Introduction

The average visually impaired person understands what is "visible" better than the average person's understanding of what is "invisible". Those visually impaired grow up among people with good eye-sight, living in a society where language and street buildings are designed for those people. They are scattered in societies that are under sound utilitarian narration.

How can we recognize and understand "disability" or "physical and mental disability" better beyond the compassionate overlooking and the imagination? Empathy may be one of the answers.

Dining in the Dark, as the name suggests, is in an environment where you can't see anything, groping for a knife and fork to taste the food in front of you. People will maximize the use of taste, smell, touch and mind to taste food. Dining in the Dark has faded away from the occupancy of attention by visual symbols such as hue and food presentation. Returning to the original taste of food, we begin to perceive a non-visual food culture and share an invisible eating experience.

In this issue of AccessAbility Thinker's Table, guests from different fields will share the memories of a meal with the visually impaired makeup artist Xiao Jia and start a new experience of food in the invisible world.

Content

To ensure the experience of the Dining in the Dark of InterCulture, the guests wearing blindfolds will be sited in dark exhibition hall. After the announcing of  "Dark Manifesto", the dishes in the "Dark Menu" jointly created by Resident Thinker Xiao Jia and Michelin-starred chef Ivan Arroyo del Castillo will be presented in order.

Chef Ivan comes from Yuan Restaurant in MAXHUB. With sophisticated design, he incorporates Xiao Jia's personal experience and gourmet memories into every creative dish.

At the dinner table, the guests blinded their visual senses, communicated with Xiao Jia equally, and listened to Xiao Jia's story experience and her thinking and feelings about the residency. Xiao Jia will also share how to use the visual accessible function of the smartphone to take pictures, allowing the guests to leave their testimony in the dark world.

Together in the position of "disabled" and "handicapped", we explore another way to observe and feel the reality.

Program

17:15   Accessible tour guided by the wheelchair marathon runner ZHANG Jian

18:15   Admission

18:30   Manifesto of dark

18:40   Start dining

19:00   Interesting game and interacting topics

20:50   Share mind and take a group photo

About Chef Ivan

Every dish is an artistic creation for Chef Ivan.

Ivan has been a personal chef for 18 years and has rich experience in Michelin restaurant kitchens. In Mina Restaurant (Michelin 1-star), he studied as a professional intern under the famous Alvaro Garrido Ramirez chef and eventually became head chef.

His unique techniques and cooking ideas are a good way to blend the food cultures of different countries. Ivan also hosted a dark dining table for Anish Kapoor's exhibition at Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Since 2018, Ivan has be working under the CVTE Group and launched a gourmet restaurant project called Yuan Restaurant.