Following the public AIC launch event on the afternoon of Oct. 9, 2009, approximately 64 people reconvened for a dinner/discussion event at MIT’s Stata Center dining room, organized by the Platform 2 artists’ collective. Each table focused on one of the eight themes of the Artists’ Prospectus for the Nation, assisted by a commissioned placemat by a New England-based artist (see the "Consumption ” placemat, top right, by Providence-based artist Ellen Driscoll). An empty placemat at each table was used by diners to record notes from the discussion. Pictured above is the front of the notated placemat from the Consumption Table.

Consumption Table Digestion Process [aka the discussion summary]

After getting beyond wondering why WE, of all peoples, were assigned to CONSUMPTION, and beating back an irreverent suggestion that “All Art Should Be Made of Chocolate” (and a strident announcement that we had decided to “eat our own words”) we buckled down to wrestle with the basic definition of Consumption.  After a good deal of backing and forth-ing we agreed that consumption was a necessary, natural, life-sustaining and not inherently Bad Thing.

The two clearest observations that seemed to emerge were  (1) that the danger of consumption was “the removal of the evidence”.  There appears to be an increasing   disenfranchisement of the (an) individual in the specific act and degree of consumption, through manipulation, ignorance, and deliberate obfuscation.  (2) We need a “reanimation of desire;” what we think we desire isn’t necessarily what we desire.  We are frequently prevented from having a voice or even being aware that a giving voice is not only appropriate but imperative .

Katy Kline