We are half-way into the workshop for the Graz situation, and I’m happy to report that all is going well. Nearly all of the technical issues are sorted – today we will test sound and make decisions about the number of laptops the network can handle – and we have a pretty good outline and a lot of media already created. All is looking good for a run-through tomorrow!
We have also had time to visit the Andrä Kirche, literally covered with great contemporary art, and community garden, picnic at KunstGarten Graz, and yesterday evening enjoy a barbecue outside the venue where we are working. Today and tomorrow we will work solidly without diversions, so that everything is ready and on Wednesday morning we can have a guided tour of Kunsthaus. Then Wednesday afternoon will be for last-minute fixes and we should be rested for the performance on Wednesday evening …
As usual we have no shortage of material and ideas. The topic of food is of course something that everyone has something to say about, and our material extends from how what you eat might influence the development of cancer, to the treatment of pigs and other animals in industrial-scale farms (a recurring theme from Eindhoven). Increasing corporate control of food, coupled with generally decreasing lack of knowledge about food (traditional recipes being lost, young people not knowing how to cook, wondering what those “E” numbers really mean, or being unable to find out where your food comes from or what’s in it) have led to the slogan: “We are what we eat; but we don’t know what we eat … therefore we don’t know what/who we are.” This is at the heart of the “situation”.
