As geographic place lost its power to guarantee quality, modern corporate brands began to appear, at first linked to the personal names of the manufacturers, who thereby offered their reputation, their face as it were, to establish a bond of trust with consumers.

I find it fascinating that this bottle is so cosmopolitan, a true multicultural brew, but it is so quiet about it.

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.

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?

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

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

How old does a recipe have to be in order to be traditional? What should we think when an old industrial food like salted (corned) beef or pickled herring becomes a part of “traditional” ethnic cuisine?

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.

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

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