flüstergewürz

chilibread for amherst

2011-03-30T17:34:00.004-04:00

i have five people's chilibread to take up to amherst for my performance. my mom's, my friends moni, kirsten, and lisa's, and my own.

fluestergewuerz performance at umass/amherst

2011-03-24T10:07:00.004-04:00

On March 31 I will be driving up to Amherst to participate in a group show titled "Here, There, and Everywhere", as part of Transcultural Exchange's conference on international collaborations in Boston in early April. I will conduct the performance element of "Fluestergewuerz", the project I showed in Berlin last year, during the opening reception. I will be handing out chilibread, made by a number of friends and family members in Germany as well as the US, who all made their versions of my recipe. There will be audio as well as visual components installed for the duration of the show. Here's the invite:

The bakers for this performance were:
Annemarie Rinnhofer, Monika Lenzer, Lisa Townley, Kirsten Kuccer, Thank you so much for your contributions! You will be at the performance in spirit and with your chilibread cookies.

lisa's adaption

2011-02-19T14:18:00.009-05:00

lisa's chilibread cookies - she sent them from denver. they will be part of the performance at hampden gallery at the end of march - i put them in the freezer so i'm not tempted to eat them in the meantime...

performance on march 31

2011-02-17T10:37:00.008-05:00

anne laPrade seuthe, director at hampden and central galleries at the university of massachusetts in amherst, invited me to do a performance of flüstergewürz. i am looking for collaborators willing to bake a batch of chilibread to be handed out during the opening at hampden gallery on march 31. please e-mail me at angelika.rinnhofer(at)gmail.com if you're interested in participating. bake your own version of the recipe posted below (under "pass it on") . looking forward to getting a lot of cookies!

desserts at moma

2010-12-04T18:17:00.002-05:00

desserts by moma executive chef lynn bound and pastry chef christina nastasi...

based on traditional german recipes

handing out chilibread samples in the hope of finding collaborators

chilibread for starters

2010-12-01T19:52:00.006-05:00

my first batch this year - i made these cookies to give to my fellow dessert makers and tasters at moma this friday. i hope the treats will entice some of the bakers to participate in my collaborative project.

my mom's recipe

2010-11-12T14:54:00.002-05:00

MoMA has it. scroll down to #6.

pass it on

2010-09-16T20:22:00.006-04:00

flüstergewürz is a long-distance, collaborative project involving families and friends, neighbors and strangers, artists and non-artists, to contemplate concepts such as home, trust, memory, migration, and separation. below is my american version of my mom's recipe for nuremberg gingerbread. please use this as a basis to create your own cookies.

2.6 cups honey/bit of maple syrup

1.5 cups ground nuts (cashews, pecans/hickory, walnuts)

8 TS butter

2 eggs

zest of 1 orange and 1 lemon

2.6 cups cornmeal

½ tsp allspice

1 tsp vanilla

2 TS candied chili peppers

½ tsp dried chili peppers

½ tsp ground ancho chile pepper

¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

combine all ingredients and let stand on a warm place, covered, for eight days. use cookie cutters or other shapes to form cookies. preheat oven to 315°f and bake the cookies for 15-20 minutes.

for my version i substitute ingredients found in traditional nuremberg gingerbread, such as cinnamon, ginger, hazelnuts and almonds with ingredients indigenous to america. i call it chilibread.

ancient names for gingerbread are honey bread (egypt), pepper cake, and honey cake. gingerbread can be stored for many months and is said to only get better with time.

collaborate with me and make your version of chilibread. bring me some of your cookies as well as your recipe. participate in an international collaboration between american and german bakers. i would like to collect these recipes and publish them in a book.

contact: angelika.rinnhofer(at)gmail.com

a synopsis of sorts

2010-08-22T09:17:00.005-04:00

summer in berlin - mfa exhibit and thesis presentation - two intense and revealing years culminated in visual and verbal manifestations. i've been reflecting on critiques and questions and am slowly sensing their effect - on my practice and other things.

