Umami Food and Art Festival 2010 Program:

FoodFashion (presented in collaboration with Gastronomica Forum)

Robert Kushner, Becky Conekin, Susan Spungen, Steve Kasher

Moderated by Darra Goldstein, Gastronomica editor in chief

A revival of artist Robert Kushner’s provocative 1972 performance piece, Robert Kushner and Friends Eat their Clothes: models dressed only in fresh vegetables and fruits in a very unique runway show, will be followed by a panel discussion that will explore the often-fraught relationship between food and fashion. The evening will end with a specially commissioned video montage “Food Fashionation”  by James Rosenow.

Wednesday, February 24th

Gastronomica Forum @ Astor Center for Food and Wine

399 Lafayette (at 4th Street)

6:30 – 8:30 PM

To purchase tickets for FoodFashion >>

Traveling Umami:
Short Film Screening and Panel Discussion @ Chappaqua Library

Carol Durst, culinary professional, moderator

A screening of short artists’ food films followed by Q&A with some of the film makers.

Thursday, February 25th
7:00 PM - Free Admission

Chappaqua Library

195 South Greeley Avenue

Chappaqua, NY 10514-3398

www.chappaqualibrary.org

NYC Mushroom Identification and Dinner

Diane Borsato, chef Chewy Cereceres, Paul Sadowski

Mushroom enthusiasts and the general public will have the opportunity to see a vast selection of fungus species collected from across the city of New York. Specimens from Chinese, Japanese, Eastern European, and other markets will be displayed on an ID table for observation and identification. Toronto artist and amateur mycologist Diane Borsato, along with expert mycologist Paul Sadowski from the New York Mycological Society will be available to discuss and identify the species from across the city. The public is also welcome to bring species from their own local markets to be identified by the experts. Following the ID table, mushroom-inspired cocktails prepared by the mixologists of Employees Only and hor d’ouevres, the audience will proceed to a mushroom-centered dinner prepared by chef Chewy Cerceres of Macao Trading Co.

Friday, February 26th

The James Beard House

167 West 12th Street

7 PM ID table and cocktails

8 PM dinner

To purchase tickets to NYC Mushroom (James Beard House) >>

Chinatown Mushroom Foray

Diane Borsato, Paul Sadowski, Gary Lincoff

A foraging event co-organized by the Toronto artist Diane Borsato and the New York Mycological Society. Interested participants will meet at 10 AM at Macao Trading Co. and go through Manhattan’s Chinatown to collect various mushroom species in the shops and markets. After the foray, everyone will gather again at the restaurant to have lunch, and observe and identify the many diverse species of fungi available in the neighborhood.

Saturday, February 27th

Meeting at Macao Trading Co.

311 Church Street, between Walker and Lispenard (with lunch there following the foray)

10 AM

Cooking-Art Challenge

Directed by Jonathan Deutch, Einav Gefen, and Judith Levin

Teams of students from the city’s top culinary and arts programs will work together to turn the ordinary into extraordinary. They will have 80 minutes to create dishes exploring the relationship between cooking and art. A panel of distinguished judges will evaluate their efforts.

Saturday, February 27th

New York University

Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health Department

35 West 4th Street, 10th Floor

1:00 PM cooking begins

2:30 PM judging

Raising the Bar

Children’s workshop

Chef Einav Gefen, artist Judith Levin.

Edible works of art will be created in this workshop incorporating the multi-sensory properties of food. Children will create their own, individually tailored, snack bars, exploring a range of ingredients, textures and new shapes. They will then experiment with recycled materials, shaping innovative packaging for their culinary creations.

Sunday, February 28th

Whole Foods Market on the Bowery

95 East Houston Street

10 -12  ages 6 -8

1 – 3      ages 9 -11

Anarchy in the Kitchen

Webcast Viewing Party and Cooking with Technology, demo and tasting

Webcast Performance:s by Graham Coreil-Allen, Steve Bradley, Bradley Chriss, Adam Good, Carolina Mayorga, Lisa Moran, Rebecca Nagle, Tim Nohe, Natalia Panfile, Casey Smith, and Shannon Young.

Laura McGough, Curator

Demo: Chef Nils Noren, chef David Arnold and Christina Wang of the French Culinary Institute

Chefs from the French Culinary Institute will prepare and serve cocktails and tastes prepared with the aid of new technology — stretching the notion of the “art of cooking,” followed by a”Anarchy in the Kitchen,” a Webcast and gastro-performance event. “Anarchy in the Kitchen” brings together a diverse group of artists who engage in acts of culinary chaos that explore the intersection of edibility and aesthetics, technology and cuisine, and prose and produce. Over the course of the evening, edible books will be read and consumed, kitchen aids will be used to generate a musical score, newspaper will be transformed into soup, and lemons will be used as a battery source to whip meringue.

