Place Settings

February 26, 2005

Buffalo, NY

This collaborative event took place in a century-old warehouse

in a post-industrial area on the west side of Buffalo, NY.

Working with a temporary coalition of artists called The Saucy

Seven, we organized an event around the metaphor of a

dinner party to take place in the basement of the warehouse.

We invited a select group of people to attend our soiree. Each

Saucy Seven artist developed one of seven "courses" to take

place during the evening, combining live performance with

video projections at each end of the table.

My project: Sandwiche Mecanique

As a way to bring together the history of the building, a former

factory, and the ritual of the banquet that the Saucy Seven was

staging, I developed a 40-person process called Sandwiche

Mecanique (Mechanical Sandwich). Each event attendee

seated at the table received a paper bag, the contents of which

revealed twenty like pieces of of a twenty-part sandwich to be

created via an assembly line process. Following the

instructions included in the bags, our obedient guests

dutifully caried out the actions, piling cheese, salami, mayo,

pickles and more on the sandwiches. As a beautiful finale,

the participants each ate a stuffed, dainty treat.

At the end of the table, I projected a collage from the films

Modern Times and Ballet Mecanique; the music from the

Chaplin film helped spur our workers on. Sandwiche

Mecanique certainly put the "work" back into "work of art."

The Saucy Seven was Liz Knipe, Chris Barr, Minh,

Tom Leonhardt, Robin Brasington, Soyeon Jung

Thanks: Tony Conrad & SUNY Buffalo Dept. of Media Study