A mix of 25+ Chicago residents (students and former students from Columbia College, externals, academic staff, others) collaborated together under motiroti's guidance for a packed, exciting, exhausting week in mid November.

The group spent a week practically exploring and discussing the role of food sharing as a tool in social art making and community-building activism. It was a great week, in which we looked at the needs for personal reflection as a social arts practitioner; the opportunities and limitations of working within and beyond cultural and funding infrastructures; a lot of specific observations about where work of this kind can usefully be done within Chicago, and much more.

We also visited a range of partner organisations across the city, including the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, the En Las Tablas Performing Arts Centre, and the Dorchester Project. Thanks to them and to others who hosted and supported our work, including the Smart Museum and of course the project's commissioners - the Critical Encounters programme at Columbia College, Chicago.

The group have a private blog space running in which we are hatching ideas for action, sharing further tools and background info. Motiroti return to Chicago in February 2012 to support the group to realise their ideas in public, in relation to the emerging 'Potluck principles'.

Please refer to the 'About' page on this blog for more info about the Potluck in its Chicago form as well as motiroti's aims to seed other Potluck nodes elsewhere. If you're interested in hearing more about the Potluck and perhaps getting involved in it as it develops, you can leave a message in the comments thread for this poost; or contact us via the twitter account @plchicago, and/or email tim (at) motiroti (dot) com who will forward you to the most relevant person. The Potluck is designing itself to be open and inclusive in its approach, and interest from others is truly welcome :)

How we welcome each other is one of @motiroti's ongoing artistic interests. The traditions, dynamics and behaviours of being a host, of being a guest. The power invested in each role, the giving and taking.

As a welcome gift here's some video of a food sharing workshop we produced for the Melbourne Festival, Australia, in autumn 2011.

This workshop accompanied our touring show Journeys of Love and More Love, in which artist Ali Zaidi takes audiences through his migrations between India, Pakistan, UK and beyond, accompanied by several taster dishes that reference the culinary diversity and migration history of the location where the show is performed.

We also find relevant the commentary about this recent-ish exhibition, Faites Commes Chez Vous, in Senegal:

"....The notion of hospitality forcedly embodies the concept of the other or the foreigner, for the word requires a framework in which to layout the outsider or the guest. Borrowed from the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, „Faites comme chez vous“ is in itself a self-limiting invitation which means: please feel at home, but remember that this is not true, this is not your home and you are expected to respect my rules. In his thinking and writing on hospitality Derrida also distinguished between a guest and a parasite arguing that hospitality, reception or the welcome offered have to be submitted to a basic jurisdiction. Not all new arrivals are received as guests if they don’t have the benefit of the right to hospitality or the right to asylum. The contemporary world is characterized by the constant movement and displacement of people, as well as by the increased unwillingness of countries to welcome migrants."

(Original link here - scroll down the page)