Pasta and the Minimum Viable – a workshop with Adriana Gallo

Using a range of conventional, industrial, and natural materials participants will explore the production of pasta with minimum viable tools and ingredients. 

Emphasis will be on pasta traditions using waste, scraps, or less desirable/conventional ingredients such as sourdough pasta, pasta using grano arso or burnt wheat, cresc’tajat made with leftover polenta, pizzoccheri made with more locally abundant buckwheat flour, and chestnut gnocchi made in regions with less flour and more chestnut trees. 

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We will also explore histories of tools and the resulting forms (ancient, contemporary, human, more than human). Within restrictions there is room for iteration and invention in direct response to the site and context in which production occurs. 

Topics covered in the workshop are pasta origins, pasta and ecology, (re)productive labor and cucina povera, recipes and the commons, pasta poetics, and pasta aesthetics and materialities. 

The class: We will begin with a talk to orient materially and theoretically, then collectively make and shape two distinct doughs, and end the workshop by cooking and tasting our creations with a meal prepared by Adriana. The meal will be vegetarian with a vegan option and will contain gluten.

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Adriana Gallo is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York with roots in Milan and the Northeastern US. Rhode Island School of Design, BFA 2015.

Her ongoing research, culinary, and art practices include studio based work, open-source resources, publications, and workshops.