Understood as the absence of knowledge or information, ignorance tends to surface from inaccessibility or unacquaintance. A certain level of acknowledged ignorance is essential for progressing creatively in unfamiliar territory.
The Futurist movement was revolutionary in its aim to overturn habitual attitudes towards cooking and eating; it glorified modernity and efficiently regenerated elements of our daily lives. The Futurist Cookbook (1930) allowed Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, founder of the Italian movement, to disguise his artistic manifesto as an easy-to-read cookbook. Through a collection of seemingly distasteful recipes, allegorical tales, provocative experiments, and declamations, Marinetti exhibits his belief that our approach to food needed to become subservient to the Futurist’s idealistic notion of reinvention through creativity.
The Futurist Cookbookdisplays a blend of the edible and the inedible, heavily challenging preconceptions of what belongs at the dinner table. Despite being written nearly 90 years ago, the oddities have aged incredibly well and remain relevant today. Multisensory experiences were favoured over solely satisfying the taste buds; sculpted foods were to be displayed as centre pieces, perfumes were to be used as experience enhancers, cutlery was to be eradicated and scientific equipment (such as Ozonisers and Ultraviolet lamps) would replace traditional kitchen tools to stimulate modernity and technology within the food. Marinetti even betrayed his nationalistic sympathies by notoriously suggesting that pasta should be abolished!
The boundary between food and art was challenged by Marinetti to support a Futurist narrative; uncertainty and curiosity was encouraged to achieve sensual freedom embedded in a dining experience. My own practice is surrounded by a thought process that heavily focuses on the interchangeability of food and art materials - plaster and icing, ketchup and paint, dough and clay. The Futurist Cookbook guided me towards a more playful exploration of this boundary; Food For Thinks aims to flourish in its own uncertainty.