The success of any meal lies in the true nature of the ingredients, the mastery of the cook and, of course, the setting. But some would say the most crucial step is the choice of the guests. A 1964 short educational film by the Eames designer duo effectively explains the applied science behind the-art-of-dinner-planning. The goal: to siege the table with a human chain as strong as possible. The almighty host approaches the seating chart with the skills of a military strategist, studying the guests' profile to predict the flow of interactions and neighbouring alliances. The seats fall into place. The host, sitting among the guests, stays in command of the entire meal.
This surefire recipe is unknown to a party of artists, philosophers, actors, musicians and pet owners that for years have wined and dined around a table where they had to find their natural places. At the centre of the cherry wood table, polished with oil and honey, taking up most of the space there's a collection of things, exotic spices and teas, rare wines, herbal infusions, all bottled in the most common glass. This still life, lit in the dimmest Flemish light, is the secret to the success of each dinner, the leitmotiv to familiar stories, that newcomers get introduced to by the most experienced diners. João Simões hosts these remarkable dinners at his kitchen, not far from Oporto. Always standing by the stove, he helms the swirl as an admiral, scripting the night with a menu that often includes cow heart, monkfish liver and octopus eggs.
Out of sight, screened by the heavy wooden shutters of Simões' lean studio space, rest two other tables made from splitting a Peter Zumthor design. One holds the Rega Planar record player, a NAD amplifier, a pair of carbon cone Celestion speakers, a vintage MacBook Pro computer and a selection of records curated over time. The other is cluttered almost to excess with piles of first edition books, gifts and machines of a dying species, organised in sympathetic disorder: a dedicated poem by Jean Dupuy with GOD upside down, a Live in Your Head catalogue with a hand-painted cover by David Medalla, a garbanzo bean rainstick gifted on his wedding by Alison Knowles, Simões' three walnuts with shells that ridge in 2, 3 and 4 parts and his drawing of a line crossing the turn of the millennium, a Warhol deflated silver cloud, Henry Flynt's unpublished study on the so-called emotion and spirituality in art…
These objects are constantly re-arranged in a provisionally definite place on the desktop. The shifting topology of this hamlet is a way of revisiting all time friends and creating new fictions by proxy.
Among the piles is a rolled silver-print taken by Jeff Perkins in 1969 while touring around the desert corners of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah with Guy de Cointet. On the lookout for red buttes and mesas of Monument Valley, they discovered a film crew shooting a Western.
Jeff's picture shows two guys in a dry landscape, one of them de Cointet. Out of the shot, John Wayne recalls spectacular horseback chases on the set of John Ford's American West. Seeing Ford in action was definitely enough food for thought for any aspiring metteur-en-scène, if it hadn't been for the site of a steaming plate of beef jerky and beans on the catering table. The starving artist, standing in the blind spot of the one-eyed director, patiently awaits an invitation to join the crew's lunch break.
Oporto, Lisbon
Thursday , Dec 19 , 9 pm, join us for this Off Screen session followed by a hearty Western meal supervised by João Simões.
Oporto : Calçada Salvador Correia de Sá 42 2F Lisboa
This session was made possible thanks to the support of DGartes
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