Rirkrit Tiravanija-Life as a Pot

Posted by Alicia Butler.

Rirkrit Tiravanija cooks for thousands of people each year. For free. He has cooked for some of the world’s top curators, art dealers, gallery owners, and museum directors. However, the majority of the population he serves for turns out to be the general public. He has traveled through Spain on a bike he invented that boasts a hotplate attached to the handlebars, cooking up steaming pots of curry and offering it to anyone he passes. He has traveled with his shows “Untitled” and “Untitled (Still)” serving up to 2,700 meals during the course of each of their runs and has not charged a single person. He has been able to sell some of his pots, pans, spoons, and anything else leftover from one of his gallery shows to some of New York’s elite to supplement his income, however, the food remains free.

Tiravanija focuses on an idea I like to call, “life as a pot.” The pot is not only what cooks the food but also what spurs the ideas, emotions, feelings, and anything else that happens to come up in life. The idea is not to focus on the object of the pot itself, but the activity that happens around it.

The pot in his gallery shows often bubbles and hisses with traditional Thai food. It creates a smell, a taste, and a memory. Anyone can go. You might see a blue-collar worker rubbing elbows with a politician and later speaking to the head curator from the Guggenheim. It creates a conversation that may not have existed had Tiravanija not been cooking that day. Tiravanija also believes life is like the pot he uses to cook his food. While he uses food in the gallery to create these experiences he also uses the internet to create websites with a pot-like setting where people can exchange ideas about any aspect of life, thus, “cooking” their own feelings and emotions.

So whereas with enough money you can physically buy the pots, pans, utensils, and leftover spices from one of Tiravanija’s shows, you cannot buy the experience that happened there.

Upcoming exhibitions:
theanyspacewhatever
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
October 24, 2008–January 7, 2009

Rikrit Tiravanija: Demonstration Drawings
The Drawing Center
September 12-Novenber 6, 2008