a performance: devouring chilibread - consuming art

cor(e)relations

2010-07-06T09:06:00.004-04:00

home

2010-05-16T19:45:00.003-04:00

real reflections

2010-05-16T19:36:00.003-04:00

essentials - photographs of memories

collaborators and exchanges

2010-05-16T19:09:00.004-04:00

my mom and some of our collaborators - the main square - food we were served -
a gingerbread house

nuremberg secrets

2010-05-16T17:28:00.004-04:00

my mother has been my agent, she set up appointments with at least 20 people for me to meet and exchange stories for chilibread. the amount of chilibread she and her friends baked is astounding. i basically got off the plane, took a two-hour nap until my mom woke me up to start our audio-tour.
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she has established a community of collaborators for me to engage with. her role in this project is crucial as she is well known in her community. people trust her and thus it was easier for them to trust me, an outsider, an artist. most of my collaborators are of working and lower middle class background. contemporary art is not essential to their lives. nevertheless, i sensed a desire to communicate, to tell a story, to speak to someone about one's memories. i realized that the topic i asked about - the hauptmarkt and events relating to its history or purpose - was insignificant, like a topic in a casual conversation. often the narrators let themselves get carried away, recalling memories of war, far-away native countries, childhoods, and - lost pets.
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artist as listener, healer, therapist, counselor, adviser, victim (!) - most important though: artist as interpreter. people long for interpretations of their experience. risk: artist's interpretation not accepted by non-artists - precarious situation.
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most people invited us to their homes or their work place. my mom and i were guests, we were sometimes treated to lunch or dinner, and we tasted some amazing wines. others were surprised and confused by our visit, nervous about our intrusion.
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in a public art piece, trust is an essential component. from my own experience it is difficult to establish trust, it seems that inquiry, criticism, and doubt don't support the development of it. here is where my own predicament comes in: as an artist i feel the urge to migrate, not to get too comfortable, to challenge the notion of "home". trust, however, needs stability, a community. public art involved with its audience, needs a community. how far do i want to go? how much do i want to be a member of a community? if germany is one big, closed-off, inward looking community, then this is certainly a major reason for me not to feel comfortable there. perhaps this discomfort is the motivator i need to make art.
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nostalgia often derives from a lack of community - like the stories from nuremberg. when i'm not in germany i become nostalgic for it, when i'm there i see the reality of it - i sense my "non presence". maybe this is how to best describe freud's idea of unheimlich: the uncanny.

brain wave I

2010-05-16T17:20:00.004-04:00

self-portrait as my self-conscious grandmother

brain wave II

2010-05-16T17:17:00.003-04:00

my dad and my two brothers ca. 1969 - a dad with his two sons on the banks of the hudson near beacon ca. 2010

brain wave III

2010-05-16T17:14:00.002-04:00

my bed in my childhood room - a hotel room in nyc

brain wave IV

2010-05-16T16:52:00.004-04:00

my parents and i skating on the silverlake in nuernberg ca. 1966 - skaters at rockefeller center in ny ca. 2010

darts and spice

2010-02-21T11:40:00.001-05:00

while my mother and her friends are baking chilibread in nuernberg, i have been considering and re-considering the planned performance on the hauptmarkt. after speaking with the manager in charge of events on the hauptmarkt, and her advice about the permanent windy conditions there after the demolition of one of the buildings at the square, i needed to think over the idea of a layer of spice covering the cobblestones. a small tent or kiosk, filled with the aroma of spices resulting from burning or boiling and laying out ginger, chili, cinnamon, etc., will be the stage of the installation. recorded stories about the hauptmarkt will be playing and there will be a recording station outside the tent for visitors to add to the story collection. i will give out spice samples and ask my audience to prepare a dish with these spices. i'll invite them to come back the next day and let me try the dish.

in the meantime i have been concerned with the issue of dispersing the spice aroma. while at sideshow in brooklyn i'd like to release aroma in the gallery. explosion as a means to disperse the spices seems a feasible option. i developed a spice game by attaching spice-filled balloons to a wall and trying to hit the targets with darts. at the moment of impact the balloons explode and spread the spice and its aroma across a small space in the gallery.

no new york

2010-02-21T11:06:00.001-05:00

witnessing america - recording america (new york) in photographs (nicolas: concept of 'no' in avant-garde) - i attempt with these photographs of my american environment to not draw attention to any specific motif/concept/object but to simply describe and thus witness the place where i live - this has been extremely difficult as it is the nature of photography to document, to draw attention to a specific object or event, and to archive. is it essential, significant, meaningful to take these pictures and print/copy/multiply/publish them?

