Ritual Ruins
The video Ritual Ruins was documented during the preparation of the Cassava’s Bread recipe presented over the weekend of Michel’s Kitchen Takeover. The virtual narration is based on a book by Silvia Malaguzzi, Food and Feasting in Art, exploring the rituals, customs, and symbolism of food and dining in western art.
#artisanofgustatorymemories
Ruins by Brian Dillon, ” The ruins are still standing – but what do they stand for? It seems that the hardest we think about destruction and decay, the closer we stare at this or that crumbling mass of stone or concrete or steel, and the further we explore the very idea of ruin itself, the less the whole together. Consider what the ruin has meant, or might mean today: a reminder of the universal reality of collapse and rot; a warning from the past about the destiny of our own or any other civilization; an ideal of beauty that is alluring exactly because of its flaws and failures; the symbol of a certain melancholic or maundering state of mind; an image of equilibrium between nature and culture; a memorial to the fallen of an ancient or recent war; the very picture of economic hubris or industrial decline; a desolate playground in whose cracked and weed- infested precincts we have space and time to imagine a future. We ask deal of ruins, and divine lot of from their silence.”
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Michel Scherer is a Brazilian chef with over thirteen years of international experience. Having started his career in Sao Paulo, Michel combines his culinary and artistic skills to build a practice where every meal becomes an experience, highlighting the importance of history and rituals, as well as ingredients and their origins. Michel is deeply interested in the history of produce and how colonial and post-colonial practices have influenced the way we eat today, something that is deeply present in everything he prepares, both edible and not. In January 2020, he became Head Chef at the Royal Academy Schools in London.
