2005 Nomadic Banquet / project that took DAI-students to the the Doors8Delhi conference / organised and tutored by Debra Solomon
Artist and DAI mentor Debra Solomon presents a cross-media urban mapping and service design workshop in Delhi for the Doors of Perception & the Dutch Art Institute, and interested participants from adjacent art and design institutions and delegates to the Doors8Delhi conference.
Up to 15 people will work in interdisciplinary teams to develop an experience or service design in the form of a wandering mobile banquet. Banquet guests will walk or take auto rickshaws from course to course and discover the city’s street food, its street vendors and of course, its streets.
Nomadic Banquet; a wandering feast through the city’s streets.
Imagine a street scene in Old Delhi, food vendors, lining the busy streets. Imagine a restaurant in which the courses are compiled entirely from the delicacies of these street food vendors. Imagine walking from course to course in sequence, in an experience designed especially for you.
In India the tradition of cooking is a cultural signature for a community as important as religion or craft in the identity forming of a community. The focal point of this project is to study and map existing and successful food system models and distribution initiatives in Delhi and by doing so gain insights that will inform the team's own experience and service designs. Some but not all of the Delhi food system services and distribution initiatives that the project will use as a point of departure are the Dabba Wallah (traditional lunch box distribution service), Waiters on Wheels (web distribution service using existing restaurants - of course, it’s India!), bike-based food delivery services(Chaicycles!), food recycling initiatives (don’t say yuck to food from 3-star hotels and weddings distributed amongst local poor), Langar (Sikh community free-kitchens),Chai shop model; drop by, hang out, stay in-tune with the community, gossip.
The results of this research will not be a traditional sit-down banquet in one location, but a prototype for a wandering banquet, a Nomadic Banquet. At the Doors8Delhi Social Innovation Salon, located in Delhi’s Habitat Centre, and in a lecture-presentation by Solomon as part of the Doors 8: Platforms for Social Innovation, the workshop participants will present their Nomadic Banquet.
March 21-26, 2005.
Nomadic Banquet is a wandering feast through the city’s streets!
Nomadic Banquet Weblog - updated daily starting March 14th, 2005.
http://nomadicbanquet.dutchartinstitute.nl
http://doors8delhi.doorsofperception.com