En place du dîner.

En place du dîner.
A. Polymeneas Liondiris, M. E. Demeglio.

Menu fatal starter: environment and politics.
Spiritual main dish: religion, life and death.
Sweet love: love and sex.
Cult after dinner: Art.

Preparation Time: X hours over 5 years.

Ingredients (for 4+4 people):

1st year:
Starter - something from the sea but not fishes
Main course- something fresh that used to swim (to be cooked with spirit)
Dessert - something with ice cream
After dinner – flavors from the north

2nd year:
Starter- something with nuts, honey, yogurt and/or cheese
Main course - something of the sky that used to fly (to be cooked with spirit)
Dessert - something with chocololate
After dinner- flavors from the east

3rd year:
Starter- something green
Main course - something dried that used to walk (to be cooked with spirit)
Dessert- something with berries and forest fruits
After dinner – flavors from the south
4th year:
Starter - something from the earth but not green
Main course- something with grains, rice, spices and eggs (not to be cooked with spirit)
Dessert- something creamy
After dinner- flavors from the west

5th year:
Choose one course from each year and try to repeat it.

- 3-4 days before the dinner night, invite your guests and inform them to research a bit above the subjects to be discussed. Do the same yourself. Every guest should bring along another person.
- Set a tripod and a video camera with one video tape inserted where the dinner will take place. Make sure the angle is good (both for video and audio). Make sure all the tools are in the same room where the dinner will take place, such as bottle opener, cigarettes, lighters etc. and hide everything that could be used as cutlery. - Prepare the dishes with your guests. (Important! Invent the courses according to the key words in the ingredients; try not to make courses that you already know). - Draw lots to allot a number from one to four to each of the four guests you’ve invited. - Start the recording. - When everybody is sitting around the table for the starter, person no. 1 begins a conversation related with environment and politics. From the moment he’s finished, all the present may start to speak out their opinion while eating. The conversation can go on until the dish is finished. The procedure repeats for every course. During the main course person no. 2 would introduce a discussion concerning religion, life and death; with the dessert person no. 3 will bring up a conversation about love and sex; after dinner, when everybody is having coffee, tea, spirits and cigars, person n. 4 would come up with a theme concerning art. Throughout the conversations people should comment and bring examples both from the news of those days and from their personal experience.
- When the last course and therefore the last subject land up, stop the recording and rewind the tape. Place it in a safe, dry and cool place. - Repeat the dinner 4 times, once every year, not necessarily on the same day, with the same four “original guests”. For every dinner the four “original guests” will have the freedom to invite a new personal guest. -The fifth dinner (which will take place 5 years after the first one), will consist of the vision of the tapes made out of the 4 previous dinners.


Five dinners as a series of meetings that would defines changes of lives and ideas through the stream of time. Moments of tasteful life framed in tapes.

"We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not."