Cooking Show | Long Evening
The Kitchen Network — The Last Reality TV Food Show on the Planet by Luiza Prado De O. Martins. Season One, Episode Three
Rirkrit Tiravanija: DAS GLÜCK IST NICHT IMMER LUSTIG
The Kitchen Network: Anti-Fascism and Plants, 2024, transmediale, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, photo Laura Fiorio
As part of the first Long Evening and the public programme for the exhibition DAS GLÜCK IST NICHT IMMER LUSTIG by Rirkrit Tiravanija, artist Luiza Prado De O. Martins will present The Kitchen Network. The cooking show delves into the politics of food as entertainment, as we increasingly consume food through content on screens. Unfolding as an episode in the last reality TV food competition on earth, the performance uses humour to examine the divide between online food cultures and their disconnection to wider issues of class, gender and geography.
From avocado toast to baked feta pasta, our relationship with food is increasingly shaped by social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Hashtags such as #TikTokFood and #Foodtok have gained billions of views, sparking surges of interest in certain ingredients and causing long queues at restaurants. As we consume food content on screens – whether through reality TV shows or viral trends – the realities of food production and its environmental impact have been hidden under digital layers of gold-leaf everything; long, melty strands of cheese, and dramatic reality TV storylines. With soaring energy and food costs, labour shortages, the cost-of-living crisis and ongoing supply chain issues, we eat with our eyes and ears. Food as entertainment is a geopolitical issue, masked and filtered through phone lenses to perform wealth, virtue, goodness, practicality, ease and skill.
Luiza Prado De O. Martins is an artist, writer and researcher. Their work moves between installation, sculpture, video and food, using performance and ritual as a way of invitation and activation for audiences. Their practice often explores anticolonial strategies in relations and knowledge between nourishment, herbal reproductive medicine, infrastructures and technology and questions what structures and processes are needed for collective concerns of care.
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