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Exhibition and Events Onsite

Eléna Nemkova

Particelle alimentari

October-December 2008

Exhibition and Events Onsite

Eléna Nemkova

Particelle alimentari

October-December 2008

Food Particles

On display at Assab One, seventeen oil and acrylic spray paintings explore the relationship between cooking and science and interpret as many imaginary recipes inspired by “molecular gastronomy”, a term coined by Hervé This, the French chemist considered the guru of superstar chefs like Ferran Adrià and Pierre Gagnaire. It is precisely Hervé This who, in the video interview created by Nemkova to accompany the exhibition, reveals the fascination behind an apparent refinement, seemingly self-serving, aimed at the sophisticated tastes of rare gourmets. He also introduces the idea that these studies could truly change eating habits, with significant consequences in terms of the nutritional properties of food, production costs, and energy consumption.

Text by Barbara Casavecchia

Knowledge / Taste

“I think it is a sad reflection on our civilization that while we can and do measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus we do not know what goes on inside our soufflés.”
Nicholas Kurti

Lee Miller, pin-up, Surrealist muse, talented photographer, friend of Picasso and Cocteau, lover of Man Ray, managed to secure an assignment from Vogue in 1942 as a war correspondent, following Allied troops in Europe. She was among the first to enter Buchenwald and Dachau, documenting on film the unspeakable horror of emaciated bodies, starved and tortured. Too much: she returned to England, locked the camera and thousands of negatives in an attic drawer, and refused to speak about it again. She transformed into a compulsive gourmet cook, spending her days checking temperatures and cooking times, collecting recipes, interviewing famous chefs, organizing dinners, and trying to control the internal and universal chaos, compensating for the unspeakable ugliness with her apotropaic arsenal of pots, fires, and flavors (and plenty of alcohol).

In the overwhelming hedonistic cult we reserve for cooking – from themed channels, to guides, to the fetishism of organic and “genuine” food – one can perceive the reflection of the same anxiety in the face of an unprecedented food and environmental emergency. The Earth devours its renewable resources with cannibalistic voracity, throwing ecosystems into chaos the more it tries to produce edible goods. The image that best embodies the nightmare of collapse is that of the two protagonists, father and son, in Cormac McCarthy’s fierce “The Road,” wandering through devastated landscapes, pushing an empty supermarket cart, always searching for something to eat. The only food left is canned, expired, stale; and while rummaging through the shelves of a ruined shop, the child experiences the thrill of drinking a can of cola, still fizzy—a relic of the past. Magic moments.

In the prevailing aesthetic regime of everyday life, food—and its representation—inevitably takes center stage. Beyond being a social display, food is, by its nature, “communication,” as demonstrated by anthropologist Mary Douglas. Publicized, mediatized, deconstructed, and reassembled in abstract compositions (food design), it increasingly resembles a sensual-sentimental mirage, a product of impossible alchemical syntheses that cannot be replicated in our kitchens. More than nourishment, it has become a whim – or, as Zygmunt Bauman writes in “Society Under Siege”, “the most powerful and especially the most versatile stimulant for keeping the acceleration of consumer demand in step with the growing volume of supply. (…) Whim completes the liberation of the pleasure principle, eliminating the last remnants of reality principle constraints: the naturally gaseous substance has been released from the container.”

The ethereal subjects, luminous and floating in the void, as well as the titles that Elèna Nemkova chooses for the seventeen oil and acrylic spray paintings in the Particelle Alimentari series, seem to have been stolen from the pages of any glossy lifestyle magazine. Or perhaps from one of the militant menus of Futurist Cuisine, devised by Marinetti, who, upon the instigation of French chef Jules Maincave, encouraged chemists to invent new flavors and chefs to create “simultaneist and changing bites” like “Tyrrhenian foam algae” and “steel chicken,” to “bring together elements today separated by unfounded prejudices” like veal and absinthe, herring and strawberry jelly, along with music, poetry, and perfume. Her works—Topinambur, spinach and herbs cooked in liquid nitrogen, Raspberry ball and dried seaweed; Vacuum-cooked beetroot and marinated plum gnocchi, Pistachio pearls and citron syrup; Seven vegetable soup cooked in liquid nitrogen—are the result of the artist’s incursions into the vast ocean of molecular gastronomy, a discipline created in the late 1980s by Hungarian physicist Nicholas Kurti and French chemist Hervé This—today a guru to global culinary celebrities like Ferran Adrià (invited to the last Documenta in Kassel) and Pierre Gagnaire. The goal is to challenge a series of taboos and prejudices tied to traditional cooking, help the public understand the contribution of science to social development, and explore the processes of culinary and cultural transformations. With surprising concrete outcomes, such as liquid nitrogen sorbets or the invention of the “piano-cocktail machine” (which Marinetti would immediately rename the “pianopolibibita”), a box equipped with an electronic circuit board that, as This himself explains in a long video interview with Nemkova during the exhibition at Assab One, would be able to mix around 500 million new dishes. Really? Cooked or raw?

