Mess Hall
2013
Mess Hall was a project created for Society is a Workshop, a thematic residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts. It provided a platform for residency participants and others to come together to share food, ideas, skills and knowledge. The origins of “mess” come from Old French meaning “food for a meal,” and later “a communal eating place.” The practice of mixing food for animal feed eventually led to the more derogatory notion of a mess as a “jumble or mixed mass”, “a state of confusion and disarray.” Mess Hall brought these definitions together to form a shared place for eating that was open to the productive confusion between: play and work, spectator and participant, learner and teacher.
Photo Credit: Nicole Kelly Westman & Holly Schmidt