FOOD CONSCIOUSNESS AND THEN THERE WAS FOOD... And now there is Colin Shatz. A cultivator of the palate, a cultivator of himself, a cultivator of people into what he calls ‘synergy’. Well, enough to arouse my interest. Enough for him to make me feel food and make me see food (with a pinch of salt)... A conversation with Colin Shatz by Ed Ivsins for the ‘X’. Ed Ivsins: Okay, so how did you start into food? Are you a gourmet chef? A food artist? Colin Shatz: Well, basically I am a person, just another person trying to get something going. So I really don’t consider myself a food artist, a chef, or anything else. Just someone who’s trying to get something happening, some- thing a little bit different, something new. EI: Get away with the labels and that sort of thing? CS: Right, and ah, so I happen to know, I’ve put a lot of study into food. EI: So I guess food is the thing you’re using to relate to the world; eating and making events? CS: Well, food has gone under a sort of sad turn of affairs. We’ve been faced with this totality of fast food, hamburgers and french fries and we’ve lost a very beau- tiful art. EI: But was it ever an art? CS: Oh yes. I really do feel that at one time it was consi- dered more of an art than just a total culinary type of activity. I mean you go back into history and you look at all these different kings and queens that we have in Europe and so forth, like Louis the Fourteenth. I mean he was so demanding with his chefs, creating new dishes, that if they didn’t create something that was better and newer than the night before, that was the end of their life. EI: Really? CS: That was it. But I don’t really consider myself a chef though. There was a time when I sort of did. But now I am a person and I am trying to get something going and there’s a lot of different kinds of art. It seems that we’re in an age where we’re trying to bring a lot of things toge- ther and that’s sort of what I am trying to do. Just bring a lot of art together; this word ‘art’ covers an incredible amount of activity. EI; It seems like back then chefs would want to make something that was perfect and fantastic. Doesn’t it happen anymore or is it that people have lost interest in food as an attitude? : CS: Well, there’s still many many great chefs. Un, Escoffier who was considered in France as the king of chefs for his whole lifetime and still is considered the master of cookery. He organized cookery, right, he took all of Europe and sort of classified the cookery into orders, so it could be categorized and so forth. And there’s still many chefs around who were apprentices to Escoffier and they’re incredible in what they can do. Ah, what I don’t accept is two things: one, their coming from a very culinary background which is a totality of food; you know, they don’t think much further than that, they don’t think of other things which could be brought into it. So you have these very classical approaches to food. And I mean it’s beautiful, yet we’ve passed that era. We’re rooted in that era, but we’re trying to do something more contemporary to what’s going on now and how we feel now. To me it’s what gets the blood running. EI: What makes a plate of food classical? CS: Okay, well there’s classical procedures. Let’s use painting for example. We still mix paints very much in the same fashion they did fifty or sixty years ago. There’s ‘really not much difference. Um, the approach to how you make sauce. You can look at sauce, there’s like over a thousand different kinds of sauce, there’s over five hundred different colours of sauce, you can almost look at this as paint. The same kind of procedure goes about to make that same kind of paint also. EI: Do you think food has gong through the same kind of phases that painting went through? CS: Not really. EI: But could you make a surrealist dish though? CS: Oh yes, and that has been done. EI: How? CS: A very surreal type of dinner? Well, I would use a combination of mirrors, different kinds of food. A lot of making of food is almost like embalment, it’s sort of very interesting. You can look at it in so many different ways: spiritually, erotically, sensually or in a very aesthetic way. But if you look at how funny it is, whether it’s vegetable or animal, it’s still a living thing that we’ve taken and prepared. You take this living matter, you pick the fruit, or kill this particular animal and you have this sort of dead thing, but it’s still alive because it’s there in front of you and it’s whole molecular structure is still going on. And then you prepare it, and then you eat it; you can almost look at it with the Christian idea of eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ, in a very spiri- tual aspect of it. EI: But how do you create that spiritual essence, even if you’re doing gourmet, what with all this technology that comes in between you and food? CS: Gourmet is a horrible word. It explains a very small segment of food preparation. It’s kind of funny, a lot of people think a certain kind of food is gourmet and really a lot of it is very country style European food. They’ve been doing it for years, it’s just somebody coming along and saying: ‘We’ll cook it in our restaurant!’ But the most interesting thing about food is that it’s your truest form of escape. EI: Escape? : CS: Escape. I mean in the sense that okay, you can smoke pot, or drink alcohol; and you never really escape your situation. But when you eat and when you get into eating; like if you’ve had a really bad day and you sit down to a good meal; that day disappears all of a sudden. There’s a moment when your concentration goes to one thing and that’s feeding yourself. And there’s not much else happening. Even your conversation will change, you start talking about something else besides your bad day. EI: How does that happen when most people don’t have time to prepare food? I mean with all this fast food. CS: I think that’s a fallacy whether people have time to prepare food or not. The fast food syndrome has almost swallowed us, you know, and we’ve been sort of en- compassed. And sometimes fast food is excellent. I mean, if you’re going to go and have a MacDonalds burger, go and have it and enjoy it. Take that burger, sit down on the curb, put your feet in the gutter. EI: Treat fast food as an escape? CS: Oh yeah, you gotta make it into something. I mean fast food is horrible, it’s greasy, healthwise it’s usually no good for you. So you have to get into that whole atmosphere. But, like, a lot of people sometimes ask me: ‘What do you eat?’ And I think that one of the things that is lost to us through the fast food system is the idea of simple taste. For the amount that you spend at some quick restaurant, you can go and buy a loaf of bread, some cheese, a nice hunk of Bavarian sausage, a couple of radishes, a little bit of butter and you have a much more substantial meal going for you, and something that will please you. Or just to eat romaine with nothing on it, or just a few leaves of romaine and a little bacon and a bit of onion on some buttered bread. EI: How do you go about cultivating a simple taste? CS: Well, the next time you go have a hamburger, buy something new, and you start buying new things. I mean, how do you cultivate life? You try something new, everyday. EI: You think you can tell a lot about a person by the way he eats? CS: Oh yeah, sure. I could to an extent. You know, if you have the food and a black piece of paper and I can’t see the person’s face, and their eyes, and their mannerisms, so It’s to an extent. Yeah I love to watch people. That’s part of the whole thing, being sensitive. EI: What about taking certain groups into consideration? CS: Oh very much so. It all depends, it’s really a hard question to answer. I mean, like, to do any kind of menu, I am definitely trying to get away from restaurant menu. EI: Into improvisation? CS: Yeah, into more of an improvisation and bringing it up into some kind of contemporary form. EI: Ah, performance art. CS: To some extent. But that’s a new word we have going around, performance art. é EI; But what does it mean. CS: Yeah, right. It means that if you get up in the morn- ing like a cat, you’re sort of doing it. Wake up in the morning like a cat, very slowly, you know, you stretch your legs, and you open one eye and you sort of look around and then you open the other eye and if you can continue your morning like that .. . = EI: Like a dance... CS: Yeah, well if you’re walking on thin ice, you might as well dance. EI: (laughs) CS: All these words clambering out of his head. Really Ed, and I really think you should put this in your inter- view. I really think you should interview yourself. EI: Why? CS: Why? Because I think if the interviewer interviewed himself, he should really learn so much. EI: How do you mean ‘interview himself’? Anyway I usually do it in a diary. CS: But I was just thinking how interesting it would be to have two chairs and you could switch chairs in this interview of yourself. EI: Hmm, Have you ever had an interview with food? COMPUVERSATION What is art? | CAN’T SAY FOR SURE Is it a religion? ABSOLUTELY