remembering my grandmother's america - in super 8. i have been filming: new york, beacon, myself.

zarah's legacy

2010-02-21T11:05:00.002-05:00

cindy sherman was motivated to compose her film stills by her memories of watching b/w films from the '50s and '60s. my super 8 clips simulate my grandmother's posing for her husband's, and later, my uncle's camera - in 1960s and '70s california. i am appropriating my grandmother's poses, her waving for the camera (to us?), her posing like a silent movie star (she adored zarah leander). when i was a child, over the years, my parents received a number of super 8 films from my grandmother in california. i have not seen these films for many years, but i am re-enacting what i remember in front of the camera: my grandmother being proud of her new life in america. i rely on my memory to recall the poses etc, but i am also adding my own movements, my own poses. i always wondered about the reason of my grandmother's extroverted and suggestive poses - whom was she posing for? for us? for the filmmaker?

film stills

2010-01-24T14:19:00.001-05:00

stills from super 8 footage filming 'home' - in beacon and in new york.

migrating between a (art) and r (research)

2010-01-03T18:48:00.002-05:00

in my current art practice i find myself mentally migrating back to nuremberg quite frequently to anticipate the process and reactions of collaborators as well as other participants in flüstergewürz. the painter judith tucker’s discussion of the concept of home and sigmund freud’s explanation of the uncanny, the un-homely (unheimlich), resonate insofar as my own concernment with the concept of home has been dissolved somewhere along my migratory paths. i truly do not feel “at home” anywhere, but i also do not miss the sense of belonging to a geographically determined location. i am quite comfortable with the idea of establishing my own narrative, whether associated with germany, the u.s., or the migratory activity in between. i give credit for this sentiment to the contemporary situation to attain permission to travel freely whenever and wherever one desires. this is a fortunate circumstance, and i am always astonished to witness travelers ending up stranded for hours, sometimes days, in an airport, caused by a weather-related delay. the sense of entitlement of the contemporary traveler related to the certainty to migrate freely takes the relative ease and comfort of modern travel for granted.

i don't consider my artistic process as an attempt to establish a sense of home for myself, but i realize that connecting with familiar and unfamiliar people in nuremberg possesses some kind of therapeutical bearing for me. in this sense, the aesthetic and psychological impact of my project on its witnesses (including myself) could be considered as an internal migration between safety and uncertainty, between the heimisch (domestic) and the unheimlich.

examining germany as the place of my origin and relating its idiosyncrasies to my voluntary migration is taking on a significant role in my art practice.

german version

2009-12-30T07:01:00.000-05:00

i finally finished translating this blog into german: http://amfa2deutsch.blogspot.com/

more mementos

2009-12-10T21:15:00.004-05:00

visuals -----

hauptmarkt model

2009-12-10T21:04:00.002-05:00

chilibread masonry

2009-12-10T20:49:00.003-05:00

it's funny how deceiving this video turned out - i wasn't attaching the cobblestones to the wall but the way i had set up the camera made it seem that way. i made a model of the town square, and cobblestones there are on the ground - this could be a gallery wall though....

sand/spice

2009-12-10T20:06:00.004-05:00

1/4 tsp of ea: cinnamon, allspice, ginger, chili - extra 1/4 tsp of chili - 1 full tsp chili

covering the square with spices might turn out to be a rather costly enterprise. i'm considering mixing spices with sand and pigments. in my studio i've been combining spices and sand: the aroma is delightful, my studio has never smelled better.

mementos

2009-12-10T19:51:00.004-05:00

these are the marks on the countertop after i removed the cut-out chilibread squares to put them on a baking sheet. unexpected ephemera.

more baking

2009-12-10T19:44:00.003-05:00

i baked another batch of cobblestones, this time i managed to cut out smaller pieces. i intend to build a model of nuernberg's hauptmarkt to play out the scenario i envision covering a small area on the square with spices.

spice trade

2009-12-10T19:19:00.006-05:00

in new york's murray hill district is a small cluster of stores selling mainly indian groceries. one of them has an immense array of spices. i bought cinnamon, chili, allspice, and ginger. paprika's intense and subtly nuanced reds certainly are tempting.

...verliefen sich im wald....

