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2398 gr.
a book about food
Date: 13 February, 2003
2398 gr. is the title and weight of a book by Fabrica about food. Food for thought and the weight of culture, two idiomatic expressions which in this case transcend their metaphoric meaning to become reality. Food, more than any other product, is an inseparable part of a people’s or a community’s identity and territory. Ludwig Feuerbach, German philosopher, said “we are what we eat". Our food habits play an important role in our cultural identity and our life. It is no coincidence if, in Latin languages, the words flavour (sapore) and knowledge (sapere) have the same etymological roots, creating almost a tangible link between our culture and our sensory experiences, therefore between our ethics and our aesthetics.
Fabrica invited famous and not-so famous artists to contribute to this research - young designers, performance artists, photographers, writers, video-makers - as well as some of the most important and eccentric figures in the art and culture worlds (from Alan Fletcher to Stephan Segmeister, from James Victore to Javier Mariscal and from Anna Fox to Wolfgang Tillmans, Martì Guixé and Reed Kram). Although the resulting sensory experience is related to food, it involves sight, touch and hearing more than taste or smell.
2398 gr. interprets such a basic cultural and anthropological stimulus as our relationship with food through the technique, or rather the techniques, of modern art. Food as a fetish, ritual, addiction, celebration, emotion, pleasure, obsession, chemistry, relationship, fear. And also as a landscape, design, metaphor, sign, writing, music, dance, architecture.
George Bernard Shaw complained that the best things in life were either illegal, bad for you or fattening. 2398 gr. is sold in leading bookshops and you can’t eat it, so, at least in that sense, you run no risk. But beware: 2938g can still be very painful if they bounce off your head or toe.
2398 gr. A book on food. 302 pages + multimedia CD-ROM. Foreword by Marti Guixé. Introduction by Paola Antonelli. Ed. Fabrica. Pub. Editore Electa.
http://www.electaweb.it
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