Kitchen Lecture / P_for_Performance

As part of ADA’s, (Area for Debate and Art) program at Het Gemaal, I will show/perform my newest work entitled Kitchen Lecture, hosted by Maja Bekan and her ongoing project P_ for _ Perfromance.

Whilst preparing dinner for her family, Deirdre M. Donoghue presents the viewer with a talk on the history of gesture studies and her own research interests evolving around language, gesture and becoming. All at once she prepares meatballs and mashed potato, presents visual material, and is interrupted by her children walking in and out of the kitchen, at times demanding her attention, at times joining in in the activities.

By setting herself this physically demanding task of giving an artist’s-talk while preparing her family a meal, she makes transparent the conditions of the artistic production of many female artists. Rather than separating the two different roles; the role of an artist and the role of a mother, she allows them to collapse together in the video performance entitled Kitchen Lecture.