Eugenia P. Butler’s The Kitchen Table
A matrix of power rather than a hierarchy of power
Cover of The Kitchen Table book, published in 2018 through The Box gallery
Table of Contents
Marina Abramovic, Eugenia Butler, Allan Graham
From left: Eugenia Butler, Felipe Ehrenberg, Carolee Schneemann, Todd Gray
Clockwise from top: (images 1, 2, and 4) John Outterbridge; (image 3) George Herms, Julia Lohmann, Mónica Mayer, John Outterbridge, John O’Brien
From left: Kim Abeles, Eugenia Butler, Michael Rotondi, Allan Kaprow
In 1993, the conceptual artist Eugenia Butler invited twenty-six artists from around the world to have conversations with her over a series of meals in a hidden booth at Art/LA ’93, for an event titled The Kitchen Table. The project included many notable artists, including Allan Kaprow, John Outterbridge, Carolee Schneemann, Suzanne Lacy, Felipe Ehrenberg, Marina Abramovic, Monica Mayer, and Joan Jonas, with the conversations grounded by the story-telling mode of exchange over a meal. It was Eugenia's belief that the project and the deep exchange of ideas it proposed were a valid form of art.
I first transcribed the conversations as Eugenia’s intern in 2000 while an art student, in preparation for her 35-year retrospective in 2003, Arc of an Idea: Chasing the Invisible at the Otis Ben Maltz Gallery. Sadly, Eugenia who was both a mentor and dear friend, passed away unexpectedly in 2008 at the age of 61. As part of my efforts to make her work known to a larger audience, I collaborated with X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly for a series of four sequential features on The Kitchen Table in which we published condensed transcripts from four of the eight talks in the project.
In 2018, on the 25th anniversary of the project, a publication of the unabridged conversations was made available as a book through The Box gallery.