The performative event Silence Meal was organized for invited guests at the private Villa Benni in Bologna on 22 July 2022, an event promoted by City Space Architecture and Museo Spazio Pubblico.
The Silence Meal is a performative dining experience conceived of and hosted by the Finnish artist Nina Backman. The performance experiments with a series of steps revolving around senses and silence. The meal follows a specific frame and is officially opened when the artist sits down. Attending to the ritual of the meal in a way that is free of verbal distraction, this transitory community of silence offers participants an experience of clarity that is unique to the occasion. By removing the aspect of the spoken word, guests are freed to explore a myriad of sensory experiences that can be physical, emotional, spiritual, or cultural in nature.
The collaboration combined a performative Silence Meal, with a lecture at Museo Spazio Pubblico on her Silence Project, focusing on the importance of building and protecting public green areas across Europe.
Nina also visited our parklet, that City Space Architecture implemented as part of the A-Place project, co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union. The collaboration with City Space Architecture and her presence at our parklet combines the importance of building and protecting green areas in public spaces in Europe, and it is an international extension of her initiative One Million Trees to Finland, conceived as a contemporary art practice as well as a collective, concrete action to fight the climate crisis.
The visit of Nina Backman in Bologna was possible thanks to the generous support of Frame Contemporary Art Finland, Globus and The Nordic Culture Fund.
