http://blog.furtherfield.org/?q=node/255

Last Sunday the Linz0nein* website launched the Buffet Plunder Blog: the great free-food-for-all action for the European Capital of Culture year Linz09. As with most great ideas, in principle it is quite simple. The more I think about it, though, the more I imagine that this project has the potential to trigger some magnificent disasters.

The idea is that during the Capital of Culture year we may expect to see a plethora of exhibition openings, project launches, receptions, etc. In Austria, at least, these kinds of events are usually free and accompanied by sumptuous buffets and plentiful drinks. When I first started going to exhibition openings in the mid-80s, I went with a painter, who explained to me that the buffets at exhibition openings are an important supplement for poor starving art students. Now this "secret tip" is to be extended to the general population. Everyone is invited to upload details about these kinds of open occasions, where there is likely to be free food and drink. The list can be printed out to be distributed in places where this information is likely to be appreciated, and contacts have been made to ensure that this happens.

In a sense, I see this as a logical continuation of the motto "culture for all", which has been asserted in Linz particularly since the late 70s and was one of the main foundations for the bid for Capital of Culture year. The director of Linz09 has also repeatedly stressed that the Capital of Culture is to be "for everyone", "for all the people of Linz". So it only makes sense to issue a general invitation to the general public at large and particularly to those at the margins of society to enjoy the festivities that are accompanied by drinks and buffets as well as general "culture for all".

Will people come? I go to exhibition openings and receptions relatively often, specifically to finally meet the people that I normally only work with online, sometimes to check the correspondence between actual art works and the descriptions of them that I have translated for the catalogue, wall texts, press releases, etc. In the end, I usually have the feeling it was worth the effort, but for me it is indeed an effort. As I am not naturally very outgoing or self-confident, walking into a room full of people and joining or starting conversations is not something I enjoy or find easy to do. Even at the opening of an exhibition that I have been involved with for months, it usually requires at least a glass of wine and a cigarette or two before I can overcome a feeling of being ill at ease, not really belonging there. How many people will really be able to just walk into rooms full of invited guests and help themselves to the buffet without inhibitions? Or what kind of appropriate or inappropriate behaviors might they need to employ to overcome any inhibitions? And then what happens when the unspoken, unacknowledged, invisible, yet quite palpable demarcations between those who "belong" and those who "don't belong" there are breached?

Due to the nature of my work (also the number of years I have been doing it), I receive invitations by email and post nearly every day to exhibition openings, presentations, receptions all over Europe. The fact that these are all addressed specifically to me (along with however many hundred other people) indicates that despite my subjective feelings of being out of place, I do indeed "belong" in these kinds of contexts. The invitation itself to upload this information to the "Buffet Plunder Blog", a kind of appeal to solidarity, a willingness to share this privilege, so to speak, already leads me to reflect on and question my own position. Thus as a "concept", it already works.

Whether and how it will work concretely at specific events with free food and drinks remains to be seen, but I imagine that art and culture gatherings could well become far more interesting in 2009.

*Linz0nein.org: the name is a bilingual play on words, since the English pronunciation of Linz09 sounds like "Linz, oh no" in German. The site was originally launched as a repository for proposals rejected by or withdrawn from the official Linz09 program. Meanwhile more than 75 projects have been submitted to the web site.