Languish at the End of the Ocean

Anna Rose Hopkins & Marina Zurkow

At the tail end of the Covid-19 Pandemic, Zurkow and Hopkins installed their janky work/care space. Ass-cushions, office furniture, fake plants, foam and rubber were used to sculpt an arte povera “spa” where guests were invited to drift in search of a bluer expanse. This work featured Zurkow and Hopkins’ previously created audio work: Soupy Salty Sonic: A Liquid Wanting and included pop up performances based on a menu of services by Hopkins.

EFA Project room, 2022. photos by jakob dahlin

Acts of Service

LIVE PERFORMANCE In Situ: Languish at the End of the Ocean

Hopkins designed this performance as a one to one interaction between participant and herself as the Spa Worker/Proxy for Ocean.

Acts of Service was performed 20 times over the course of 5 days. Through affective labor, Hopkins provided “treatments” that mapped from ocean surface to ocean depth. Spa guests were thus encouraged to sensorially move through states of languishing, by surrendering to light, smell, touch, pressure and weightlessness.

Treatments included TOUCH ME: a Euphotic Zone Offering - Aromatherapy and salt scrub; CHANGE ME: a Mesopelagic Zone Offering - Red light therapy; WEIGH ME DOWN (so i may rise up): an Abyssopelagic Zone Offering - Weighted inversion therapy; and FORGIVE ME: a Hadal Zone Offering - Confession.

EFA Project room, 2022. photos by jakob dahlin

Mars Cookbook

Hank and Bean + Jess Bunchek, Ben Greaves, Joseph Taylor & Christine Annette Jackson

It started with GAIA, Bunchek & Greaves’ 2019 NASA big Idea Finalist design for a closed loop Martian greenhouse. Based on that work, Hank and Bean imagined a food-sovereign Martian future for a mindful young colony. Hank and Bean designed a complete culinary narrative to supply 4 astronauts with 100% of their food-based nutrition for a 36 month period off earth. Hard science is sculpted into “comfort food” recipes, food design and imagined outcomes where abundance is eked out from a hyper-limited crop selection.

Roles: Mars Cookbook recipes and narratives by Hank and Bean, with scientific annotation by astro-botanists Jess Bunchek and Ben Greaves, and plant molecular biologist PHD candidate Joseph Taylor. Graphic designer Christine Annette Jackson added visual design. Hopkins’ specific role was food researcher, world builder, narrative designer and with Henry Fischer, food and recipe designer.

Photos below by Paul Salveson, styled by Hank and Bean, 2020

inquiries: bean@hankandbean.com

Soupy Salty Sonic

An Edible Exploration Through Fluid Oceanic Inner Spaces

hank and bean + artist marina zurkow

This dinner incorporated scripted text, found text, ASMR, audio, visual interventions and food. Diners are met with messages in a bottle and a milky seas porridge they were invited to flavor with vinegar based algal blooms. Sea plants, shellfish and invertebrates were used to investigate what it means to eat “with” rather than from the ocean. The dining experience would later evolve into an audio theater work by Zurkow and Hopkins.

Sunview Luncheonette, 2019

Making the Best of It

NImble foods for climate chaos

Hank and Bean [Anna rose Hopkins & henry Fischer] with artist Marina zurkow

Starting with a snacking tour through the diverse flora of the Mildred E. Matthias Botanical Gardens [featuring readings from Octavia E. Butler’s Earthseed Parables] guests were guided through a rich, multi-course tasting experience. The dinner featured mainly plant ingredients, but also included moon jellyfish, cricket and mealwork flours plus local goat and rabbit. Though the work was to explore eating in a future of scarcity, we stretched to create a maximal expression of taste and comfort. Produced with the generous support of LENS at UCLA’s IoES at the Mildred E. Matthias Botanical Garden.

institute of environment and sustainability [ioes], ucla, 2018

Port Capa (coastal / border)

Hank and Bean for artist Dany Naeirman

Hank and Bean designed comestibles for Dany Naeirman’s site-reponsive installation and performance, produced at Angels Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro, CA overlooking “America’s Port” or the Port of Los Angeles. Inspired by global trade and watercraft freight, a human practice that began in antiquity, Hank and Bean incorporated global ingredients: tea from Yunnan Province in China, bourbon from Kentucky algae from the Pacific, fresh sugarcane and Domino sugar. The confections were labeled with edible binary code and everything was horrifically served from plastic sourced from the internet. Hopkins also had the pleasure of performing in Naeirman’s performance piece in situ.

Pacific Standard Time LA/LA: An Initiative of the Getty, 2017

Outside the Work

A TASTING OF HYDROCARBONS AND GEOLOGICAL TIME

Lucullan Foods [Anna Rose Hopkins & Lauryn Tyrell] for artist Marina Zurkow

This dinner for 50 was co-hosted by philosopher Timothy Morton and poet Joseph Campana. Zurkow, Hopkins and Tyrell explored the concept of Deep Time and the multiple million-years-long process of fossil fuel formation, embodied in a seven course meal. The purpose was to field test the effect of creating a meal that at once felt like a familiar banquet, and created the strange feeling of dissolving into deep time through food and interactive design, in order to explore our complicated relationship to—and dependency on—petroleum. This was the second iteration of a work in collaboration with artist Marina Zurkow and set the stage for our long term and enduring collaboration. More can be found here.

RICE UNIVERSITy, 2014