My Pizza, My Idea!
A collaboration with Donna Oblongata at 601Artspace, NYC | Aug 17-20, 2019
My Pizza, My Idea! is a conceptual pizza business. For the most recent incarnation, people visited a gallery in lower Manhattan to make a pizza in our mobile kitchen, print a pizza box, and send the pizza (free of charge) to anyone they wanted. The recipients receive a surprise pizza handmade by someone they know, delivered by a uniformed cyclist.
This project is about the ways that we nourish ourselves and each other. We make things by hand. We engage in tangible creation—dough, cheese, ink, cardboard. We imagine who could benefit from something we have to offer. We surprise and delight each other and feel how those fuzzy feelings created by generosity bounce right back to us.
Part of the value and beauty of living in a city is the element of surprise and the interaction with strangers. It's the value of the diversity of human life that exists beyond our front doors. As apps promising everything from dating prospects to Thai food continue their kudzu-like creep across city life, My Pizza, My Idea! offers the chance to come out of your house, make a gourmet pizza with your gross hands, hang out amongst the lushness quasi-junk, and send something delicious to someone you'd love to surprise.
My Pizza, My Idea! is a playful jab at the culture of convenience and on-demand-ness we’re living amongst. What is the actual price that we’re paying to have everything (music, avocados, infinite television) on demand? And what is lost when an entire culture shifts to give primacy to that? Surprise and real-life interactions are important and precious, and that gets lost in a culture where surprise is sacrificed in the name of commerce.
Image credits: Patrick Costello, Ben Simon, and James Chrzan
My Pizza, My Idea! on Instagram
