Lindsay Kelley's BioArt Kitchen is now available. I'm happy for her, and also delighted to be included in this interdisciplinary critical work. In her book, she writes about the Genetically
Modified Foods Cookbook alongside The Betty Crocker 3000 Presents Food for a Hungry World by Critical Art Ensemble and The In Vitro Meat Cookbook by Next Nature Network.
Kelley writes:
The cover of The Genetically Modified Foods Cook Book reinforces this everyday aesthetic, quoting popular binder-style cookbooks like Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book and the chequered tablecloth pattern covering Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book…Although Chin stops short of embodying the corporate mascot format pioneered by General Mills with Betty Crocker, The Genetically Modified Foods Cook Book does play on the cookbook aesthetics and commercial agendas developed by General Mills and Better Homes. In addition to the cookbook, ‘Chef Chin’ hosts a cooking show available on DVD. As in Home Economics demonstrations of the past, the cooking show introduces techniques for working with new foods and new technologies. Chin treats every dish as a sensory and social system. Her garrulous gazpacho pairs with earsporouts, which listen to the mouthy tomatoes. Chin asks how a cookbook can illustrate the cross-species shifts occurring in our food supply and how multiple species are at play in any given meal interacting with one another. Recipe artists comment on the systems that sustain new food technologies and the ruptures that occur when old habits collide with new foods. What does a tomato expressing human proteins for vaccine development look like? In Chin’s cookbook, these imaginary products blur species boundaries as well as boundaries separating genres, the real and the fictional.