SPARK
SI-008, from issue3, 2022.
There needs to be an external catalyst.
Alice Taranto is an experience designer who also hosted many dinner parties when during her studies at Rhode Island School of Design.
UDÖ I heard that you hosted dinner parties when you were at RISD.
AT I started the dinner parties my freshman year. In the beginning, I wanted to get as many people in one room as possible because people tend to stick to their own cliques in this school. I would ask everyone to bring a friend from a different department. Over time the emphasis on the prep went away and the dinner parties also became conceptually sound. A theme and a name would accompany them. Similarly, I have a twin sister who went to MICA and we did a MICA/RISD joint zine that brought two campuses together in a way. But also, we would do launch events for the joint zine that used the lessons I learned from hosting these dinner parties.
UDÖ So your work when you were a student called for other’s involvement.
AT The work of art lives in the interaction people had with the art. Or the work is not complete until people are engaged. The memories people form are the outcome of Experiential Art. The events were also always collaborative. Expose was this gallery in Downtown run by RISD students and we had an opening there. Pneuhaus, an architectural practice now making giant inflatables, made a big bubble for one of the launch parties at the RISD Beach. At the same time, the dinner parties were also getting more conceptually charged. There was one called Bone’Apettite in the RISD Nature Lab where we made these still lives with the specimens found there and the food was inspired by the still lives. The grand finale of that night was in the bone room where we served bone marrow. It was a moment where the place and the food became more harmonized around a concept.
UDÖ It seems like you put a lot of attention to making everything intentional.
AT As it was turning into a more polished art project, the documentation of them also got specific. I was working with a photographer friend of mine and we developed a relationship event by event. Understanding how to make it natural but also composed enough took some time, but having intentional documentation was really important in how the story lives onwards.
UDÖ Social interactions should also be designed for them to feel well taken care of. There is intent in making people happy in a setting with others.
AT The thing that makes RISD special is it’s small tight-knit community. Organizing events within that social fabric is fairly easy. After school I got into experiential marketing and it wasn’t as fulfilling as doing small events at RISD. When you do these events between 200-5000 people and skyrocketing budgets, it can get very impersonal. However, I’ve been in other settings where I organized events for thirty-five people where it becomes way more about understanding who is attending and how the different parties who are there can have a fruitful conversation.
UDÖ How do you bring a group together?
AT If you know there will be lots of introverts coming to the event, you can ask yourself: “How can I make them feel comfortable?”. People who make a group are all different and may have different needs in a gathering. Let me give you an example: I am dating right now and using dating apps. I have been so frustrated because they are not that great. A few weeks ago I told myself that I would rather go speed-dating than go on many not-so-great dates. However, speed dating is heinous and I would like it to be a more vetted crowd. So, I basically made my own event. I invited 10-20 girlfriends from different walks of life and the idea was that everyone recruited male participants from dating apps. We got a private space at a bar and we know everyone here is there for the same purpose. They have to be available, interested in meeting someone and the same sex. I set up this bingo game for everyone. That was the design: a conversation tool. At its core, we just want people to talk to each other, engage and connect.
UDÖ Do you believe in conversation starters?
AT I am generally a good conversationalist. There are times when I am talking to software engineery types and I am doing my best but it is not happening. When there is an interaction between two people (especially if they don’t know each other), there needs to be an external catalyst. You meet at a bar, and there is a menu. Or my bingo game. That’s the third element, a connector in a sense.
UDÖ So a lubricant for a good conversation is that you place a
connector between the parties?
AT When I was doing my thesis at RISD, I used to question why I am so curious about organizing events. One day I talked to someone who also went to RISD but who also knows my family. She just said you do this kind of work because you come from a big family, a family of nine. It is automatically a group.
UDÖ Maybe family’s make up our social DNA. I am a single child so I grew to be much better in one to one conversations.
AT It’s also not that deep. A baby shower wouldn’t look like a traditional baby shower at all, if we question why people are coming together for this event. Tradition also plays a big role in many aspects of our lives still. There is a tradition of being together.
Follow Alice Taranto’s work here
interview by Utkan Dora Öncül
Spark Interview-008, 2022