How fragile is a world so connected and tied together that a change in food fashion in one place can lead to starvation halfway through the world?

The idea that foods and diets will “just mix” when they come into contact is clearly a vast oversimplification.

People want to think of a food tradition as something that would continue unchanging and timeless, unless some outside force knocked things askew.

There is no culture where everyone cooks in the same way.

But instead of being frozen in time, I want to show that “local” and “authentic” food are as much creations of modernity as survivors from before it. Authenticity is therefore a problem, not something we can ever depend on as some kind of naturally occurring category. Tradition is crafted, just as much as modernity is manufactured.

The world becomes a pageant of diversity with its differences neatly organised and selected.

Globalisation creates a world where causes are remote form effects, and the connections between them are often hidden or obscure.

Or could it be that there is something about globalisation itself that produces local culture, and promotes the constant formation of new forms of local identity, dress, cuisine, music, dance and language?

The inevitable result of any search for authenticity is that you always end up with something completely modern in intent, since the purpose of the performance lies in the present, not the past.