London SE16 4RP
UK
20 June, 1916, Kalamazoo, Michigan, doctor’s report: “Father, osteopath, ate supper, including Limburger cheese, about 6pm. At 12pm purging; vomiting…Girl, aged 8 years. At 6pm ate heartily of cheese. 12pm, vomiting. Mother gave her 2 spoon castor oil. Girl quieted down and went to sleep. At 12.20 I woke her…Said she felt alright, but was cold and wanted to be covered up and go to sleep again. Gave 3ss magnesium sulphate which was thrown out of stomach with such force it struck opposite wall three feet away. Many small chunks of cheese in vomitus.”
Cheese, as a peculiar food technology, provides an acute vantage point on society; an intricately made commodity available in thousands of guises able to arouse paroxysms of pleasure or disgust. Following the development of pasteurisation in the 1860s, processed cheese was developed at the end of the 19th century, according to one source “to improve the keeping quality and tropical stability of export Emmenthaler.” These processes have no doubt improved food safety and predictability, but have also led us towards the illusion, as Aldous Huxley claimed, of “being Immaculate.” Drawing from historical anecdotes and his research while on residency at Vassiviere, Limousin, writer Chris Fite-Wassilak leads a tasting, screening, and discussion of cheese as an embodiment of the desires and fears that drive the ways we eat and view ourselves.
About Chris:
Chris Fite-Wassilak is a writer, critic, curator, and cheesemonger. He is a regular contributor to Art Monthly, Art Review, and frieze. His essay on the social history of dry cleaning appeared in Gavin Murphy’s On Seeing Only Totally New Things (Royal Hibernian Academy and Irish Architecture Foundation, 2013), and other recent publications include The Andrew Project: Shaan Tariq Hassan-Syed (FormContent and S1 Artspace, 2013) and the Serpentine Memory Marathon Catalogue (Serpentine Gallery and Koenig Books, 2013). Forthcoming projects include ‘Temple Bar Gallery and Studios Are Dead’, TBG&S, Dublin, in November 2013.