Recipe for Conversation was a participatory performance staged as part of the Trespass Parade, a major public art event held in downtown Los Angeles on October 2, 2011. The Trespass Parade—a collaboration between artists Arto Lindsay, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and West of Rome Public Art—was part of the Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980 initiative, celebrating civic engagement through music, dance, and performance.
Over the course of 2.5 hours, Recipe for Conversation transformed a mobile dining environment into a platform for public dialogue. The centerpiece of the performance was a large dining table installed on a trailer, which functioned as a moving float within the parade procession through downtown Los Angeles. This mobile table served as both literal and symbolic stage, traveling across the city while inviting ongoing conversation among its participants.
Selected willing and active participants were seated at the table, their conversations amplified through speakers so that the surrounding parade audience could listen and engage. Acting as Master of Ceremonies, Reynolds facilitated the event by prompting the audience to provide topics of conversation. These prompts were collected either aloud or anonymously via handwritten "recipe cards" submitted by spectators. Once a topic was introduced, the seated participants engaged in an evolving dialogue, with subjects shifting organically as guided by both participants and the artist-host.
By placing the dining table on a mobile platform and integrating it into the public spectacle of the parade, Recipe for Conversation emphasized the role of communal dialogue in shaping the social and political landscapes of everyday life. The work foregrounded the dinner table not simply as a site of consumption, but as a performative and democratic space where decisions, negotiations, and relationships are continuously formed and contested.