WASTE NOT: A Dinner at the American Academy in Rome
WASTE NOT took place at the American Academy in Rome, and featured a five course menu developed in collaboration with Chef Kyle Pierce and the staff of the Rome Sustainable Food Project, as well as a hand-painted table mural by architect Francesca Berni, a musical installation titled “Process” by composers Katherine Balch and Ted Moore, and a live performance of “Re-sounding Alessandro Moreschi [work in progress]” by composer William Dougherty. The aim was to foreground themes of ephemerality, waste, and salvage through dishes that made use of overlooked and repurposed ingredients.
“Living here at the Academy these past months and eating Kyle’s food taught be so much about how we draw the line between wheat and chaff, and how many pleasant surprises there are in examining your discards more closely. I remember shelling a huge heap of peas for a dish we were taught to cook over zoom, in the earlier days when we couldn’t eat dinner together in person. Where I would normally discard the shells, Kyle told us they could be saved and turned into a broth—which I tried and found to be unusual and wonderful in equal parts, rich and sweet and tasting very…green. To find use in what might otherwise be tossed out, to reexamine and complicate our narrowly circumscribed ideas of value, to value process even over product, are some of the possible gifts of reflection on a time made slow, strange, and difficult to consume.” - Alexandra Kleeman
