The last ten years have seen a re- emergence of artists who use food and the participatory act of dining as a platform from which to generate political and social discourse. When it comes to “free speech” it has become apparent that the politically correct mask donned throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s has now been dropped, as witnessed in the escalation of unashamedly racist, sexist and capitalist rhetoric. In the dominant English-speaking nations of the Western world, elected leaders are outspoken in their promotion of intolerant, misogynist and neoliberal ideologies. The world is literally burning and our “leaders” are denying the reality of climate change, building real and invisible walls, imprisoning those feeing from unliveable conditions and eroding hard-won rights, the implications of which disproportionately affect First Nations peoples, diasporic communities and other minority groups. When faced with the question of where to from here, the answer for some is to gather at the dining table. The dining table is a place where serious conversations about these issues take place in the home, where friends gather to connect, enjoy each other’s company and concoct future life plans. It is also where activists meet to devise their next move, where colleagues meet to network and collaborate, and where political leaders gather information and strategise. As feminist authors A good dinner party Food as a medium for social change Courtney Coombs Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards articulate, “a good dinner party … is just as likely to be a place to see politics at work as is a rally” because “our politics emerge from our everyday lives.” 1 Artists have long-embraced food and the social exchange of dining together to disrupt and break down the hierarchies of the artworld itself, turning the everyday materiality of food and the mundane act of eating into a participatory art that extends art beyond its commodifed forms. Works that use food as a medium for expanding understandings of identity and connection to place are at the forefront of art practice today. Politically driven performative and participatory food-based practice is most often linked to Nicholas Bourriaud’s defnition of Relational Art and artist Rikrit Tiranavanija, rather than correctly placing it in line with the history of Fluxus and Feminist practice. It is true that each invite participation via the act of eating but the key difference, as Claire Bishop highlights, is that the work discussed by Bourriaud is less about democratising art and more about creating exclusive art parties. 2 These exclusive parties are still as prevalent as ever, with the “haves” desperate to hold on to their piece of the mystical– decadent art experience that only money can buy. Among the plethora of artists embracing food as a material for making, I am interested in works that continue the work of challenging the expected roles and barriers between art and its audience, drawing out a more responsive dialogue resulting in an expanded understanding of the world, and our relationship to it. A selection of Australian-based practitioners are exploring how we can come to terms with the environmental and cultural impact of our colonial past and migrant present, and move forward in a more productive and united way. Keg de Souza, Jamie Lewis, Jayanto Damanik Tan and Kieron Anderson invite audiences to broaden their understanding of the world through food to further explore these relations. As an instance of this, the recent public conversation between Christine Black and Camila Marambio, presented by the Brisbane Free University at Bunyapa Park, strategised how we might best decolonise our relationship to the land and respond to the vast changes in our climate. Over the course of the evening, the two speakers drew from Christine’s book The Land Is The Source of the Law: A Dialogic Encounter with an Indigenous Jurisprudence (2011) to discuss different ways in which we might engage with and listen to the natural world. Across the conversation and question-time that evening, the message was to let go of ego, accept the impact that colonisation and neoliberalism have had on our planet, listen and adapt to the land as it is now while moving forward with respect and care. 46 | Artlink Issue 39:4 | December 2019