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Performative meal
@Kitchen Takeover _ Open Space Contemporary

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IL PRANZO DELLA DOMENICA

Performative meal

@Kitchen Takeover _ Open Space Contemporary

Collevecchio,

2020

From our confinement in the countryside of Rome, we re-enact the conditions of a festive Sunday lunch, transforming a big wooden table into a surreal stage-set. We populate it with extravagant objects, ingredients, dishes, and memories. Everyone is invited. We perform at the table and this happens as a natural act: the Sunday lunch in Italy is by definition an ordinary yet exceptionally theatrical performance.

Sunday lunch is not a simple meal, it is a marathon. Therefore our project starts at the first light of dawn, when the kitchen begins to speak, to come alive, while all the members of the family sleep, in a triumph of smells and flavours, starting to prepare the sauce with which to season the pasta.

“A pig with a rosemary forest in the belly” - Carlo Emilio Gadda The hostess holds in her arms a roasted pig, “porchetta” - a dish traditionally eaten on special occasions, feasts and gatherings. Carrying its weight like a sacrificial animal, her parade starts from the kitchen until it reaches the table. The pork belly was filled with sage, pepper, salt and rosemary and cooked for over 6 hours. The scent lingers throughout the house, leaving behind a delicious aroma. We are all slowly waking up, with high hopes and expectations for this ‘first’ Sunday lunch together.

A sense of fear remains, you can smell it whilst preparing this delicious dish. After months of greed, feasting on negative news, frightening articles, and headlines from all over the world, we are still scared. Surely, the guests will blissfully jump on this porchetta. Yet, we can’t forget, we have been consumed by what we have witnessed: this moment of celebration is hiding a bitter aftertaste.

The verb "porchettare" means to stuff the meat with aromas and spices, whilst continuing to massage it, until achieving a harmonious blend. Similarly, hands, pieces of meat and cutlery intertwine into a visual feast of expressive trajectories and evocative gestures.

Food is not only an allegorical connector amongst the guests during this Sunday lunch. The porchetta, thanks to its copious length, becomes a physical place of encounter: via cutting, grabbing, sharing - hands can finally meet at the centre of the table, fulfilling the mutual lust for togetherness.

These hours spent in the countryside have left visible marks on the table, appearing now as a kind of violent and passionate battlefield. Generous meals in Italy are often associated with cheerful warfare, where even angels have to surrender to sins of gluttony. The culinary match has just ended.

Directed and curated by

Lemonot

with

Arianna Zamparelli

Palma Bucarelli

Marianna Morreale

Federico Armeni

Leone Hadavi

Federico Angeloni

Zobeide Hadavi

Tommaso Riccitelli

Carlotta Dotto

Anna Previte

Alessandra Frustaci

Rita Elvira Adamo

Felix Doeple

Video

Filippo Bonza Brachetti

Performative meal

@Kitchen Takeover _ Open Space Contemporary

Collevecchio

2020

From our confinement in the countryside of Rome, we re-enact the conditions of a festive Sunday lunch, transforming a big wooden table into a surreal stage-set. We populate it with extravagant objects, ingredients, dishes, and memories. Everyone is invited. We perform at the table and this happens as a natural act: the Sunday lunch in Italy is by definition an ordinary yet exceptionally theatrical performance.


Sunday lunch is not a simple meal, it is a marathon. Therefore our project starts at the first light of dawn, when the kitchen begins to speak, to come alive, while all the members of the family sleep, in a triumph of smells and flavours, starting to prepare the sauce with which to season the pasta.


“A pig with a rosemary forest in the belly” - Carlo Emilio Gadda The hostess holds in her arms a roasted pig, “porchetta” - a dish traditionally eaten on special occasions, feasts and gatherings. Carrying its weight like a sacrificial animal, her parade starts from the kitchen until it reaches the table. The pork belly was filled with sage, pepper, salt and rosemary and cooked for over 6 hours. The scent lingers throughout the house, leaving behind a delicious aroma. We are all slowly waking up, with high hopes and expectations for this ‘first’ Sunday lunch together.


A sense of fear remains, you can smell it whilst preparing this delicious dish. After months of greed, feasting on negative news, frightening articles, and headlines from all over the world, we are still scared. Surely, the guests will blissfully jump on this porchetta. Yet, we can’t forget, we have been consumed by what we have witnessed: this moment of celebration is hiding a bitter aftertaste.


The verb "porchettare" means to stuff the meat with aromas and spices, whilst continuing to massage it, until achieving a harmonious blend. Similarly, hands, pieces of meat and cutlery intertwine into a visual feast of expressive trajectories and evocative gestures.


Food is not only an allegorical connector amongst the guests during this Sunday lunch. The porchetta, thanks to its copious length, becomes a physical place of encounter: via cutting, grabbing, sharing - hands can finally meet at the centre of the table, fulfilling the mutual lust for togetherness.


These hours spent in the countryside have left visible marks on the table, appearing now as a kind of violent and passionate battlefield. Generous meals in Italy are often associated with cheerful warfare, where even angels have to surrender to sins of gluttony. The culinary match has just ended.


