This event is now booked out. Please email rmit.gallery@rmit.edu.au if you would like to join a waiting list. If you missed out on a booking, there will be space for observers to watch the performance meal. See rmitgallery.eventbrite.com.au to book your place in the upcoming events as part of Bruised Food: A Living Laboratory.

Join artist Keg de Souza with scientist Lucien Alperstein for a performance lunch at RMIT Gallery to discuss salt as currency [the cause of wars and revolutions] as part of trade routes and urban development and local agriculture.

Participants will be seated at a salt encrusted table.We are taking bookings for those who will eat the meal. Observers may walk in on the day to watch the action, depending on space availability.

Please advise if you have food allergies [email: rmit.gallery@rmit.edu.au when your booking is confirmed] The meal is comprised of salt tolerant plants. A full ingredient list will be provided on the day.

Bruised Food: a Living Laboratory is a project curated by Marnie Badham and Francis Maravillas that complements the exhibition Bruised: Art Action & Ecology in Asia at RMIT Gallery (12 April - 1 June). The Bruised Food Lab Events critically reflects on food and social practice, and present works and events by artists.

About the event

Whilst salt crosses through the diets of every culture, as well as being essential to our survival, we are also struggling to deal with an excess of it. Through a performative lunch this work takes us around the world through stories of salt as currency and brings us back to Naarm/ Melbourne where surrounding local agriculture is struggling with changing salinity conditions, coupled with a drought prone environment. The meal, comprised of salt tolerant plants proposes a way we can think about our relationship to salt through the future of food production and consumption, by adapting our diets to suit the changing environment around us.

About the artists

Keg de Souza is an artist working with mediums such as temporary architecture, food, mapping and dialogical projects to explore the politics of space. This investigation of social and spatial environments is influenced by her formal training in architecture and experiences of radical spaces through squatting and organising. She creates projects that are often site and situation specific and emphasise participation and reciprocity.

Lucien Alperstein is a scientist working across microbiology, genetics, food waste, fermentation and science and technology studies. Lucien is interested in traditional and modern use of food and food technologies, and has worked for and collaborated with artists, restaurants, news outlets, breweries, educational and art institutions and festivals.

Image: The only rock we eat (2019), dinner performance, Keg de Souza with Lucien Alperstein, ACE Open, Kaurna/ Adelaide. Photo Lucien Alperstein.