Friday, March 5th

Eyebeam art and technology center

540 West 21st Street

6:30 PM cocktails

7:00 PM screening

8:30 PM feasting

To purchase tickets >>

* Anarchy in the Kitchen will be available to view or download to iphone on the Umami2010 website beginning March 5th, and will be screened at The Non Stop Institute of Yellow Springs, Squeaky Wheel, and Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture at UMBC.

Resistance Can Be Tasty

Ame Gilbert and Laura McGough, curators

Screening of artists’ short food films and cookzine exhibit.

A screening of international artists’ short food films accompanied by a cookzine exhibit. Umami’s film highlights are pure Umami: earthy sensations transcending the expected. Hotdogs become ritual objects, tortillas offer language lessons and gefilte-fish is deconstructed. This showing is nothing like Food Network — its sensibility expands into a fifth sense.

Cookzines are self-published and self-distributed amateur cookbooks that have circulated within the punk and vegan communities since 1991 with the publication of “Soy Not Oi!”. This collection of over 50 cookzines includes texts from the US, Canada, Australia, the UK, Japan and Germany in a range of handmade formats and styles – from small, intimate booklets to hand-scrawled pamphlets and small-press publications.

Cookzines are self-published and self-distributed amateur cookbooks that have circulated within the punk and vegan communities since 1991 with the publication of “Soy Not Oi!”. This collection of over 50 cookzines includes texts from the US, Canada, Australia, the UK, Japan and Germany in a range of handmade formats and styles – from small, intimate booklets to hand-scrawled pamphlets and small-press publications.

Saturday, March 6th

Tribeca Grand

2 Avenue of the Americas @ White Street

8 PM

From Lens to Hands: Visual Representations of Food

(Presented with the Experimental Cuisine Collective)

Artist Corin Hewitt, photographer Michael Harlan Turkell, industrial designer turned pastry cook Brian Sullivan, designer and photographer Emilie Baltz, and web designer Jason Wright.

Moderated by Fabio Parasecoli

Monday, March 8th

Dactyl Foundation for the Arts & Humanities

64 Grand Street (between Wooster and West Broadway) in SoHo

4-6 PM

The Bread Project

Sarah Klein

Employees and passersby are invited to join in the process of making sourdough bread in the lobby of a corporate building. The process begins at 9:00 AM and continues throughout the day. Around 5:00 PM, when the bread is done, the hot loaves are sliced and given away to all.

Thursday, March 11th

Bread Salon

California based artist Sarah Klein will be baking sourdoughbread and talking about bread in art.

6 PM Bread tasting and starter exchange

7 PM Talk

Friday, March 12th

Free admission. For more information please email yael@umamifestival.com

Urban Garden Roundtable

Gardening and growing food brings multiple threads to the table: food justice, community activism, architecture and the use of public space, alternative technologies, ecologies, and economies, as well as the thrill of watching things grow.

Umami is proud to host a roundtable discussion among artists, gardeners, food activists and chefs who are invited to come together to discuss ideas, expertise, and to share a meal. Participants, who might not otherwise cross paths, will present their work, find points of juncture and have an opportunity to brainstorm creative approaches to the many food concerns that affect our culture, including food security, sustainability and health.

Sunday, March 14th

Umami Sponsors:

CMYK Cocktail

Droog design and Tasteologie present a private evening of tasting color in multiple mediums to benefit the Food Bank of New York.

5 mixologists and 5 renown designers will each present their interpretations of the CMYK graphic design color standard (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black and White) through 5 courses of unique cocktails with paired tasting plates, complimented by presentations from each designer.

CMYK Cocktail will bring together mixologists Orson Salicetti of Apothéke, Mayur Subbarao of Dram Bar, Tomas Delos Reyes, Brian Sullivan of MethodLabDesign, and Mihir Desai and surprise guests to present five tasting courses specially conceived for each of the CMYK colors accompanied by a unique signature cocktail. Before each tasting, four acclaimed designers including conceptual designer Tobias Wong and curator Josee LePage; Joshua Walton and James Tichenor of the Interaction Lab at Rockwell Group; interaction designer Renda Morton; and renown illustrator and graphic designer Seymour Chwast will “toast” one of the four CMYK colors, presenting their importance in shaping how and what we consume.

Ticket quantities are limited to the first 50 guests and include 5 cocktails, 5 tasting courses, designer presentations, limited edition gift bag and open bar.