Documentation and analysis by Laurie Beth Clark and Michael Peterson of a project by the arts collective Spatula&Barcode: In December 2016 a major city building in Madison, Wisconsin was closed for renovation, and enterprising curators installed a massive temporary art exhibition, titled Municipal. As the community was in the midst of processing the presidential election results, we created Rage Grief Comfort & with the explicit aim of moving participants through and past their immediate emotions.
Articles by Spatula&Barcode
Spatula&Barcode makes art projects in which the performance of place and of hospitality are central. Most projects involve conversation and some form of playful gift or souvenir (“swag”). While most Spatula&Barcode projects involve food in some way, their recent series Foodways directly explores the movements of food and food culture.
Spatula&Barcode is a "social practice art" group that combines many activities in their projects: interviews and interactions, social media, photography, writing, and public events. Spatula&Barcode is the umbrella name for the work that Michael Peterson and Laurie Beth Clark make together, but they often say that anyone who works on one of the projects is a part of Spatula&Barcode. (Clark and Peterson are Professors of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.)