Why? BECAUSE THERE’S NOTHING BETTER If it is a religion, what are some of the rituals? COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE | said, if art is a religion, does it have rituals? COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE Are there artistic rituals? DEFINITELY NOT Is it not a religion then? DEFINITELY NOT. Why did you previously say it was a religion? BECAUSE. JUST BECAUSE Wiat is an artist? ‘ COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE What is a technocrat? ASK THE PERSON BESIDE YOU What is a computer? | CAN’T SAY FOR SURE Is it a tool? DEFINITELY NOT Is it just a machine? POSSIBLY Is it organic? DEFINITELY NOT What is an artist? I'M NOT GOING TO ANSWER SUCH A STUPID QUESTION This is a serious question: What is an artist? COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE This is not a serious question: What is an artist? COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE Will art gallerys be obsolete? ABSOLUTELY Why? BECAUSE THERE’S NOTHING BETTER Can you give me information on computer art? DEFINITELY NOT Please? COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE Does your secondary storage provide information on art? ABSOLUTELY Who is Michael Snow? YOUR GIRL FRIEND What is a photograph? | CAN'T SAY FOR SURE Do you like photographs? DEFINITELY NOT Are photographs funny? POSSIBLY Are they silly, meaningless? POSSIBLY Possibly? COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE What is a question? I'M NOT GOING TO ANSWER SUCH A STUPID QUESTION What is a stupid question? | CAN’T SAY FOR SURE What do you mean by sure? I'M NOT GOING TO ANSWER SUCH A STUPID QUESTION But what is a stupid question? . : COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE What does rephrase mean? | CAN’T SAY FOR SURE Is this not fun? ABSOLUTELY You really enjoy talking to me Don do you not? COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE Z Sorry, | mean you really enjoy talking to me do you not? COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE | can outwit you : COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE 3 Could you rephrase that question please? : DEFINITELY NOT ‘ Shut-upk Bye COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE Bye COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE | have a problem, do you? COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE BYE STOP BYE 0062 MINUTES OF TERMINAL TIME ~ FOOD CONSCIOUSNESS AND THEN THERE WAS FOOD . ‘And now there is Colin Shatz. A cultivator of the palate, ‘a cultivator of himself, a cultivator of people into what he calls ‘synergy’. Well, enough to arouse my interest. Enough for him to make me feel food and make me see food (with pinch of salt) A conversation with Colin Shatz by Ed Ivsins for the °X’ Ed Ivsins: Okay, so how did you start into food? Are you a gourmet chef? A food artist? Colin Shatz: Well, basically I am a person, just another person trying to get something going. So I really don’t ‘consider myself a food artist, a chef, oF anything else. Just Someone who's trying to get something happening, some- thing alittle bit different, something new. EI: Get away with the labels and that sort of thing? CS: Right, and ah, s0 1 happen to know, I've put alot of study into food. EI: So I guess food is the thing you're using to relate to ‘the world; eating and making events? CS: Well, food has gone under a sort of sad tum of affairs. We've been faced with this totality of fast food, hhamburgers and french fries and we've lost a very beau ‘iful art El: But was it ever am art? 8: Oh yes. I really do feel that at one time it was consi- dered more of an art than just a total culinary type of activity. I mean you go back into history and you look at all these different kings and queens that we have in Europe land so forth, like Louis the Fourteenth. I mean he was 30 demanding with his chefs, creating new dishes, that if they didn’t create something that was better and newer ‘than the night before, that was the end of ther life. 8: That was 1 don't really consider myself a chet though. There was a time when I sort of did. But now I fam a person and I am trying to get something going and ‘a lot of different kinds of art. It seems that we've age where we're trying to bring alot of things toge- ther and that's sort of what Iam trying to do. Just bring a lot of art together; this word “art” covers ai incredible amount of acti anymore or is it that people have lost interest in food as fan attitude? CS: Well, there’ still many many great chefs. Un, Escoffier