Second Avenue Firehouse Gallery • Bay Shore, New York • 18 June 2012
Open Feast: Potato Potluck was a collaborative community dinner organized by Jeffrey Allen Price, Ryan Seslow, Steven Ceraso, Irina Zadov, and Abraham Epton as part of the CO-ACTIVATE exhibition at the Second Avenue Firehouse Gallery in Bay Shore, New York.
The event served as the final stop of Open Feast, a cross-country social practice project in which artists Irina Zadov and Abraham Epton traveled across the United States sharing meals, conversations, and stories with communities along the way. Their participation in a potato-themed gathering was encouraged through a connection with artist Viviane Le Courtois, who had previously hosted an Open Feast event in Denver and recognized the natural relationship between the project and Price’s ongoing potato-centered activities.
Participants were invited to bring potato dishes, share a communal meal, and take part in conversations about food, art, travel, community, and cultural exchange. The evening also included several playful potato-themed activities, including a round of “A Potato, B Potato, C Potato,” one of the many participatory games developed through Price’s earlier potato festivals and public events.
Although modest in scale, Open Feast: Potato Potluck continued a tradition of communal potato gatherings that stretched back to the First Annual Think Potato Festival in Springfield, Missouri and the potato-themed meal organized during Price’s EMERGENCY PÖTATOFÊTE performance at Stony Brook University. The event demonstrated how the potato could function not only as an artistic symbol, but also as a catalyst for social interaction, hospitality, and collective experience.
Looking back, the gathering can be seen as an important precursor to later TPI food-centered projects, including the Potato Masquerade Ball, various public potato dinners, and Kartupelis Gardēdim (Potato for Gourmets) in Cēsis, Latvia. Like those later events, Open Feast: Potato Potluck used the shared act of eating potatoes as a means of bringing people together around conversation, creativity, and community.
Related Projects:
Related Documentation:
→ Institute Chronicle: Potato Potluck with Open Feast
→ Institute Chronicle: Reflections on Open Feast: Potato Potluck