When she was enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Nemkova was struck by the aesthetic of functional packaging and the high nutritional content of NATO K-Rations, distributed to students to cope with the shortages following the Soviet collapse. It is unclear whether her “contemporary still lifes” express a sincere admiration for such fleeting yet sought-after beauty, a sincere trust in the technology’s ability to change our relationship with food, optimizing its protein intake and energy consumption, or if they are instead imbued with the subtle irony she has used for years to archive the most absurd and unverifiable stories published on the Russian news site Newsru.com, from which she then draws works such as The production technology of artificial meat is created in the USA (August 2005)—the mutant and transgenic great-grandchild of Futurist Carneplastico. Regardless, viewers need a healthy, disenchanted portion of doubt—not only regarding food neophobia, but also regarding humanity’s chronic inability to solve basic needs.

Interview with Hervé This

Hervé This is a chemist and the scientific director of the Department of Food and Food Safety at the Institut des Sciences et Industries du Vivant et de l’Environnement in Paris. He introduced the term “molecular gastronomy” in the 1980s. Since then, he has been an inspiration and consultant for famous avant-garde chefs like Ferran Adrià and Pierre Gagnaire. This is a summarized transcript of a conversation between him and Eléna Nemkova, with video documentation available as part of the exhibition.

Paris, July 8, 2008, Institut des Sciences et Industries du Vivant et de l’Environnement

Eléna Nemkova: …As I mentioned earlier, I’m working on the theme of contemporary food, and my project aims to trigger a discussion based on a paradox: every day, we make increasing technological progress, but we still prepare food the same way we did fifty or a hundred years ago.

Hervé This: …In the 1980s, I realized we needed to change the way we cook, because we’ve been preparing food the same way since the Middle Ages… But imagine being faced with billions of people who don’t want to change anything. First, [to do this, you have to be] crazy, and second, you need a strategy. And in this case, the strategy is to analyze the examples of someone who has already done something similar in the past. Like Parmentier, for example, who introduced potatoes to France when no one wanted them. His strategy was to give potato flowers to the king (Louis XVI). At that same time, the Academy of Medicine was declaring that potatoes were poisonous, but Parmentier knew they weren’t, because they had already been cultivated in Germany for a while. So Parmentier had the king receive the potato flowers, so people could see that even the king was eating potatoes. Then, he ordered the cultivation of potato fields just outside Paris, guarded by royal guards, but without arresting those who would steal the potatoes at night to taste them. In this way, within a generation, potatoes became part of the French diet, and their habits changed. It’s the same strategy I apply… The kings of today are the three-star chefs. So I pass my “potatoes” (that is, recipes) to Pierre Gagnaire or Ferran Adrià. They use all the innovations, so they’re very competitive artistically. People can taste their dishes, see these chefs on TV… Oh! This is very fun! [He pulls out a package.] It’s a box I received yesterday: a children’s game to learn to cook, play with alginate, agar-agar… This is proof that the strategy works.

E. N.: Sure, but even the form of food is important. In restaurants, you can already taste some pretty futuristic things, but perhaps it’s important to modify the way we cook at home.

H. T.: But you have to wait: first the “king,” then ordinary people. Look, this game is for kids! In France, since 2001, we’ve introduced experimental taste workshops in schools. In all the schools in France, six-year-old children learn how to make 1 cubic meter of foam from a single egg white. So tomorrow it will change… After all, adults like you and me don’t want to change anything. Children are very important. Through them, this change will happen. Let’s forget about the adults, they will disappear…

E. N.: Anyway, in the near future, we’ll have to face the issue of the food crisis: the world’s population is growing, and food is scarce. What do you think about introducing new products, like insects or worms, as protein sources?

H. T.: We’re smart enough to decide what we’ll eat in the future. That’s why I think chemistry is the future. We know that organic food is fashionable now, but there won’t be a choice. If the price of electricity rises, people will turn to nuclear energy. The same thing is happening in chemistry. Here [in the West], it’s still possible to cope with the high price of food, but if the cost of energy rises, chemistry will become more important, because it will still be necessary to transform basic products into different edible varieties.

