Conflict Kitchen: Conversations Over Kubideh

Conflict Kitchen is a take-out restaurant in Pittsburgh that serves cuisine only from countries with which the United States is in conflict. The artist-run take-out storefront serves a rotating menu every four months to both highlight and introduce a direct, and non-polemic, understanding of these countries and their rich food cultures.

While many, many artists use food as prop and platform to stage conversations, performances, gatherings and happenings, what strikes me most about Conflict Kitchen is how they use food as the medium and the message — how food might intersect with both social activism and knowledge propagation to establish a greater system of cultural exchange. Also interesting is the way Conflict Kitchen is not concerned with its positioning as an art project or tries in some way to navigate internal art-world logic: It bypasses many of the constraints that makes so many art projects inaccessible. Their objective, simply and straightforwardly, is to carve out spaces for conversations, allowing the conversations to take center-stage within the work.

Interview segments with local Iranians, and general information on international relations with Iran, line the kubideh's wrapper.

It sounds just a bit utopian and pedagogic, but I think if this situation can lead to a conversation with a passing US veteran who’s never tried kubideh in his life, or could pass dining tips over a shared Skype dinner with a stranger in Tehran, there’s some hint of progress to be learned.

Tags: Public Practices (column)