The Urbanophagic Instinct
These works explore what Alicia describes as the urbanophagic instinct. Alicia claims that we harbour within us a desire to devour our surroundings. The idea of edible environments may bring to mind precedents such as the gingerbread house in the Grimm Brothers' fairytale Hansel and Gretel or the garden made of sweets in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. In the American folk song Big Rock Candy Mountain a hobo describes his ideal world where not only does it never rain and the jails are made of tin but the hens lay soft boiled eggs and there are lakes of stew and whiskey too. This song is often described as a modern version of the popular medieval tale of the Land of Cockaigne, an earthly Eden where houses have walls of pies and pasties and the shingles are cakes, there are rivers of oil, milk, honey and wine and mountains of cheese. In Cockaigne roast pigs walk about with knives in their backs for carving and perfectly cooked geese fly out of the sky straight into open mouths. Called Luilekkerland (Lazy Luscious Land) in Holland and Schlaraffenland (Land of Milk and Honey, a reference to the biblical Promised Land) in Germany, the same land of plenty was described across Europe with regional variations that reflected local tastes. It functioned as an escape from the harsh conditions of peasant life, becoming 'the most pervasive collective dream of medieval times.'(1)
According to Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, the Land of Cockaigne was represented in edible festival sculptures in Renaissance Italy called 'macchina della coccagna.'(2) In eighteenth-century Naples it was also the inspiration for the Cuccagna arch, created out of meats, cheese, bread, fruit and vegetables supplied by the King to celebrate a feast day. Upon the King's signal the public were allowed to destroy the arch, taking as much food as possible. Apparently this served as entertainment for the court who looked on.(3)
However, while the story of the Land of Cockaigne and the works that it has inspired relate to Alicia's assertion that, consciously or not, we all wish to consume our surroundings, these tales differ from urbanophagy in being fantasies of abundance and indulgence in which luxury treats are central to the narrative. In addition, many works that depict or invoke The Land of Cockaigne do so as an allegory condemning gluttony. This can be seen in Pieter Bruegel the Elder's painting The Land of Cockaigne, 1567, and in Doug Fitch and Mimi Oka's revision of this image using photography in The Land of Cockaigne, 2003. In the case of Hansel and Gretel and Willy Wonka's garden, the tempting creations erode the children's judgment and Hansel, Gretel and Augustus Gloop all find themselves in sticky situations. Ali&Cia's edible cities are not intended as criticism and, while they are a pleasure to eat, the gourmet qualities of the materials are, on the whole, incidental to the work's meaning.
While the urbanophagic instinct illustrated by the works above is one of indulgence and even greed, that of Ali&Cia is concerned with curiosity and sensory exploration. As babies we explore our environment by putting it into our mouths, taking advantage of the mouth's sensitivity to analyse anything within reach. James Gibson suggests that the mouth may even be more sensitive and intelligent than hands in perceiving things.(4) The acclaimed historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto points out that, 'Our most intimate contact with the natural environment occurs when we eat it.'(5) Assuming it was edible, our most intimate contact with all aspects of our environment, natural or not, would be through its consumption.
Alicia states that urbanophagy facilitates the satisfaction of our sensory and intellectual curiosity towards our cultural environment. Ali&Cia does not simply construct with cake and party food but looks for ingredients and dishes that reflect the sensory profile of our environment as well as its history and social geography. For example the roads in Melbourne were paved with marmite, a yeast extract spread popular there, and in Gran Canaria with a local blood pudding. In downtown Madrid, towers of Spanish tortilla were next to towers of sushi. In Gran Canaria there was soil of gofio, a toasted flour eaten by the locals for hundreds of years, and couscous beaches, a reference to the boats of immigrants that arrive there from Morocco. Thus Ali&Cia creates edible meditations to be explored, tasted, savoured and contemplated.
(1) Colombia University Press website describing the book Pleij, Herman Dreaming of Cockaigne: Medieval Fantasies of the Perfect Life. New York, Columbia University, 2001.
(2) Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara 'Playing to the Senses: Food as a Performance Medium' in Performance Research 4(1), 1999, pp. 1-30, p. 4.
(3) New York Public Library website.
(4) Gibson, James J. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1968, p. 138.
(5) Fernández Arnesto, Felipe Food: A History, Pan Books, London, 2001, p.xiii.