Un cuento de Basura 



dinner performance with Sandra Teitge 
Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City
2017


Un cuento de basura is the first edition of a series of site specific dinner performances focusing on municipal waste managment. Bringing together experts and a general audience over dinner to engage in a debate moderated by a female tv-anchor.

In the context of Mexico City, a city that produces extreme levels of waste and in which, as a result, official and unofficial ‘waste management’ economies have emerged and co-exist, Pierwoss & Teitge are developing a dinner performance for the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) that will address the ambiguity of this situation. During the culinary as well as discursive evening, questions of the local demands of organic waste management, informal economies, and waste crime in the city along with their social, political, and economic importance will be addressed. Around a menu, specifically conceived for this context, invited experts from all the above mentioned fields together with the audience are invited to converse over dinner.

The invited experts came from all different fields of waste management such as the union of waste transport, the ministry of environment, the city council's waste department, researchers in informal work, urbanists, waste truck drivers, recycling entrepreneurs and waste pickers among others. The event was moderated by local news anchor Maria Alejandra Molina who brought up questions of economic structures, political corruption and labour conditions.

The Dinner was held on Thursday, March 2nd, Auditorio Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City with 60 guests seated at 6 tables. The 4 course dinner was prepared so that all leftovers of one course would be recycled during the meal in another course.