The Pleasures of the Table is a participatory installation that moves to disrupt the cultural narrative of eating, ultimately challenging and proposing a new expectation of consumption. The installation consists of a 5-foot round maple butcher-block table with a hole in the middle to fit interchangeable kitchen items such as a bowl, grill, or trashcan. To exaggerate the ritual of production and consumption, the table is framed by a bright red wall adorned with eight knives and eight aprons; the number of participants that can comfortably fit around the butcher-block. The title of the installation expands upon another meditation in gastronomer Brillat-Savarin’s treatise “The Physiology of Taste.” In Meditation 14, Brillat-Savarin states that “the pleasures of the table are a reflective sensation which is born from the various circumstances of place, time, things, and people who make up the surroundings of the meal.” Brillat-Savarin’s occasion is inclusive only of the events happening at the dining table and thus dismissive of the actions that take place prior and post to dining, an exclusivity that exemplifies a cultural- and class-specific concept of dinner service and ritual consumption. As a response, this project brings forward Reynolds’ own cultural experience of the disparity between time spent creating and preparing a meal and the time spent consuming it. As a result he was not only highlighting production over consumption - process over product - but also shifting the focus onto the “various circumstances” of the experience, making the actual meal the least important component of the occasion. The Pleasures of the Table breaks down notions of place and title, designating each participant as creator and consumer, removing the inherent power and control formerly held by the host of the meal. The round butcher-block works to eliminate the typically inevitable role of head of the table, ensuring that any established hierarchical systems of class, order, and rank are blurred and erased. With this installation, the actions of preparing, awaiting, and consuming food completed by participants means that each at once is a chef, patron, host, guest, audience member, and performer. With these actions happening simultaneously - preparing, cooking, consuming, cleaning - the proposed new ritual of eating becomes the hybrid site created for the opportunity to alter the viewer/participant, disrupting the cultural narrative of consumption and effectively changing the participant's dietary and social interactions.