(Since 2013)
gula gula is an ever-mutating performance project that turns cooking into dramaturgy, appetite into critique, and indulgence into method, usually cooking with the absurd. Founded in 2013, gula gula operates as a performative kitchen-lab where invited collaborators, guest artists, and accidental participants are drawn into a delirious theatre of taste, technology, and politics; an invitation to destabilize the polite rituals of taste.
From frying computer parts on live TV (The Geek Chefs, 2017) to serving edible eroticism in a glory-hole installation (Fetish for Food, 2014), to staging a tropical hallucination during lockdown (Fantasy Island, 2020), and blending sauerkraut seriousness with Caribbean grooves in a multi-day banquet of social fermentation and Loco Loco beer — a glocal brew marrying local hops with the taste memories of the Global South (Exotische Provinz Frühschoppen, 2025), gula gula has consistently treated gastronomy as a form of cultural hacking; where the line between pleasure and critique melts, ferments, and occasionally explodes.
Each performance unfolds like a sensorial mise-en-scène: costumes, recipes, and scenographies operate as political metaphors disguised as edible jokes. Food is never simply served; it is provoked, tasted, and dramatized. Between the smell of burnt circuits and the shimmer of tropical cocktails, gula gula rehearses the absurdities of late capitalism, the crises of desire, and the edible ecstasies of everyday revolt.
As a whole, gula gula could be described as a cross-contaminated practice of “culinary performance art and speculative fermentation”: a collective playground where cooking, media, and critical humor ferment into new forms of social digestion.
It believes that taste is a tool for critical imagination, that satire can be sensorial, and that sometimes, the most radical gesture is to cook.
Over the years, gula gula has evolved through a constellation of collaborators: artists, chefs, musicians, and heritage bearers, whose contributions have shaped its many forms and flavours. The project’s development between 2014 and 2025 is marked by a long-term co-authorship with chef Paul Peters, whose participation has defined much of its performative and sensorial research. Other collaborators have included María Fernanda Ariza, Eva Fernbach, Sarah Stöffl, Daniel Bierdümpfl, Iradi Luna, Martina Fuchsberger, Voland Székely, Felix Brandauer, Angelika Peroni, Tamara Mascara, Alessio & Lady Me, María Llopis, Didi Bruckmayr, Weiqi Wang, Elio Seidl, Kalla Blomquist, Anna Ach, Martin Hohla, Doris Roth, and NONEON.
Selected Happenings and Performances
Exotische Provinz Frühschoppen (2025)
Festival der Regionen, Braunau am Inn
A culinary time-travel merging the seriousness of sauerkraut with tropical grooves. Staged in a redesigned food truck turned kitchen-laboratory, the happening unfolded as days of “social fermentation,” blending conversations, workshops, and absurd gastronomy. Events like Berry Pleased to Eat You! and Deep-Fried Utopia: The Future is Fluffy explored speculative food futures, culminating in a collective Frühschoppen with live Austro-Caribbean music and the premiere of Loco Loco, a specially brewed exotic beer in collaboration with Privatbrauerei Pfesch. Invited artists and chefs: María Fernanda Ariza, Eva Fernbach, Sarah Stöffl, and the ‘Tanzlmusi Tropicale’ directed by Daniel Bierduempfl, Iradi Luna, Martina Fuchsberger, Voland Székely, and Felix Brandauer.
Fantasy Island (2020)
Ars Electronica SOUND CAMPUS, Linz
A tropical lockdown fantasy staged in blue-screen limbo. A tombola of digital desire, piña coladas, and pixelated gibbons. Presented within the virtual realm of the Sound Campus curated by Enrique Tomás, Fantasy Island invited audiences into a sensorial Metaverse of absurd luxury and escapism during the CD19 lockdowns.
The Geek Chefs (2017)
Sankt Interface Festival, University of Art and Industrial Design Linz
A live cooking show in “espainsterreichish” dialect blending kitchen slapstick, digital jargon, and culinary absurdism. The duo flambéed computer condensers and served “Raspberry Pie,” “Floppy Schnitzel,” and Gebackene Mäuse (fried computer mouses).
An homage to the “Mother of All Demos”, and to all motherboards thereafter.
Exotische Provinz (2015)
GfK im Central, Linz
A culinary welcome to the Clemens Denk Band’s first concert outside Vienna. gula gula constructed a makeshift würstelstand out of recycled cardboard and served black sesame ice cream on beetroot sauce: an edible parody of provincial hospitality and pop absurdism.
The Eggoists — Mens Sana in Corpore Sano (2015)
Das Werk, Vienna
An egglectic ritual for intellectuals: sauna, sweat, and ego release.
Participants were invited to bring their own towels and join a playful purification rite exploring body politics, performance, and absurd wellness culture.
The Eggoists — Release Your Ego (2015)
OMG! Ball, University of Arts Linz
A night of self-deification and excess featuring gula gula alongside artists Aleksander Borisovich Kaplun, Veronique & Emanation X, Be in Key feat Body Meta, and Vandalicious.
A hymn to self-care turned collective exorcism, or perhaps the other way around.
Fetish for Food (2014)
TransPorno: Porn, Trans and Artistic Practices Festival, University of Arts Linz
A glory-hole dinner installation offering edible eroticism: aloe-gin mucus, lychee dildos, and cheesy bouquets. Wall artwork by KEOS. Staged as part of the TransPorno symposium and performance constellation curated by Alex de las Heras and Roland Laimer, where artists, scholars, and performers—including María Llopis (Porno Terrorist), Angelika Peroni, Alessio & Lady Me, Tamara Mascara, and Didi Bruckmayr—shared the same space and time in overlapping acts of sensual, political, and academic disobedience.
Low-cost hedonism for all (2013)
DOKAPI, Linz
The first gula gula happening: a participatory low-cost feast. Guests were invited to feed and be fed in an edible séance blending philosophy, performance, and pleasure. Featuring gula gula: Weiqi Wang, Elio Seidl, Kalla Blomquist, Anna Ach, Martin Hohla, Doris Roth, and NONEON, the night celebrated Julien Offray de La Mettrie’s sensual materialism through a seven-course menu of ecstatic excess.
