Futurist Cookbook – Dinner at the Light Table

Jane Lombard Gallery hosted a culinary performance based event featuring artist Allan Wexler and chef Phoebe Tran. Wexler’s Light Table is a dinner table set with transparent glass dinnerware embedded into its surface, each illuminated from below by individual light sources. Phoebe Tran created an array of translucent foods that were enhanced by Allan Wexler’s glowing table. Following the performance of Allan eating from the table, guests had the opportunity to taste Tran’s creations. 

The process of conceptualizing a menu for Allan’s table revealed the complex interplay of politics and identity within a place setting designed for Western cuisine. In recontextualizing the piece, Phoebe Tran intentionally disrupted the expected functionality of certain items to shed light on the ways in which her Vietnamese food and culture juxtapose the framework of western culture and its ideals of a “typical” dinner table. Through this meal activation, Allan was invited by the cuisine presented by Phoebe to subvert the western place setting - to eat with his hands, to dip his food into what is typically perceived as a water glass, and create a space for reflection and redefinition.

The event was documented and will be included in the forthcoming publication, A New Futurist Cookbook, a project by Allan Wexler and Michael Yarinsky, of Office of Tangible Space. This is the second of ten meal collaborations for A New Futurist Cookbook, which began in response to F. T. Marinetti’s 1932 innovative Futurist Cookbook.