WHAT/HOW/WHY

PIZZA PIZZA

WHAT

PIZZA PIZZA is a digital video, 11:06 long. The opening shot is of a pizzeria called "Classic Pizza" at night. On the store's sign, the text "De best geteste pizza in town" (The best tested pizza in town) can be read. The audio is ambient sound, mostly of cars driving by. A figure, “Pizza,” dressed as a mushroom and pepperoni pizza slice, is seen walking up to the door of Classic Pizza, and enters the pizzeria. The shot changes to an interior shot of the pizzeria. Part of the store window can be seen, as well as a table next to the window, a chair, a booth with a lamp hanging overhead, and part of another booth. There are no other customers in the pizzeria. All of the furniture is upholstered in red vinyl. A menu is on each table, and a larger version of the menu hangs on the wall. After we hear the door close, we see Pizza walk in front of the camera. Off camera, we hear Pizza order a slice of mushroom-pepperoni pizza for €1,50. Then we see Pizza walk to the booth in the center of the frame and sit down. The table is lit primarily from the lamp over the table. The ambient sound in the pizzeria comes mostly from the TV in the background, whose flickering is faintly reflected onto the large menu on the wall.

Pizza leans forward, forearms on the table, and sinks its chin into the crust of the pizza costume. Then Pizza sits up straight. Shortly thereafter, a man dressed in black with a green apron brings a slice of mushroom and pepperoni pizza on a red plate to Pizza. Pizza proceeds to methodically eat the slice of pizza. After finishing the slice of pizza, Pizza stares at the empty red plate, picks up the plate and gets up from the table. Here, we see the pizza costume in full. Off camera, we hear Pizza order another slice of mushroom and pepperoni pizza. Pizza returns to the booth and sits down. Pizza leans forward with forearms on the table, head leaning forward, and chin sinking into the crust of the pizza costume. Then Pizza sits up straight. Shortly thereafter, a man dressed in black with a green apron brings a slice of mushroom and pepperoni pizza on a red plate to Pizza. The shot changes to a close-up of the table, showing the red plate with the slice of pizza on it and the upper body of Pizza, excluding Pizza’s head. Pizza proceeds to eat the slice of pizza. As Pizza finishes the slice of pizza, the shot changes back to the previous medium shot of the interior of the pizzeria. Pizza finishes the slice, picks up the red plate, gets up from the table, and walks off camera. We hear the sound of a trashcan opening and closing, then we see Pizza walk in front of the camera. The shot changes to the exterior of Classic Pizza, and we see Pizza exit the pizzeria and walk down the sidewalk, until Pizza is no longer in view.

PIZZA PIZZA was shown on a flat screen monitor, installed in the frame of a set of metal security shutters. The frame was mounted on the wall, and the shutters were lowered to the height of the monitor. Next to the monitor, behind a piece of plexiglass, there was a printed photograph of four stacks of pizza boxes filling the rest of the window frame, each between 10 and 12 boxes high, and each printed with the text, “PIZZA PIZZA.”

HOW

PIZZA PIZZA was filmed one evening in Rotterdam at Classic Pizza. I chose the location of Classic Pizza after visiting a few other pizzerias. Classic Pizza proved to be the appropriate location both because of its interior decor and because the man working there was willing to serve me pizza by the slice. In total, five slices of pizza were consumed during the filming of PIZZA PIZZA. The pizza costume was sent to me in a care package from a friend who lives in New York. She had previously sent me the complete set of Slice Harvester zines, which provides reviews of all the pizzerias in Manhattan. The installation of PIZZA PIZZA was made possible by borrowing the metal security shutters from the box container in the courtyard of the Piet Zwart Institute. The photo print of the stacked pizza boxes was taken in a pizzeria in Amsterdam in the weeks following the filming of PIZZA PIZZA.

WHY

PIZZA PIZZA is both a response to receiving the collection of pizza zines and the pizza costume in the mail, as well as an enactment of production via consumption and consumption via production. In making PIZZA PIZZA, I was looking at the idea of becoming what you eat (or eating what you are), productive consumption (through literally eating pizza), and also enacting semiological cannibalism. While PIZZA PIZZA quite literally enacts a semiological cannibalism (“Pizza” eats pizza), the installation of video in the frame of the metal shutters interrupts the film spatially to create a viewing space that is both frame and façade. As an act of architectural appropriation, moving the shutters into the exhibition space is also an attempt to bring the street inside. The work reflects the idea that we produce our self-images and we consume our self-images; thus, we consume ourselves in acts of self-cannibalism, or autosarcophagy. PIZZA PIZZA also engages with my ongoing investigation into the consumption of spectacle and the spectacle of consumption.