DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2023.1.5| TAVAKOLI: BUTTA LA PASTICHE!_ INSIGHTOUT 1(2023) 33 past is forgotten. Considering the past as well as the future in discussions of the sociotechnical imaginary furthermore results in a vision of nation that is deeply Camp, lending what would otherwise be understood as“low-class” or“poor taste” a degree of respect of­ten reserved for high culture. Performing Pasts and Futures Cecchini’s performance, Carne e Spirito —literally “flesh and spirit” but perhaps more accurately“body and soul”—unfolds as follows: 2 We begin with a stage decorated to invoke the rol­ling hills of the Tuscan countryside: yellowed grass covers the floor while a fallen tree trunk lies at the front of the stage. Craggy grey boulders punctua­te the scene. Two figures challenge this rural idyll. First, to the right of the stage, is Cecchini, sharpe­ning a breaking knife and dressed in a butcher’s apron. Rather than the standard starched white, Cecchini’s uniform is coloured with a vertical green stripe running from right shoulder to armpit and a red stripe from left shoulder to armpit. The traditio­nal white separates the two. In the mirrored vision of the audience, Cecchini appears as a walking Ita­lian tricolore . The second figure is a recently slaughtered pig, hung by its hind legs from unseen rafters and left hover­ing a few feet above a bundle of straw and sawdust, into which its blood continues to gather. The effect is the suggestion of a carcass offered from the hea­vens above. The last decade has seen a continued downward trend in rainfall across both Northern and Southern Tuscany. 3 In Cecchini’s Tuscany it might not rain cats and dogs, but it does seem to rain swine. In a dislocated performance of his daily labour, Cecchi­ni slices open the belly of his supporting actor, scoo­ping out purple, grey, and pink entrails. What follows is, presumably, less day-to-day. As he separates the offal by organ, Cecchini recites verses from Dante Alighieri’s Inferno .“[…] io venni men, così com’io mo­risse. E caddi come corpo morto cade,” he cries.“I fainted as if I had met my death. And then I fell as a dead body falls.” 4 The performance was the opening act of the third annual MAD Symposium, a three-day event dedica­ted to discussion on the production, protection, and culture of food and dining, founded by René Redzepi, chef and co-owner of the restaurant Noma in Co­penhagen, David Chang, founder of the Momofuku restaurant chain and food brand, and the former editorial team of the now discontinued food magazi­ne Lucky Peach . In 2013, the symposium theme was “Guts”, dedicated to“visceral stories of strength, persistence, risk-taking, and embracing failure” 5 . Cecchini, who owns and operates a small butchery shop in Chianti, was performing on behalf of Slow Food International. Somewhat at odds with its own international status, Slow Food defines its mission as the preservation of local methods, practices, and values related to food and cookery. The organisation first emerged in the late 1980s as a loose coalition of individuals, figure-headed by Carlo Petrini, whose first course of public action was to protest both(and someti­mes interchangeably) what they considered to be the fast-foodification of Italian cities and the Ame­ricanisation of Italian life. 6 Today, Slow Food has established a much more significant presence, not 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hcn1TOYxLuE(accessed 18 July 2023). 3 Cf. Michael Märker et al.,“Assessment of Land Degradation Susceptibility by Scenario Analysis: A Case Study in Southern Tuscany, Italy”, Geomorphology, 93/1–2(Jan. 2008), 120–129. 4 Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia: Inferno , V, 141–142. English: The Divine Comedy, trans. Allen Mandelbaum(New York, 1991), 81. 5 https://madfeed.co/mad-symposium/mad-symposium-3-guts/(accessed 18 July 2023). 6 Cf. Florence Fabricant,“A Faintly Amused Answer to Fast Food”, New York Times , 15 Nov. 1989, C10; Roberta Sassatelli and Federica Davolio,“Consumption, Pleasure and Politics: Slow Food and the Politico-Aesthetic Problematization of Food”, Journal of Consumer Culture , 10/2(2010), 202–232, at 206.