Installation view of Global Taste: A Meal in Three Courses at MoMA, 2014. Photo by John Wronn.

Global Taste: A Meal in Three Courses
1985/2014

Installation with kiosk, three single-channel videos, wood, paint and two text panels

Global Taste: A Meal in Three Courses centers on the marketing of Western goods globally and on English as the language of power. The left monitor, one of three, shows clips of television ads for food, often in giant close-up and featuring talking infants, droll animals, and exuberant foreigners. The center screen presents an argument about the penetration of Western companies in media, advertising, and data flows. At its end are questions about media campaigns for missing U.S. children and starving "natives" abroad. The third screen offers a loop of auditions for a soft-drink commercial in which a group of male baseball fans rise and sing, led by a single man intoning: "It's fantastic, it's so different, it's got orig-i-nal-i-tee!" In each audition, the soloist is white, and there is one black man and one older man. Next to the kiosk are two montaged panels that refer to global marketing strategies.