Sanselig deluxe: A multi-sensory dining performance during Fragment festival
During Fragment modernism festival, GRAC presentered an immersive dinner experience in collaboration with artist Ann Cathrin November Høibo.
Over three nights we welcomed precisely sixty guests to enter our still very raw art space and experience a unique dinner setting. We met our guests outside the building, giving them a trustworthy face and guided them blindfolded into an empty room where they were given their first tasting experience and invited to reflect on trust and sensability. After removing their blindfold, the guests could explore the installations in the room and where served a Tomatini from a levelig tool. From there the live seremonial installation of the dining table began, and the guests were guided through a carefully created food and drink meny, presented as conseptual art works with an overall experience design.
Ann Cathrin November Høibo developed a visual universe of industrial history and feminine play, where each of us in the room, including the guests, played a vital part.
The culinary vision was developed in collaboration with our artistic test kitchen Polyamoral. Together with Ann Cathrin, we focused specifically on end-of-summer foraging combined with influences from the damp darkness that rises with the income of fall in the southern norwegian region. We gathered treasures from local fauna from the shore to the pine forest; fermenting, preserving and pickling.
Local ingredients, humour, beauty, and also even some nerves. Every element of the performance was curated with care, from the food and light to the music, gestures, interactions and objects surrounding our guests.
Students from Vågsbygd music, dans and drama high school participated both in creating the performance and the facilitation of our guests. Thank you so, so much. The GRAC team and Ann Cathrin had the best time creating this with you.
Thank you to all of our guests who gifted us their trust, time and loyalty in not spilling the surprise for anyone participating the following days. And we have received such beautiful feedback from all over, which motivates us to continue developing our concept further.
Also thank you so much to Dag Olav Kolltveit for creating a perfect soundtrack for this experience.
And thank you Cultiva stiftelsen for making this financially possible.
By Henriette Wulff30 September 2025