Michael Portnoy. WANDBISS

Michael Portnoy’s project WANDBISS, staged for the first time at Art Unlimited Basel, offers audiences a “fine biting experience” in an installation that unites epicurean pleasures with Portnoy’s long-standing investigation of social exchange and its constraints as media for art.

For WANDBISS, small parties of fair-goers may reserve sessions inside the “biting room,” a private chamber in which participants are fed gourmet hors-d’oeuvres through small holes in the walls and ceiling. Eating is by mouth only: most bites will be fed by skewer or edible utensil (vegetables, breadsticks, etc.), and ceiling bites lowered on strands of seaweed or bean noodles, so that the biting experience may remain hands-free. Staffed by a reservationist and a team of expert feeders, and with a menu of Portnoy’s own design, WANDBISS promises gustatory delights and a respite from the norms of art fair sociability.

Michael Portnoy.
WANDBISS