E. N.: So you think that in the future, most people will become vegetarians?

H. T.: I can’t predict the future, but from a scientific point of view, plants are very interesting. They contain both proteins and other molecules.

E. N.: But to update our cooking, we need new devices… There’s quite a big psychological barrier. What’s the way to overcome it?

H. T.: It’s what I’ve already said: it’s the story of Parmentier. First, the wisdom of the “kings” – three-star chefs – then the others. That’s the current situation.

E. N.: How can molecular gastronomy accelerate this change?

H. T.: This is a communication problem; we must not confuse research issues with application issues. Application needs strategy, and this has been in progress since 1980, but it’s too early to talk about it. Parmentier had to spend a lifetime introducing potatoes, so you need to be very determined… Look at this machine I designed in 2002. I called it the “pianococktail” – these are the small pumps… I originally conceived it as a demonstration tool, so it’s portable… I took it with me everywhere like a chair… Here you can have about twenty pumps like these. But this part is not necessary [shows the various parts of the machine]. It’s like a small box, with an electronic card… And this part is a mixing tool. It injects into this small space, and the product mixes. This machine can produce about five hundred million new dishes. Press the button, ask for béarnaise, and you get béarnaise. Press the button, ask for mayonnaise, and you get mayonnaise. Ask for a cocktail, and you get a cocktail. Of course, it will be required to provide, for example, yogurt, etc… But it works exactly like an espresso machine: you put a capsule in, and you get a ready-made cup of coffee… This machine can be made at a very low cost – this costs zero, this too… And it could be anywhere, one day. I’m proposing this idea to a big company, and you’ll see that we’ll make it. There’s no patent; it’s open… We just need to put it into production.

E. N.: That’s quite a generous gesture; will it work like “open source”?

H. T.: This machine could be distributed in ten years; I’m not pushing too hard because it’s pointless to pressure, you have to follow a strategy. When Gagnaire uses it… or another chef… Imagine this machine in a restaurant! Instead of beating eggs, you put an egg white in and press a button. But this is technology, not my work.

E. N.: I think you’re making a huge contribution to popularizing this, you’re a public figure…

H. T.: When [what I do] is published… I remember that in 1996, I published my recipe for chocolate mousse without eggs, called “Chocolate Chantilly.” It was published in the magazine Elle. And when you ask how molecular gastronomy will reach home… Well, I’ll tell you, many people use this recipe now: you don’t need eggs, if you’re poor, you can make it without eggs for this mousse.

E. N.: Do you use – or think it makes sense to use – artificial additives, preservatives… or do you prefer to work without them?

H. T.: You know, there’s a huge war going on in the world of Spanish cuisine chefs. There’s a big debate… The person who started the debate is crazy: he wants to sell his book, and when a person isn’t very ethical… they say Ferran Adrià poisons people, and his book sells. This isn’t just a simple controversy. Anyway, it’s all very ridiculous; this person questions methylcellulose. But methylcellulose is so safe that pharmaceutical industries use it instead of gelatin to encapsulate pills, because gelatin didn’t work very well. But we use gelatin in our kitchens every day! So the pharmaceutical industry replaces it with methylcellulose… So when this person says methylcellulose is dangerous… no, he’s gone crazy. Then, this same chef in particular makes many roasts… and when you cook over an open flame, a lot of benzopyrene forms, which is a very carcinogenic substance. So I can say this is all nonsense… It’s a very strange situation; we’re afraid of any chemical term, but then we barbecue and eat terrible things and don’t care. We’re afraid of chemistry, but do you know how sugar is made? In the first stage, they cut the beets, in the second step they add lime milk, tons of lime, because it’s essential to separate the sugars. Is that chemical? Yes, but it’s sugar! Nobody has problems with it. It’s absolutely chemical! For 99% of it!

E. N.: Why are people so afraid of new things in the kitchen?

H. T.: We’re like shrimp; we have a reflex called “food neophobia” because we’re primates, which means we’re not capable of eating something new, we need to know what it is first. And we learn what to eat when we’re children. Imagine, if someone proposed eating a snake, u-u-uh! But the snake isn’t poisonous, and its meat is very good. But for you, it’s something new and it’s not part of your inherited experience. For that reason, you can’t eat the snake.

