Suzanne Treister: Rosalind Brodsky's Time Travelling Cookery TV Show Episode 1 – Pierogi

Videostill aus Suzanne Treister, Rosalind Brodsky's Time Travelling Cookery TV Show Episode 1 – Pierogi, 1998, 07:00 Min., Video, Farbe, Ton.  Courtesy of the artist

- selected by Inke Arns (HMKV) –

In the first episode of The Cookery Show, Rosalind Brodsky creates cherry and chocolate Polish pierogi using the ingredients of a German Black Forest cake. This is a symbolic translation of a German dessert into a Polish one. She originally invented the dish to take on a time-travelling trip to rescue her Polish-Jewish grandparents from the Holocaust.

The Rosalind Brodsky Project began in 1995.
Brodsky is an alter ego, avatar and heteronymic identity of the artist Suzanne Treister.
This work uses historical material, both real and fictional. Rosalind Brodsky, with whom Treister shares Anglo-, Eastern European and Jewish roots, was born in London in 1970 and survived until 2058. She supposedly had her first delusional experience of time travel during a session with the psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva in Paris when she noticed the similarity between Kristeva's face and that of her Polish-Jewish grandmother, who was murdered in the Holocaust. By 1995, Brodsky had become a delusional time traveller, convinced that she was working at the Institute of Militronics and Advanced Time Interventionality (IMATI) in London in the 21^(st) century. IMATI is a controversial, government-funded organisation that develops equipment and carries out time travel research projects, the results of which are primarily used by the military and other government research organisation.

Suzanne Treister (b.1958 London UK) studied at St Martin's School of Art, London (1978-1981) and Chelsea College of Art and Design, London (1981-1982) and is based in London and the French Pyrenees, having lived in Australia, New York and Berlin. Initially recognized in the 1980s as a painter, she became a pioneer in the digital/new media/web-based field from the beginning of the 1990s, making work about emerging technologies, developing fictional worlds and international collaborative organisations. Utilising various media, including video, the internet, interactive technologies, photography, drawing and watercolour, Treister's work has engaged with eccentric narratives and unconventional bodies of research to reveal structures that bind power, identity and knowledge. Often spanning several years, her projects comprise fantastic reinterpretations of given taxonomies and histories that examine the existence of covert forces at work in the world. An ongoing focus of her work is the relationship between new technologies, society, alternative belief systems and the potential futures of humanity.

Check out Suzanne Treister’s current solo show at Modern Art Oxford – Prophetic Dreaming (on view until 12 April 2026) - https://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/whats-on/suzanne-treister