Vitra very kindly invited me to their annual Vitra Campus party in Weil am Rhein, Germany a few weeks ago, which coincides with Art Basel in neighbouring Switzerland. All the action takes place in a complicated little corner where France, Germany and Switzerland meet. Driving around you suddenly find you’re in a different country – something very strange for an island dweller like me.
One of the art installations, and part of the catering, was Dutch artist Marije Vogelzang’s Eat Love, which celebrated this three-country corner with the invention of ‘bastard bread’.
Vitra Fire Station by Zaha Hadid. Photo by Thomas Dix. Copyright Vitra.
Hosted in the fire station designed by Zaha Hadid, her original plan was for the bread to be baked live on-site. Unfortunately when baker Fritz Trefzger saw her set-up, “I had to laugh uproariously,” so it was baked off-site, with live demonstration of the process instead.
The bread was a hybrid of German pumpernickel, French baguette and Swiss zopf. Each dough mixture was produced separately, and then overlaid with a cord and the wafer with the word “bastard bread”. The buns were shaped so they could be easily torn in two. The idea was that the bread was shared to “symbolise the solidarity of the people”. Trefzger the baker said: “Something like this brings people closer.”
Elsewhere bread slogans read things like “hello gorgeous. I’m still wearing the smile you gave me.” Who needs canapes, when you can Eat Love?
Further reading for the especially geeky:
- out and about :: pulse
- out and about :: clerkenwell design week
- out and about :: paris flea markets
- out and about :: marni
