Queer Environment: Hand Cutlery

https://vimeo.com/265840319

We intended to create a queer environment by manipulating the conventions of restaurant etiquette. One of the foundations of restaurant etiquette is cutlery and the way we interact with many different types and sizes, especially in upper class establishments.

Furthermore, we wanted to create an environment where eating with your hands is actively encouraged. A way of stuffing your face without it affecting your social standing. The eating implements we have made may be considered as tools, however it is the way people interact with them in a formal and public setting that conjures the queer within an environment. This is through changing the way people eat and placing value upon a primitive habit.

We created our implements by casting hands in plaster with alginate. We wanted them to have a realistic aesthetic and a lustrous appeal. We sprayed them in high gloss paint to enhance the ornamental and high-quality feel, intriguing people to use and replicate such a contagious action.

Moulding process, casting with alginate and filling with plaster to produce life-like hands.

The hands in action, prevents your own hands from getting dirty whilst eating with hands.

Eating with the hands in a public restaurant