THE RESTAURANT | WILL BENEDICT & STEFFEN JORGENSEN

The Restaurant is a series of videos and podcasts made by artists Will Benedict and Steffen Jorgensen in collaboration with DIS, a streaming platform created to entertainment and education, aim to extend the research into the world of art, philosophy, culture and political activism. The focus of their programme is nutrition investigated at 360 degrees, both involving specialists and the daily experiences of real and fictitious characters.

The Rainforest Inside Us (2021, link to the video) an episodes of The Restaurant project, is composed by studio recordings and virtual reproductions that are interspersed to build a dystopian imaginary, in which different characters are able to explore the different themes concerning the production and the eating of food. The fundamental and central element is The Restaurant, a company whose headquarter is a skyscraper in the middle of an Amazon forest and where several chefs experiment with different methodologies to create new dishes and aim a healthy lifestyle. However, the interest in people’s sake that seems to be the heart of The Restaurant‘s research alternates with a capitalistic approach that investigates the economic dynamics instead of the population’s health.

There is an interrogation at the begin of The Rainforest Inside Us, presented just like a TV show in which the presenter/policeman bombards the guest with a series of questions: into their dialogue food begins to be defined as a source of both physical and psychological stress and no longer as a moment of enjoyment and wellness. Questions like “So you know what did you eat yesterday?” / “How many times have you eaten at the restaurant?” follows each other. In this first intervention, food seems to be part of people’s daily lives as a source of anxiety and daily prison. Where is the border between pleasure and obsession?

In the following scene Benedict and Jorgensen’s alter egos present their podcast: inside a farm (a setting that winks at George Orwell’s novel), episode after episode, they invite specialists to investigate specific issues regarding food production and its uptake by the human body. In the complex structure created by the artists, in which fiction passes to virtual reality, the theme of nutrition finds different representations and communication methods that seem to coincide with a contemporary entertainment where the definition between real or surreal levels is missing. Moving from dystopian representation to fantasy reality and referencing many trash TV programs, Benedict and Jorgensen construct a new imaginary capable of entertaining and simultaneously communicating a relevant and contemporary cultural message. The final result is a grotesque and bizarre alternate reality, where marvelous creatures, policemen, people, utopian architecture and unpredictable futures alternate to represent the human absurdity that we are already living in.

Will Benedict & Steffen Jorgensen
The Restaurant: The Rainforest Inside Us
Video (2021), co-production of the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève for the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement 2021 © Courtesy: Dis Art and the artists

03/05/2023