Dear X, 

I am a writer and curator, and I started a 2 months research residency at MORPHO in Antwerp. 

In about 10 days, I will co-host a dinner for approximately 10 people at MORPHO, in collaboration with Michelle Woods who is an artist, cook, and co-founder of Table Dance, a restaurant and event space in Antwerp. My fellow residents and the artistic director of MORPHO will be present, as well as a few invited guests, who are somehow connected to the research I am doing there. 

My research at MORPHO is about the Night. About the disappearance of the Night as we have experienced it, and the rise of another one that has been menacing us since a long time, and appears to be more and more present - now shadowing many things around us. My project deals with darkness and obscurity and the visible and invisible forces that are in conflict today. I am writing a long text about this, that I am imagining like an exhibition, and that will also welcome other individuals, collectives and voices in the way it is composed. 

I recently came across a series of studies on tubers. Following anthropologists such as James C. Scott, or philosophers like Igor Krtolica, tubers that are growing underground have been participating in forms of resistance to State control and dissidence towards land appropriation in history. I have also been interested in vegetables, fruits and plants that grow in the dark, also known as nightshades, that have a singular history, fascinating for their strange powers, some of them having been used as narcotics, or hallucinogens... 

This dinner has a name: Moon Eaters. Like flowers blooming at night, meals that ferment in obscurity... It led Michelle and I to work on an evening and menu based on something like the "Nightlife" of plants. Michelle will be composing a 10 course menu, that will be based on various old and new techniques, and that will be the occasion to share, sometimes unusual visual experiences, or tastes. Food, and drinks will be staged within a specific environment that we have devised in collaboration, and that will welcome a moment that we would like to be a little ritualised. 

During the event, a small stage will be on display not too far from the dinner table. Each participant in the evening is invited to share a short "live" moment: it could take the form of a reading, a dance, a song, an improvisation, a video, an object, a talk, a music track to be played... That will punctuate the tasting and the conversations. These acts should be of a duration of (maximum) 3 minutes each. I would be happy to discuss this with you in advance, of course, but would also be happy to be surprised. 

It will be my pleasure to welcome you there.

Moon Eaters 

Where: Ploegstraat 27, 2018 Antwerpen
When: Wednesday 23rd March, 7pm

*Dress code: Hello, Earth

°Music by Duma

Please let me know if I can provide any further information about the evening, and if you would like to attend or not. If your answer is yes, I would also be interested to hear your technical (and dietary) requirements!

Best wishes,

Yann Chateigné Tytelman

& Michelle Woods