tales, tales, tales is a participatory installation based on the parable of the Long Spoons, which focuses on food consumption as a communal ritual, highlighting the need for nourishment and care. In the parable encountered in various versions and across many cultures, people are given an adequate amount of food to eat but they also have to use very long spoons, not allowing them to feed themselves, resulting in failure to eat, starvation, aggression, and death. It is only by using the long spoons to feed each other across the table, taking turns, that every person can eat and thrive.
Participants are invited to sit around a table and activate tales, tales, tales by figuring out how to eat using the glass utensils. In this iteration, the frailty of the material stresses even further the care with which they have to treat both the sculptural utensils and the process of feeding each other. The participatory process may result in an intimate, ritualistic feeding process, an experience of actively caring for others, and practicing change, no matter how minor, or a chaotic, absurd situation in which participants will not be able to figure out how to cater to each other’s needs.
commissioned by BJCEM, for the exhibition every food is a landscape, curated by Marco Trulli, Polo del ’900, Turin
tales, tales, tales, 2022, installation and performance, 7 borosilicate glass spoons, 130 x 6 cm, blown glass container, ⌀ 30 cm, soup, 1.5lt
special thanks to Mila Panic, Chiara de Maria, and Lucia Di Pietro, for performing the piece