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The Subnature Smokehouse

Part of the Eat What You Learn Series

“Subnature” is a term coined by the historian and theorist David Gissen to categorize what architects dating to Vitruvius have historically cast as marginalized spaces in buildings and landscapes (e.g. darkness, dankness, weeds, pigeons, crowds, dust, smoke, etc.). Occasionally, architects and other innovators have reappropriated and transformed these spaces into aesthetically pleasurable and functional places. The Smokehouse installation explores and negotiates smoke as a subnatural material in the creation of enjoyable olfactory, visual, and culinary sensations. From smoked food to the now taboo act of smoking tobacco, the Smokehouse will be a place to reflect upon smoke in its consumable manifestations.

Transcending the boundaries of its physical space, the Smokehouse will also function as a central monument to the Subnature and Culinary Culture project co-convened on the Duke campus by Humanities Writ Large.

For more on the smokehouse, click here. 

For more on subnature studies, click here.