During Spring 2024, The Harmony Show received a commission to create a new episode in artist quori theodor’s installation, Gnaw, at Performance Space New York (PSNY). The episode was a Cooking Show that integrated live and online participants into a performance for a live audience. After the episode was recorded and broadcast, the audience was served bowls of soup prepared by Hawk Swanson during the performance.
Cooking Show with Ilana Harris-Babou︎︎︎ and Kyla Wazana Tompkins︎︎︎ in quori theodor’s installation Gnaw
Cooking Show with Ilana Harris-Babou︎︎︎ and Kyla Wazana Tompkins︎︎︎ in quori theodor’s installation Gnaw
[Four people connect virtually on a Zoom grid where each person’s rectangle is outlined by a thin magenta line. They are engaged in a group conversation about Audre Lorde’s essay “Uses of the Erotic,” Ilana Harris-Babou’s video Cooking with the Erotic, and Kyla Wazana Tompkins’s essay “Consider the Recipe” as well as her books Racial Indigestion and Deviant Matter. In the top left of the grid sit Sidore Kuroneko—a Japanese-British Synthetik woman with shoulder-length black and purple ombré dyed hair—and Davecat, an Organik Black man with dark hair slicked over the right side of his forehead. On the top right is Ilana Harris-Babou, an Organik Black woman wearing her dark hair in braids parted to the right and partially covering her forehead. On the bottom left is Kyla Wazana Tompkins, an Organik North African Jewish woman wearing her dark hair in a high tight bun and resting her smiling face in her hands. On the bottom right is Amber Hawk Swanson, an Organik white woman with bangs and long graying hair. She stands in artist quori theodor’s installation Gnaw, which includes a fermentation wall and a pink diner counter on which she cooks soup—using large pots and cooking utensils—in front of a live studio audience that is not pictured. Kyla also stands at a counter near a large pot in her home kitchen where she prepares coconut butter mochi in front of her refrigerator, on which pictures hang. Ilana, who is smiling, sits in her studio which contains metal shelves, wooden work tables, and artwork. Sidore and Davecat sit together on a gray sectional in their living room. A geometric green room divider hangs behind Davecat, who looks pensive.]
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The full episode is available here.
