«Le Bonheur»

In the project «Le Bonheur» HOIO goes on a quest for happiness, that is, a search for culinary bliss, entailing that Tremolo of the soul and palate which are released through the memory of steaming asparagus or Chinese marinated duck breast, or other delights such as chocolate-braised wild boar or fig compote. The results of the search are represented in two video films and a series of portraits.

Highest concentration

In the first video film «Le Bonheur - Les 200 plats de S.» we witness a man undergoing an act of the highest culinary concentration. In advance of the act, he first made a list of two hundred dishes and beverages associated with his own very particular memories. He then arranged for the names of all these delicacies to be read out loud to him by two women as a thirty-minute performance. Some of the meals were familiar to the two, while others were more or less strange - and thus the names of some of the dishes moved in their mouths like exotic meals. During the reading Herzog closed his eyes and tried to concentrate as completely as possible on the dishes as the names were recited. But how does the face react to the mention of meals? Do memories lead to changes of facial expression? Does a kind of saturation take place over time? Or, on the contrary, does hunger increase?

Kulinarischen Vorlieben

The portraits also function through a similar principle. In short interviews HOIO asks various passer-bys and colleagues about their culinary preferences. At the end of the exchange, as a short exercise the interviewee is requested to concentrate – with eyes closed, of course – on a dish which they associate with happiness. During this exercise they are photographed several times. In conclusion, they select a portrait of themselves and supply some additional personal information about themselves to be published with their portrait on the Internet. The remaining portraits are integrated sequentially in a video film («Le Bonheur» - the second film) and a DVD-project.

[Translated from German by Linda Cassens]

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