About my old performance

I miss the performances. This one, the very first one, I did in 2014 (and the others were solo and/or undocumented).

CameraCafe: will portrait for food. 

The theme of food appeared here because it was held as part of Restaurant Day — it’s a bit of a carnival in St. Petersburg, when all over the city any non-gastronomic establishments turned into cafes and restaurants for one day. Someone cooked his grandmother’s favourite dishes, someone fantasised not about food at all (but still a little about food too). This was a show, having fun and cooking something edible for money, making a holiday out of it, of course. 

I participated in Restaurant Day from the Fotodepartment in St Petersburg. It is an educational art institution where I learnt and was part of the community.

The performance consisted of taking pictures of people without any cameras, with words. I tried to transfer to paper in words and phrases in the mode of automatic writing what came to me in the presence of this person and in our mutual silence. 

As a café, I traded apples — people bought the fruit of knowledge from me in the form of a fruit and a leaf with words about them on it.

Here’s the description from the announcement:

- a performance the length of a restaurant day 

You don’t know me, I don’t know you, but we’ve seen each other — and you’re already imprinted in me, and that’s what photography does. 

And that imprint is definitely me, but so are you, and neither of us, and all human all at once, with associations and a habit of categorising. 

Andy talked about fifteen minutes of fame — I’m talking about ten minutes of attention and silence. 

You get the dish — and my attention. And at the end of ten minutes — your portrait painted in words. 

How long does it take to reflect yourself in the eyes of another? What is our image? How do we look to strangers? Next in line!

This is, of course, an ommage to my favourite book by Alessandro Barrico, ‘Mr Gwyn’. It seemed to me then and now that he understood a great deal about portraiture, and I wanted to do the same.

I have no idea if I succeeded!