A Beginner's Guide to the Art of Throwing the Perfect Chocolate Fountain Party
2016
Installation, three-day performance, single-channel video
Dimensions variable
Film duration: 11 minutes 34 seconds
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, San Francisco
Excerpt (1 minute 25 seconds)
For three days, the gallery functioned as a film set, where a large audience watched Wang and her crew filming a short film as a continuous live performance.
The film, a satirical presentation of table etiquette based on a 1945 American television commercial, centers around a chocolate fountain dinner party, where a narrator raises questions on the potential faux-pas of the dinner guests. As the party goes on, a sense of absurdity accumulates.
In reference to Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) where, during a dream sequence, it is revealed that the bourgeois dinner party participants are in fact dinning on a stage set in a theatrical performance, A Beginner's Guide to the Art of Throwing the Perfect Chocolate Fountain Party examines the concept of a performative and make-believe Western Utopia.
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