Talk Sandwich investigates the ways artists borrow from past art and art movements to construct new interventionist practices. The metaphor of sandwich making embodies ideas of sampling, mixing, and cooking up new approaches.
– Talk Sandwich Project Description, Terri Cohn and Hibbert-Jones, 2008
Talk Sandwich
Co-curated with Dee Hibbert-Jones
Online Dialogue: May 10, 2008
Creative Lunch: May 16, 2008
Part of Intervene! Interrupt! Rethinking Art as Social Practice Conference
UC Santa Cruz
Featured Artists and Sandwiches:
Geoffrey Hendricks: Fluxus Sandwich
Marisa Jahn & Steve Shada: Molotov Aperitiv
Alison Knowles: The Best Sandwich
Tom Marioni: Conceptual Art Sandwich
Moira Roth: Feminist Sandwich
B. Ruby Rich: Feminist Sandwich Revised / IUCSC Faculty
Terri Cohn published two essays in the catalog Interventions: A Trans-Genre Anthology, edited by Roxanne Power, 2016:
Interventions: Politics, Participation, and Shape Shifting, authored by Terri Cohn, 2016, is an introduction to this collection of essays which offers historical context for artistic interventions.
Talk Sandwich: We Are Building Art, A Creative Lunch, Designed and Hosted by Terri Cohn and Dee Hibbert-Jones, authored by Terri Cohn, 2016, documents and explores the implications of the Talk Sandwich intervention project.
Talk Sandwich was a collaborative intervention designed to spark dialogue about socially engaged art by inviting participants to propose conceptual sandwiches for an event at UC Santa Cruz in 2008.
“Talk Sandwich is an interactive Creative Lunch project Dee Hibbert-Jones and I created for the 2008 Intervene! Interrupt! Rethinking Art as Social Practice conference, intended to query the nature and structure of artistic interventions.
“Interventions have been defined as an interdisciplinary approach to socially engaged art practice that draws off multiple sources. This motivated us to invite an eclectic group of artists, critics, curators, and theorists to propose virtual sandwiches, using ingredients that represent their ideas about this hybrid form. The intention was to consider existing theories and approaches as a point of entry into a dialogue concerning the nature and meaning of social practice art today. As means to inspire discussion with participants at the Talk Sandwich event, Dee and I used the ingredients submitted by each of our invited contributors… to materially create their text-defined ‘sandwich.’”
– From Talk Sandwich: We Are Building Art, A Creative Lunch, Designed and Hosted by Terri Cohn and Dee Hibbert-Jones, Terri Cohn, 2016
“We had a budget and made all of the sandwiches that would be on those pedestals, if it was possible to make them.
“One of the most complicated ones to make was Alison Knowles’, who was an original Fluxus member. We had a delightful conversation. She said she wanted me to make what she called “the best sandwich.” That involved going to a cafe, asking the person who makes the sandwiches to tell me what their best sandwich is, and then making the sandwich, and eating it.
“But I didn't want to eat the sandwich. I wanted somebody else to do it, so I could actually serve in my capacity as curating that project, rather than being the subject and object. One of Dee's students said that he'd be happy to do it. So we went to a cafe in Santa Cruz, and we asked the cafe to make their best sandwich. They did, and he sat and ate it. I brought somebody along to photograph us. I'm at the table talking with him - that was really fun!”
– From Unpublished Interview with Terri Cohn, 2024
At the Creative Lunch event, Cohn, Hibbert-Jones, and other collaborators brought these conceptual sandwiches to life. Over 100 participants gathered to engage with the sandwiches, which were displayed as sculptural objects on pedestals alongside the artists’ instructions and wall banners with the artist’s statements. Participants were also fed lunch - sandwiches! - while interacting with printed tablecloths that featured excerpts from a prior online discussion, adding another layer to the project.
Cohn later expanded on Talk Sandwich in two essays published in Interventions: A Trans-Genre Anthology (2016), edited by Roxanne Power.
In Interventions: Politics, Participation, and Shape Shifting, Cohn was asked to provide background information on the tactic of artistic interventions, tracing their roots in earlier art movements and connecting them to current social practice.
In a historical context, the most consistently cited forerunners to contemporary interventionist practices are the Paris Dada events of 1921 and the Russian Avant Garde, both of which included the creation of large-scale actions aimed at public participation, social disruption, and political change, allowing viewers to be involved in the processes of production. In a more contemporary context, an expansive range of intervention situations have been created using similar strategies (Suzanne Lacy’s large-scale, multisensory projects that connect participants to living experiences through the power of mass media and interpersonal dialogue come to mind), as well as more personal approaches—such as Natalie Jeremijeko's Environmental Health Clinic—as means to rearticulate the public sphere. This is, in part, one legacy of feminist criticism, which states that it is the private sphere (and the potential impossibility thereof) that can help rearticulate the public, as opposed to the other way around.
– From Interventions: Politics, Participation, and Shape Shifting Terri Cohn, 2016
In her second essay in the anthology, Talk Sandwich: We Are Building Art, Cohn documents the creation of the Talk Sandwich project, exploring its implications for how art can intervene in social and political discourse.
“While the metaphor of sandwich making was a somewhat abstract way to mine current definitions of socially engaged art practices, it provided means to consider the ways in which contemporary artists sample, mix, and borrow from such artistic movements as Fluxus, Social Sculpture, Happenings, Conceptual art, Feminist art, and Situationists, as well as from non-art sources. It was also a playful means to engage with some well-known creative individuals, who in their willingness to share their ideas, also allowed us to venerate their influential artistic theories and practices.”
– From Talk Sandwich: We Are Building Art, A Creative Lunch, Designed and Hosted by Terri Cohn and Dee Hibbert-Jones, Terri Cohn, 2016
Together, these essays offer both theoretical insight and a practical reflection on the evolving role of artistic interventions.