E. N.: Yes, I know this situation well, I grew up in the Soviet Union and didn’t know oysters, and I don’t like them now…

H. T.: But they’re really good!

E. N.: Yes, they’re delicious, but I don’t like them…

H. T.: All new food seems unacceptable to us. That’s why in my strategy, I don’t try to persuade adults, because it’s useless, but I work with children. Then, as they grow, they won’t be afraid. I have two children, and I’ve always made sorbet at home with liquid nitrogen, and they know it. Recently we went to a restaurant where the chef made a sorbet with liquid nitrogen: they didn’t even look at it because for them, it’s already a habit, it’s no longer something new. It’s a habit, which means it can be passed on. I’ve passed this on to them, so they’re not afraid.

E. N.: For your research, do you find any references in traditional cuisines, for example, in Japanese cuisine, which does many transformations? I’m thinking, for example, of beans: they have a thousand ways to prepare them because, basically, Japanese cuisine is a cuisine made of humble ingredients… Or what are your references?

H. T.: …I’ve collected more than twenty-five thousand recipes, they’re French, and all of this only since the 1980s. I have to study them. Sure, I could study Japanese, English, German, Russian cuisine… But first of all, it’s an enormous amount of work and I already have enough, and then it wouldn’t be very efficient because I can’t read Russian or Japanese. My strategy is to create molecular gastronomy groups in different countries so that these people can study local cuisines. Then we meet and compare the studies of molecular gastronomy. That’s why I’ve just come back from Portugal, where I’m currently collecting recipes… I just returned from Canada. In April, I was in Ireland, and we created a group there that collects and studies data from the molecular gastronomy perspective. In February, I was in California, and I created another group there. In October, I was in Brazil and created a group in Brazil, etc. In the end, it will be a large organization spread across many countries, I’d say twenty to twenty-five, it changes all the time, made up of people working in universities.

E. N.: So, what is our future in the kitchen?

H. T.: I don’t know, but I try to push in a certain direction, and it seems to be working, more or less. The direction, the strategy, comes first [shows the children’s game]. Then there’s the issue of energy… which we use to cook… If we use an oven, we lose 80% of the energy. That means: first, produce it, then bring it home, then pay for this energy and then waste it… It’s completely illogical. You lose 80%. So it’s a question of electricity, and you know that energy will always become more important… I’m sure that when economic conditions no longer allow wasting energy obtained at such a high price, the way we cook will change too. This is the time to propose the new way of cooking. Probably, I will be helped in my effort… You see, in 1980, when I started proposing changes, the energy issue didn’t exist. But today it does, and it will help solve this problem… Another thing: the “mad cow” issue. This is very interesting. In 1984, I proposed to French chefs to use carrageenan, agar-agar, etc. The chefs said, “No-no-no-no! You want to poison us with your food additives…”. Then, suddenly, the mad cow problem arose, and they moved and replaced gelatin with alginate, carrageenan, agar-agar, etc. Look: now, in cookbooks, they’re everywhere, agar-agar and carrageenan on every page. This means that economic and environmental issues are much more effective than any kind of coercion. That’s why I believe that when the price of electricity rises further, the way we cook will also change, and I’m pushing hard in this direction. We need to change… For example, a microwave – it’s a very limited tool, but from an energy point of view, it’s very interesting because it only wastes 20%. But realistically, you can’t cook with a microwave, so we need new tools to process completely different things. This is the time to propose new tools. People have new devices, so they will cook in a different way and different things. I hope! I’m pushing hard in this direction.

Biography

Eléna Nemkova lives and works in Milan and Saint Petersburg. She was born in 1971 in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. She graduated in Design and Art from the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts and obtained her diploma from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. She participated in the Contemporary Art Master and the Mercedes-Benz Art Award at the La Loggia Art Center in Montefiridolfi (FI), and in the Pépinières Européennes program at Konstepidemin in Gothenburg. She received a scholarship within the Movin’ Up program of the GAI and took part in residency programs at the BundesKanzleramt in Vienna and Buchsenhausen.lab in Innsbruck. In 2004, she was selected for the Advanced Course in Visual Arts at the Ratti Foundation in Como (visiting professor Jimmie Durham).
Her expressive mediums are painting, video, and sculpture. Her works seem to be imbued with an authentic Soviet spirit and an unwavering belief in scientific progress, as if the captivating discoveries of science exerted a wholly positive fascination on the artist. Eléna Nemkova’s practice is based on an attraction: that of the ongoing ‘modernization’ process in the world. Fascinated by scientific progress in its various forms – from space exploration to the most original domestic applications, including gastronomy – her works represent the transformation of our habits, as well as our malleability in response to the continuous intrusions of technology into daily life. The concept of heroism that emerges in some of her works questions humanity’s position regarding the act of ‘modernizing’: an active position or a progressive atrophy. The answer remains, for now, without a final image.