Directed and curated by

Lemonot

with

Arianna Zamparelli

Palma Bucarelli

Marianna Morreale

Federico Armeni

Leone Hadavi

Federico Angeloni

Zobeide Hadavi

Tommaso Riccitelli

Carlotta Dotto

Anna Previte

Alessandra Frustaci

Rita Elvira Adamo

Felix Doeple

Video

Filippo Bonza Brachetti

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lemonot

Sabrina Morreale, AA Dipl
Lorenzo Perri, AA Dipl (Hons)

London / Prato

projects@lemonot.co.uk

ABOUT

This is Tooltip!

Sabrina Morreale and Lorenzo Perri are architects, educators and founding partners of Lemonot – a duo for spatial and relational practices, architecture and performative arts. We graduated together at the Architectural Association and we’re now based between London and Italy.

Our projects re-invent the relationship between urban fabric and human rituals through a wide range of media: pavilions, exhibitions, short films and designed performances. We relentlessly seek new forms of togetherness, with a contextual yet transterritorial approach that aims to detect, celebrate and trigger the spontaneous theatre of everyday life. 

We experiment with the language of artistic strategies in public space, empowering alternative narratives and unexpected interactions – to initiate unconventional acts of place-making. We explore how architects can contribute to a peculiar reinterpretation of the city, defining novel 1:1 experiences through short and long-term occupational strategies. Dealing with multiple stakeholders at the same time, we often intervene as both facilitators and designers – constructing supporting spatial structures to make things happen.

Our constant engagement in academia is a crucial part of Lemonot. In 2018-19, we taught as Adjunct Professors at INDA in Bangkok and we’ve been Programme Heads of the AA Visiting School El Alto (Bolivia). Lorenzo taught at the University of Applied Arts Vienna  (dieAngewandte) in Architectural Studio 1 from 2020 to 2023, while Sabrina is currently Studio Master in the Foundation Course at the AA in London. Together, we now lead the Architectural Design Studio 7: Convivial-ism at the Royal College of Art in London. 

We collaborate with several cultural institution – including Arquine, La Biennale di Venezia, DPR Barcelona, LINA European Architecture Platform, S AM Basel, Architecture at the Edge (West Ireland) – and our projects have been exhibited and awarded internationally: among the others, at the Young Talent Architecture Award 2016, at the ATT19 Gallery in Bangkok, at the RIBA, at Vienna Design Week, at Bangkok Design Week, at Milan Design Week, at Archifest Singapore 2019, at Mextropoli 2021 in Mexico City, at FAR-Architecture Festival of Rome 2022 and at CAFx Copenhagen Architecture Film Festival 2023.

Furthermore, Lemonot is one of the 9 selected architectural practices for the Padiglione Italia – curated by Fosbury Architecture – of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023, and Sabrina has been appointed as the 2024 Enel Foundation Italian Fellow in Architecture at the American Academy in Rome.

Lina Fellows 2022/2023

“Spaziale” – Padiglione Italia, Venice Architecture Biennale, 2023

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This is Tooltip!
lemonot

Sabrina Morreale, AA Dipl
Lorenzo Perri, AA Dipl (Hons)

London, Vienna, Stockholm, La Paz and Italy

projects@lemonot.co.uk

ABOUT

This is Tooltip!

Sabrina Morreale and Lorenzo Perri are architects, educators and founding partners of Lemonot – a duo for spatial and relational practices, architecture and performative arts. We graduated together at the Architectural Association and we’re now based between London and Italy.

Our projects re-invent the relationship between urban fabric and human rituals through a wide range of media: pavilions, exhibitions, short films and designed performances. We relentlessly seek new forms of togetherness, with a contextual yet transterritorial approach that aims to detect, celebrate and trigger the spontaneous theatre of everyday life. 

We experiment with the language of artistic strategies in public space, empowering alternative narratives and unexpected interactions – to initiate unconventional acts of place-making. We explore how architects can contribute to a peculiar reinterpretation of the city, defining novel 1:1 experiences through short and long-term occupational strategies. Dealing with multiple stakeholders at the same time, we often intervene as both facilitators and designers – constructing supporting spatial structures to make things happen.

Our constant engagement in academia is a crucial part of Lemonot. In 2018-19, we taught as Adjunct Professors at INDA in Bangkok and we’ve been Programme Heads of the AA Visiting School El Alto (Bolivia). Lorenzo taught at the University of Applied Arts Vienna  (dieAngewandte) in Architectural Studio 1 from 2020 to 2023, while Sabrina is currently Studio Master in the Foundation Course at the AA in London. Together, we now lead the Architectural Design Studio 7: Convivial-ism at the Royal College of Art in London. 

We collaborate with several cultural institution – including Arquine, La Biennale di Venezia, DPR Barcelona, LINA European Architecture Platform, S AM Basel, Architecture at the Edge (West Ireland) – and our projects have been exhibited and awarded internationally: among the others, at the Young Talent Architecture Award 2016, at the ATT19 Gallery in Bangkok, at the RIBA, at Vienna Design Week, at Bangkok Design Week, at Milan Design Week, at Archifest Singapore 2019, at Mextropoli 2021 in Mexico City, at FAR-Architecture Festival of Rome 2022 and at CAFx Copenhagen Architecture Film Festival 2023.

Furthermore, Lemonot is one of the 9 selected architectural practices for the Padiglione Italia – curated by Fosbury Architecture – of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023, and Sabrina has been appointed as the 2024 Enel Foundation Italian Fellow in Architecture at the American Academy in Rome.

Lina Fellows 2022/2023

“Spaziale” – Padiglione Italia, Venice Architecture Biennale, 2023