2009-11-15T10:36:00.008-05:00

the book i remember from my childhood

for a while i have been considering the significance of fairy tales in german culture; in relation to my project the tale of haensel und gretel and their ordeal in a witch's gingerbread house seem rather relevant. the siblings' forced migration from their home through a dark forest, the unsuccessful creation of a map using bread crumbs, and their fateful encounter with a witch at her gingerbread house, resonate within the context of my art practice. the story questions our perception of home by attempting to recreate a sense of security, familiarity, and dwelling in a seemingly protective and accommodating place (gingerbread house), which turns out to be a hazardous façade. the narrative describes the words and the process of heimisch/heimlich (heimlich: hidden, secretly) to unheimlich.
on another note: it is the sister who, in the end, saves her brother by killing the witch.

un/heimlich

2009-11-15T08:45:00.011-05:00

lily markiewicz's question of viewing art and its affect: are we impulsively trying to rationalize the initial, subconscious experience by becoming aware of the emotional and aesthetic impact of a piece of art? does it eliminate our out-of-control sense after the revealing moment of affect in case the work is disconcerting or unheimlich? are we trying to rationalize our response by analyzing our emotional reaction and the aesthetic aspect of the piece? this is obviously one of enlightenment's argument. are we trying to reconcile?
in a wider aspect, all these questions are ingrained in my project. i react to the perception of discombobulation and the feeling of being out of control and of un-homeliness when i remember beginning to experience america as my new place of residence. these moments of initial affect and the feeling of confusion still happen but now occur only sporadically. i don't consider my artistic process as an attempt to establish a sense of home for myself, but i realize that connecting with familiar and unfamiliar people in nuremberg possesses some kind of therapeutical bearing for me.
i admire my mother's courage and enthusiasm for my project; she is re-establishing relationships with people with whom she might have parted on uneasy terms some time ago.
list of collaborators so far:
nuremberg: my mother, monika lenzer, matthias dachwald, michael matthaeus martha, ute little
usa: kaycee olsen

postal exchange

2009-11-14T18:37:00.006-05:00

chopping candied chili peppers

exchange commodities: my mom has been sending material such as copies of photographs and other information about the hauptmarkt. some of it i requested, some of it came from books that she borrowed from friends. on monday i sent her a rather big package of pecans, cashews, allspice, candied and dried chili pepper, and a variety of baked cobblestones disguised as early christmas presents. it's a challenge, i wonder whether the package will get to nuremberg.....

chilibread compound

2009-11-14T18:08:00.007-05:00

cobblestone cutter

2009-11-08T17:08:00.002-05:00

cookie cutter for cobblestones/two sizes/wonder whether it's going to make it to germany in one piece.

recipe

2009-11-08T09:47:00.006-05:00

this is the recipe i use to make chilibread. i first converted the measurements from my mom's german cookbook into cups, teaspoons, and tablespoons, and then converted them back to grams and german pounds to translate my american version and send it to my mom.

bring honey and butter to a boil, let cool down to room temperature. combine all ingredients in food processor or mixer, fill into bowl and cover; store in warm place (florida: kitchen is fine, new york/germany: cooler or oven). let dough rest for eight days. roll out using lots of cornmeal, and cut out squares. bake on wax paper for 15-20 minutes on 315f. store in sealed container.

chilibread
2.6 cups honey
1.5 cups ground pecans, cashews, and walnuts
8 TS butter
2 eggs
zest of one orange and one lemon
2.6 cups cornmeal
1/4 cup cocoa
1/2 TS allspice
1 tsp vanilla
2 TS candied chili peppers*
1/2 tsp dried chili peppers

*cut stem off chili peppers, cut lengthwise, scrape out seeds, and cut into thin strips; combine sugar (1 part) and water (1 part), add peppers, and boil everything on low heat for an hour. take out peppers and spread on baking sheet and dry at F 395 degrees for about 10 minutes. syrup's delicious over pancakes; but use caution. courtesy of ice cream ireland

bake traces

2009-10-19T16:00:00.003-04:00

to photograph a still life of dirty kitchen utensils and left-over ingredients in a renaissance manner seemed an intuitive thing for me to do. dutch paintings of food and kitchens, documenting haphazardly arranged, or better disarranged, scenes of middle-class life and taste ----

edible rock

2009-10-19T15:16:00.010-04:00

i fell in love with wolf lepenies and my cobblestones at the same time.

