interpreted by Natalie Doonan

Bacon Beer, by Chris Bacon

Futurist Feast

With generous support from the  Sustainability Action Fund, the Concordia Council on Student Life, and the Centre for Sensory Studies at Concordia University