OSLO: Will Benedict & Steffen Jørgensen: The Restaurant Season 2

Over the course of the past eight years, Will Benedict and Steffen Jørgensen have collaborated on an ongoing video series called The Restaurant, showcasing episodes in various exhibition contexts. The series is set in the ruins of a Parisian skyscraper, surrounded by dense jungle, where we are introduced to a variety of human and non-human characters who cook, serve, search for meaning, and fail in their attempts at being productive members of society.

In Season 2, presented here at Den Frie, we follow a police detective and owner of Café Wha? as she aggressively questions customers on their eating habits, their relationship with “hanger”, and the effect food has on their lives in general. In the shadow of The Restaurant, a humanoid blue chicken and a man with ears for eyes host a science podcast for a small group of barn animals. With the aid of experts in the fields of bio-engineering, physics and zoology the program explores the world of the microbiome, the origins of fat, and what it would be like to live on an earth made entirely of blueberries. Over the course of each episode we meet a melancholy moon, a T-Rex stuck in an outhouse, a disenfranchised scarecrow and a half man, half snail making the essential deliveries that hold this world together.