Just being together: a Fluxus tea party in the Don Bosco district of Bolzano

“Art is already here, in our daily lives; we just need to train ourselves to see it.” According to Daniel Spoerri, art can be found in anything we do, no matter how simple, like going for a walk, listening to a piece of music, looking at the sky, or even sitting at a table and eating together. Inspired by the Fluxus artist, whose work is on display at the Piccolo Museion - Cubo Garutti and Museion in the Francesco Conz Editions exhibition, Laura Pernechele, Educational Project Coordinator and Mette Zannato, Curatorial Assistant, organized a special tea party in collaboration with La Rotonda Community Hub – Cooperativa Sociale OfficineVispa in the Don Bosco district in Bolzano. Here’s how it went!

Food is conviviality and conviviality is art. This is the message Daniel Spoerri (1930-2024) seeks to convey in his tableaux-pièges, displayed at Piccolo Museion – Cubo Garutti, in the Don Bosco district as part of the exhibition: You and The Night and the Music: Francesco Conz Editions from the Museion Collection.

With his tableaux-pièges – or “snare-pictures” – Spoerri seeks to “trap” the moment at the end of a meal by gluing down everything that is left on the table when the guests get up. Dirty plates, breadcrumbs, full ashtrays, empty wine glasses, and crumpled tablecloths are all fixed to capture the randomness of the situation and celebrate the uniqueness of every meal in an artwork. What remains on the table, then, is not a simple accumulation of objects but the tangible memory of a moment of sharing, in which the people present exchange not only food but also stories, emotions, and memories.

Spoerri’s two great loves – food and art – merge together so often in his works, he is regarded as the inventor of Eat Art, a concept that he himself defined as, “The study of everything that is edible or seems edible.” Through edible artistic creations (often made with bread dough) and his continuous quest for new flavors, Spoerri aimed to show that food creates an indispensable bond between art and life. For example, in his Restaurant Spoerri, opened in Düsseldorf in 1968, he presented a menu of unusual dishes, like ant omelets, python steaks, and snake meat sauce, to offer an artistic experience that could actually be tasted.

In line with the Fluxus art movement, that both his approach and themes were closely associated with, Spoerri did not try to create “new artworks” but to show that “art is already here”, in our day-to-day life, “we just need to train ourselves to see it.” Spoerri believed that art can be found in anything we do, no matter how simple, like going for a walk, listening to a piece of music, looking at the sky, or even sitting at a table and eating together.

So, to break down the invisible wall that separates art and life, we sometimes need to step outside the boundaries of the museum and bring art into people’s lives.

Starting from this vision, Museion began to work together with the La Rotonda Community Hub – Cooperativa Sociale OfficineVispa, based in the Don Bosco district of Bolzano, and this led to the “Living art: Fluxus practices at Piccolo Museion – Cubo Garutti” project. The project’s goal is to merge Fluxus practices with neighborhood life. The first meeting (held on May 16, 2025) was a “Fluxus Tea Party”. Conceived as a moment of sharing food through art, the event was open to anyone from the local neighborhood. It was an opportunity to spend time together, eat, and rediscover art in small everyday actions. Inspired by Yoko Ono’s instructions in her book Grapefruit (1964), we created a “menu” to help participants focus on the present moment and the artistry of every action. One of the instructions, taken directly from Ono’s book, says: “Think about what the person next to you is thinking.” It is a simple action, requiring no complex movements, just a focus on the person sitting next to you. We also invited the participants to draw the outlines of their plates and glasses on the tablecloth and note any personal thoughts. Through these actions a collective map was created, reminiscent of Nam June Paik’s Fluxus Island in Décollage Ocean, that is also on display at Museion Passage in the Francesco Conz Editions exhibition.

Many people attended and enjoyed this experience, but what most reawakened the Fluxus spirit was the extraordinary spontaneous participation of the local community. Some people lovingly prepared focaccia, cakes and other snacks, while others laid out chairs around the Cube, helped clean up at the end, and offered to embroider the tablecloths to make them even more meaningful. What really broke down the boundaries between art and everyday life, though, was the genuine and sincere care shown to each other by everyone who took part.

This meeting was the first of a series of events that aim to bring this neighborhood closer to Fluxus art, while also offering an experience of art in its most convivial form, beyond the walls of a museum. It is an opportunity to talk about art, but also, and above all, to simply spend time together.

Because, as Spoerri teaches us, art is also conviviality, everyday life and food.

The exhibition, You and The Night and the Music: Francesco Conz Editions from the Museion Collection uses the museum collection to explore the cultural legacy and artistic vision of Francesco Conz. An important figure, who worked with Fluxus, Visual Poetry and Concrete Poetry artists, and played a decisive role in disseminating these artistic practices in Italy and abroad.

Museion Passage, free admission. Until 31.01.2026

Cubo Garutti, Via Sassari 17/b, Bolzano. Until 31.01.2026