In this synaesthetic performance series, I cook a meal that reminds me of “home,” which is prepared at the host’s house.  Through this performance series, I explore notions of home, memory, synaesthesia, community, and authenticity.  Having lived in more than 10 countries, home can be fleeting.  Sometimes, it is about food that reminds me of a place I called home, or even a memory or feeling of a place. 

Sometimes, it is just about a moment.  Sometimes, it is about a confluence of temporal and spatial realms in a particular space.  It is always about food.  As a bit of a no-mad, food has always been anchor to a place that for me has never really existed – a place called home. 

---

I create a performance of home by preparing and sharing a meal with you.   Much in the way that home has never existed in one space, place and time for me, I Skype a guest into each performance to share the experience from afar.  Skype guests from Hanoi to Kabul have shared the experience however disjointed and patchy over the internet in hopes of creating new community and break-ing bread together in a cyber format.   You never know what will be on the menu.  Together, we will enjoy a meal, just like family – just like “home.”

For me, part of the performance is the inevitable failure as I seek to replicate or create dishes with authenticity.  For example, I spent days going from market to market in Ho Chi Minh city in search of a turnip to make Syrian Meklah pickles.  At each stall, as I displayed a picture of a turnip to the vendor, the response was the same, “it looks like a daikon.  I don’t have that (pointing to picture) but i do have daikon.”  In the end, I had to resort to daikon, as my turnip quest was unsuccessful.

GEO Home Dinners have been hosted in homes in Vietnam and Cambodia.  The GEO Home dinners have been presented as pop-up restaurants in Los Angeles.  Each performance is documented with digital stills and video and where possible the dinners are broadcast live on the internet using UStream.