the similarity of color and texture of the cookies to actual cobblestones is amazing. i plan to spread spice over the center of the hauptmarkt onto its cobblestone pavement. the aromatic spices indicate the square's traditional purpose as a center of commerce. the color, a brownish red which seeps into the gaps between the cobblestones, touches on acts of torture, defamation, and humiliation that took place there in the past. i'll encourage visitors of the hauptmarkt to walk over the spices and thus distribute them over a larger area.

the perfect hausfrau

2009-10-19T14:24:00.004-04:00

with my first batch of gingerbread - no, chilibread - cobblestones....super 8 footage coming soon....outfit courtesy of my mom...

nuts in and out of a blender ---- oh, no wait, it's the food processor

2009-10-19T14:10:00.003-04:00

variations

2009-10-19T11:51:00.017-04:00

i've been working with my mom's recipe for gingerbread but replacing the traditional ingredients - mainly spices from china and india - with native american ingredients, substituting ginger with chili peppers, cinnamon with allspice, almonds and hazelnuts with pecans, walnuts, and cashews, sugar with honey and maple syrup, and flour with cornmeal, and adding lots of cocoa and vanilla. the dough needs to rest for eight days in "the warm kitchen", then i cut and shape it to simulate cobblestones to resemble the pavement of the hauptmarkt. these chilibread cobblestones will serve as the currency to trade stories for food. i intend to give this collection of recorded anecdotes to the city museum of nuremberg.

a page from my mom's cookbook with her and my scribbles: improvements on her part, conversions of measurements on mine.

flüstergewürz

2009-10-19T10:16:00.003-04:00

the project's collaborators are my mother, a number of her friends, the city of nuremberg, and potentially matthias dachwald, curator at the kunsthalle nuremberg. the invented name of the project may be translated as "a spice that makes one whisper".

i have been making variations of a recipe for nuernberger lebkuchen, a type of gingerbread originally made 1395 in a bakery near the hauptmarkt - or so the story goes. nuremberg was one of the most northern cities on the extensions of the silk routes; bakers had access to spices from asia through nuremberg's role as a trade center in the middle ages. in this sense, nuremberg has been part of globalization very early on.

for now i've been working mostly with my mom; her friends will help to bake my version of nuremberg gingerbread as a commodity to trade stories for food. i intend to find people who agree to add to nuremberg's chronicles with their own stories and anecdotes related to nuremberg's town square, which i will record. i hope that matthias dachwald accepts that one of his roles in this project will be to act as a mediator between the city of nuremberg's administration officials and me.

this is an advertisement for commercially made nuernberger lebkuchen mailed to my parents. it features the typical shapes the cookies come in: circles, hearts, stars, squares covered with sugar and chocolate frosting.it promotes the company's worldwide delivery service and affirms that the goods are packed "fresh out of the oven" (ofenfrisch verpackt) and sent immediately "on their journey" (auf die Reise).

what do I know

2009-10-19T09:36:00.002-04:00

i'm collecting information on the history of the nuremberg hauptmarkt. this image was taken around the same time of my great-grandfather's arrest. at this point the nazis had renamed the hauptmarkt adolf-hitler-platz.

this is from an article in the local paper.

the story behind it

2009-10-18T19:43:00.001-04:00

this is the only existing photograph of my great-grandfather. when i was a child, i was frightened by this image, by the translucency and fragility of my great-grandfather's face. he died in his early 50s of stomach cancer.
an episode from this man's life informs my art project. my father told me fairly recently that "well, your great-grandfather, my grandfather, was a socialist and the gestapo arrested him in 1934." he had criticized hitler's regime by announcing his political opinion on the hauptmarkt, the town square in nuremberg. soon after, police took him to the station and kept him there until his wife and three daughters pleaded with the officials to release him. they claimed not having a source of income and would starve if their husband and father was being held in jail. he was released shortly thereafter.
this story is my family's connection to nuremberg's town square. had my dad not mentioned it to me, it would have eventually been forgotten. how many stories such as my great-grandfather's, are there? who remembers them? which stories do people remember and which ones would they rather forget? with my project, i want to add to the chronicles of nuremberg by recording stories related to the hauptmarkt, narrated by people in their own voices. the square's history of being a center of trade and commerce spurred my interest - i intend to exchange baked goods for anecdotes...