Sometimes you feel like you've seen it all. And then you realize, no you have not. So, I just received a press release for the upcoming Umami Food and Art Festival taking place in Soho from April 8 through18, 2008 @ Roulette, 20 Greene Street, between Grand and Canal.

Okay, I thought, this sounds interesting. I went on to read that the festival “will bring together artists who use food in their work with food professionals through performances, panel discussions, tastings and workshops."

While I am all for art and food and festivals, this graf of the press release caught my attention:

“Umami kicks off on Tuesday, April 8th with Orphic Memory Sausage by the artists Mimi Oka and Doug Fitch (repeated Wednesday, April 9th): bring anything (from shoes to dried fish) that evokes a memory of place or time or experience that you wish to transform into sausage and help smash, chop and pulverize everything, mixing all of it into a great pulp to be stuffed into pig intestines and hung to dry. Everyone will be able to take home a link of collective memory sausage at the end of the day.”

Come again? Collective memory sausage? Thoughts? Please Share Your Two Cents. Is it just me? I have no idea what to make of this.

Andrea Strong