This article takes the work of the Austrian collective AO& as its primary case study. Immanuel Kant’s concept of ‘civilized bliss’, as considered by Peter Melville, allows for further enquiry into the history of food preparation, as outlined by Luce Giard in her research on ‘living and cooking’. The article also looks to ephemerality and meaning, juxtaposing Henri Lefebvre’s assertion that the everyday is the mediator between nature and culture with notions of meal time. From a temporal perspective grounded in Henri Bergson’s conception of consciousness and slowed rhythms, I argue that the methodology of AO& allows for the extension and distillation of the everyday by rescuing an aesthetics of eating from readymade urban experience.
CONCEPTUAL ECOLOGIES 