YKON Dinner Games

Dinner Games is a 2-day workshop playing with the social format of the dinner and developing new interactions around it. During the two-day, hands-on workshop participants develop a dinner format from scratch. We create a menu, revisit and modify established notions of behaviours, develop new social rules, and redesign our table hardware. The project starts at the dinner table, but its wider aim is to look at tools and tricks to transform everyday activities.

The elements developed during the workshop were tested in a closing dinner event, where guests were invited by the participants to enjoy a menu of different courses and interactions.

The workshop was led by YKON artists Christina Kral, Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen and Pekko Koskinen.

DAY 1
YKON introduces tools for reinvention: a map of dinner elements, a boxful of playful props and a set of game operators. Participants create a range of concepts using idea cards and then split into two teams, each starting to develop their dinner format.

DAY 2
Teams continue working on the dinner structure, refining the social and sensual elements, followed by collaborative cooking of the ambitious menu.

At 6 PM, guests arrive on the island to participate in two experimental dinner sets:
TABLE 1: QUEST FOR THE GREAT DESSERT
TABLE 2: DINNER OF THE SENSES

The workshop was organised by M-Cult in context of the first Finnish Triennale for Community Art Vastaan+Otto ('Reception').