Pages — Daniel Pravit Fethke

ARTIST/
FILMMAKER/
EDUCATOR/

Projects

Food as Care Cookbook
Teak & Bricks
Tree of Heaven
Untitled Graduate Thesis
Pratt Public Sphere
Cannon Café (Café Bustelo)
Culinary Performances
Ox-Bow Pad Thai
LaTerre Realty Trust
On the Line

Bio
Curriculum Vitae

Email
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UPDATES

TEAK & BRICKS

2024

Duration: 12:02
Form: Single-Channel Video

TEAK & BRICKS

“Teak & Bricks” is a project about my own identity as a Mixed-Race Thai- American – the title drawn from the hybrid materials used to build my maternal grandmother's (Thai: Yai) childhood house. Recently, I have begun methodically archiving my own history through conversations with my Yai, with topics ranging from the mundane (the best way to cook rice) to the geopolitical (French colonialism in Laos) to the personal (my great grandfather smuggling gold). As such, this work is a personal exploration of the meals, stories, and eternal care that have inspired the socially-engaged artworks that I make today. Images of my own commute to work flowing through New York harbor pair with audio of our lunchtime conversations, drawing connections between shared waterways, rematriation, and my family's migratory flows.

This work extends beyond myself into my expanded practice of video- based multimedia work that weaves my own personal history around narratives of race, politics, and the geopolitical contradictions embedded in the relationship between American Empire and the Kingdom of Thailand. Altogether, these conversations with my Yai construct a growing assemblage of time-based portraits that center my own personal narratives as seen through the lenses of family, subaltern history, and the poetics of video art.

Collaborator: Suda Sarabanchong
Exhibition: Colonial Currents, Sight/Geist Festival, The 8th Floor

TREE OF HEAVEN

2023

Duration: 18:07
Form: Mixed Media Installation
Materials: Remnants of Ailanthus altissima; Dessicated Spotted Lanternfly; Researcher’s wardrobe, Microscope; Sketches, Ephemera; 4K DCP Video

TREE OF HEAVEN

A mixed-media video installation chronicling the felling of an Ailanthus altissima (Tree of Heaven) in Brooklyn.

Collaborator: Sunny Leerasanthanah
Exhibition: Swale House, Governors Island, NYC

UNTITLED GRADUATE THESIS (ENCOUNTERS IN THE PRATT PUBLIC SPHERE)

2023

Duration: Variable
Form: Mixed Media Installation; Gathering Space
Materials: Remnants of 100 Bowls of Soup; Paper Tags; Folding Tables; Folding Chairs; Cooking Equipment; Ingredients; Recipes; CRT Television; Digital Slideshow; Inkjet Photographs; Ephemera.

An immersive installation for my Graduate MFA Thesis in Fine Arts at Pratt Institute, featuring spoons, bowls, media, ephemera, and people from my encounters throughout my studies. Spoons hang from the ceiling, accompanied by tags with responses from participants for the question: “What food reminds you of home?”

PRATT PUBLIC SPHERE

2022-2023

Dimensions: 20’x20’x16’
Form: Mixed-Use Classroom Space, Mutual Aid Hub, Library, Public Kitchen
Materials: 20ft Geodesic Dome, Marine Shrink Wrap, Spandex, Lumber, Open Sign, Tables, Chairs, Kitchen Equipment, Shelving, Donated Books, Clothes, and Food.

Instagram

PRATT PUBLIC SPHERE (PPS)

A mixed-use classroom space in the form of a 20ft geodesic dome. Open to all, the PPS was designed around a full set of public programming, focusing on open workshops, dialogue, and community-based programming. The space func- tions as a mutual aid hub, public kitchen, and platform for interdisciplinary action.

Collaborators: Mary Mattingly, Rafael de Balanzo

CANNON CAFÉ (CAFÉ BUSTELO)

2022

Duration: 1 Hour
Form: Culinary Performance
Materials: Café Bustelo, Moka Pot, Wooden Sign, Microphone, Custom Tabletop

CANNON CAFÉ (CAFÉ BUSTELO)

A culinary performance where I transformed Pratt’s iconic cannon into a pop-up coffee shop, serving Cuban-style coffee in homage to the monument’s Spanish colonial roots in Havana. I asked passers-by “what kinds of monuments would you like to see?”

CULINARY PERFORMANCES

2021-Ongoing

Dimensions: Variable
Form: Culinary Performance
Materials: Food, To-Go containers, Cooking equipment, mobile soup cart, apron, neighbors.

CULINARY PERFORMANCES

Food can be an incredible way to tell stories, and I have explored cooking as form as a response to the past years of pandemic precarity. I draw inspiration from the food we eat, the recipes we pass down, and the places that remind us of home. I often place myself in my work as a facilitator of dialogue, as a provocateur asking critical questions, as a host creating space for people to come together. I use food—in particular the act of cooking, gathering, and sharing meals—as an entry point into new discursive and public spheres.

As such, I have devised a series of happenings that I call “culinary performances”: a loose collection of site and time-specific cooking sessions that all hinge around the centrality of shared dialogue in public space. Each performance follows a particular formula that privileges the location and the dish served while keeping room for growth and flexibility with each iteration. The first culinary performance was in November 2021 on Flushing Avenue in front of my MFA studio building. Often times, I cook chicken soup — a dish that embodies care and reminds me of home.

As a perpetual student of social practice art, I am indebted to the visual language of practitioners like Rirkrit Tiravanija, whose use of food, gatherings, and “a lot of people” opens up new possibilities for contemporary relational aesthetics. Like Tiravanija, I seek to interrogate the systems we find ourselves embedded in as a way to open up space for the social, the restful, and the hopeful. As I continue to create socially-engaged artworks, I intend to investigate hopeful futures that are in direct conversation with artists like Tania Bruguera or Theaster Gates. Bruguera’s concept of “Arte Útil” (Useful Art) provides a positive framework for thinking of my practice as a tool that can be positioned as a means to create real social and political change - shaping collective futures that center community, resistance, and joy.

OX-BOW PAD THAI

2022

Duration: 2 Hours
Form: Site-specific Workshop/Salon
Materials: Pad Thai ingredients, Wok, Propane, Tables, Chairs, To-Go Containers

OX-BOW PAD THAI

A "cooking class" held during my fellowship at the Ox-Bow School of Art in Saugatuck, MI. Guests gathered to cook pad Thai while discussing the fraught nationalist history of the dish, fostering discussions about the intersection of food and politics.

LATERRE REALTY TRUST

2022

Duration: 2 hours
Form: Site-Specific Intervention
Materials: 120mm B&W Photographs, Microphone, Land, Contracts

LATERRE REALTY TRUST

A series of interventions where I impersonate a real estate agent and try to sell land at market rate. This is a video documenting my alter ego Pierre LaTerre selling square-feet of land to passers-by in front of the Brooklyn Central Library.

ON THE LINE

2021

Duration: 09:51
Form: Short documentary; 2K DCP

Screenings:

ON THE LINE

A short documentary I produced in collaboration with director and anthropologist Naomi Schil- ler and members of the Sixth Street Community Center. The film tells the story of the struggles of building community alongside an emergency food distribution program.

Collaborators: Naomi Schiller, Jen Chantrtanapichate, Kenny Wu, Chloe Lin, Sixth Street Community Center

04 RENO

DOC 234—34/2

DEUS: 088/26812—81
REX-13: 978-0882681/283

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DANIEL

PRAVIT

FETHKE