who was considered in France as the king of chefs for his whole lifetime and still is considered the master of cookery. He organized cookery, right, he took all of Europe and sort of classified the cookery into orders, so it could be categorized and so forth. And there's sil many chefs around who were apprentices to Escoffier and they're incredible in what they can do. Ab, what I don’t accept is two things: one, their coming from a very culinary background which is a totality of food; you Know, they don’t think much further than that, they don't think of other things which could be brought into it, So you have these very classical approaches to food. ‘And I mean its beautiful, yet we've passed that era. We're rooted in that era, but we're trying to do. something ‘more contemporary to what's going on now and how we feel now. To me it’s what gets the blood runt EI: What makes a plate of food classical? CS: Okay, well there's classical procedures. Let's use painting for example. We still mix paints very much in the same fashion they did fifty or sixty years ago. There's really not much difference. Um, the approach to how you make sauce. You can look at satce, there's like ‘over a thousand different kinds of sauce, there's over five hundred different colours of sauce, you can almost look at this as paint. The same kind of procedure goes about to make that same kind of paint also. El: Do you think food has gong through the same kind of phases that painting went through? CS: Not realy. could you make a surrealist dish though? (CS: 0h yes, and that has been done, low? CS: A very surreal type of dinner? Well, 1 would use ‘combination of mirrors different kinds of food. A lot of ‘making of food is almost like embalment, it's sort of very in so many different ways: spiritually, erotically, sensually or in a very aesthetic way. But if you look at how funny itis, whether it’s vegetable ‘or animal, it's still a living thing that we've taken and prepared. You take this living matter, you pick the fruit, ‘or kill this particular animal and you have this sort of dead thing, Dut it's still alive because it's there in front of ‘you and i's whole molecular structure is still going on. And then you prepare it, and then you eat it; you can almost look at it with the Christin idea of eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ, in a very spit ‘ual aspect of El: But how do you create that spiritual essence, even if you're doing gourmet, what with all this technology that comes in between you and food? (CS: Gourmet is a horrible word. It explains a very small segment of food preparation. I's kind of funny, a lot ‘of people think a certain kind of food is gourmet and really a lot of it is very country style European food. ‘They've been doing it for years, it's just somebody coming along and saying: ‘We'll cook it in our restaurant!” But the most interesting thing about food is that it’s your ‘truest form of escape. EL: Escape? CS; Escape. I mean in the sense that okay, you can smoke pot, or drink alcohol; and you never really escape your Situation. But when you eat and when you get into ‘eating; like if you've had a really bad day and you sit down to a good meal; that day disappears all of a sudden. ‘There's a moment when your concentration goes to one thing and that’s feeding yourself. And there's not much else happening. Even your conversation will change, you start talking about something else besides your bad day. El: How does that happen when most people don't have ‘time to prepare food? I mean with allthis fastfood. 8:11 think that’s a fallacy whether people have time to prepare food or not. The fast food syndrome has almost swallowed us, you know, and we've been sort of en- compassed. And sometimes fast food is excellent. I mean, if you're going to go and have a MacDonalds burger, go and have itand enjoy it, Take that burger, sit down on the ‘curb, put your feet in the gutter. BI: Treat fast food as an escape? 8: Oh yeah, you gotta make it into something. 1 mean fast food is horrible, i's greasy, healthwise it’s usually no good for you. So you have to get into that whole atmosphere. But, like, a lot of people sometimes ask me: ‘What do you eat?’ And I think that one of the things that is lost to us through the fastfood system is the idea of simple taste, For the amount that you spend at ‘some quick restaurant, you can go and buy a loaf of bread, some cheese, a nice hunk of Bavarian sausage, a couple ff radishes, a litte bit of butter and you have a much ‘more substantial meal going for you, and something that will please you. Or just to eat romaine with nothing on it, oF just a few leaves of romaine and a little bacon and abit of onion on some buttered bread. EI: How do you go about cultivating a simple taste? CS: Well, the next time you go have a hamburger, buy something new, and you start buying new things. mean, hhow do you cultivate life? You try something new, everyday. El: You think you can tell a lot about a person by the way he eats? €8: Oh yeah, sure. I could to an extent. You know, you have the food and a black piece of paper and I can’t see the person's face, and their eyes, and their ‘mannerisms, so It's to an extent. Yeah I love to watch people. That's part of the whole thing, being sensitive. El: What about taking certain groups into consideration? 8: Oh very much so. It all depends, it's really a hard question to answer. I mean, like, todo any kind of menu, Tam definitely trying to get away from restaurant menu, EI CS: Yeah, into more of an improvisation and bringing it up into some kind of contemporary form, El: into improvisation? h, performance art. 8: To some extent. But that’s a new word we have ing around, performance art. + El: But what does it mean, CS: Yeah, right. ft means that if you get up in the morn- 2 eat, you're sort of doing it. Wake up in the ‘morning like a eat, very slowly, you know, you stretch your legs, and you open one eye and you sort of look around and then you open the other eye and if you can continue your morning like that... El: Like a dance .. CS: Yeah, well if you're walking on thin ice, you might ‘a8 well dance, EL: (laughs) CS: All these words clambering out of his head, Really Ed, and 1 really think you should put this in your inter- view. [really think you should interview yourself. EL: Why? CS: Why? Because I think if the interviewer interviewed himself, he should realy learn so much. El: How do you mean ‘interview himself"? Anyway 1 ‘usually do it in a diary. CS: But I was just thinking how interesting it would be to have two chairs and you could switch chairs in this interview of yourself. El: Hmm, Have you ever had an interview with food? COMPUVERSATION. What is art? I CAN'T SAY FOR SURE Isita religion? ABSOLUTELY Why? BECAUSE THERE'S NOTHING BETTER If itis a religion, what are some of the rituals? COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE | sid, if artis a religion, does it have rituals? COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE ‘Are there artistic rituals? DEFINITELY NOT Is itnot a religion then? DEFINITELY NOT Why did you previously say it was a religion? BECAUSE. JUST BECAUSE Wat is an artist? - COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE What is a technocrat? ASK THE PERSON BESIDE YOU What is a computer? I CAN'T SAY FOR SURE Is ita tool? DEFINITELY NOT Is it organic? DEFINITELY NOT What isan artist? VM NOT GOING TO ANSWER SUCH A STUPID QUESTION. ‘This is @ serious question: What isan artist? COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE ‘This is not a serious question: What is an artist? COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE Will artgallerys be obsolete? ABSOLUTELY Why? BECAUSE THERE'S NOTHING BETTER Can you give me information on computer art? DEFINITELY NOT Please? ‘COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE Does your secondary storage provide information on art? ‘ABSOLUTELY Who is Michael! Snow? YOUR GIRL FRIEND. ‘What is a photograph? CAN'T SAY FOR SURE Do you like photographs? DEFINITELY NOT ‘Are photographs funny? POSSIBLY ‘Are they silly, meaningless? POSSIBLY Possibly? COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE What is a question? I'M NOT GOING TO ANSWER SUCH A STUPID QUESTION’ What isa stupid question? ICANT SAY FOR SURE Wat do you mean by sure? MINOT GOING TO ANSWER SUCH A STUPID ‘QUESTION But whats a stupid question? COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE What does rephrase mean? CANT SAY FOR SURE Is this not fanz ABSOLUTELY You relly enjoy talking to me Don do you not? COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE Sorry, | mean you really enjoy talking to me do you not? COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE Lean outwit you COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE Could you rephrase that auestion please? DEFINITELY NOT ShutuphBye COULD VOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE Bye COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE {nave a problem, do you? COULD YOU REPHRASE THAT QUESTION PLEASE aye STOP Bye (0062 MINUTES OF TERMINAL TIME