Black Gold Magic is an art installation/performance of actions and discussions creating a ritual space to explore food in context to Chicago’s urban environment involving the alchemy of de/reconstitution in the context of grounding. The invocation of spirits and ancestral ethers gives directional context to the created space of black gold magic. Entangling metabolisms of earth, air, fire & water. Entangling ritualistic purification stations and groundings.

Black Gold Magic was originally conceived and performed for the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial as part of Outside Design show at the Sullivan Galleries.

Black Gold Magic choreographs questions which can be experienced, and experiments which can be tasted, smelled, yelled, chanted, wrapped, souped up, and felt. It makes visible the no visible arenas of space we cohabit ate with our ancestors and ether forms. How does what matters to us as individuals, as communities, as different ethnic groups, different races, genders, life orientations, political groups, and citizens of the world — how does what matters to us get translated through food, through food systems, food practices, food policy, through what we grow and where we grow it, what we are allowed to prepare and, how? Is “a vegetable a democracy”, as Alfred North Whitehead says. Whose version of democracy are being trumped by your vegetables? What are the ingredients of your ethnic-geographic identity and stories? Can you taste your stories? How does your lake taste in a beef consommé?

Sullivan Gallery, Chicago 2017
Inside Out, coproduced with Erika Allen & Eric Ellingsen