Salad=Fluxus

Alison Knowles made the Fluxus statement ‘make a salad’ in 1962. In my opinion, the salad is exactly what the genre denotes: a happening!!!!

Friends will know my passion for salads. The Marks and Spencer Prawn Layer is a particular favorite of mine. In fact, the extent of my passion for the Prawn Layer is such that it could probably be classed as a personal character trait (if it is at all possible to make prawn mayonnaise and grated carrot a tangible extension of your SOUL) Yes, I think salads are important. And I know your first thought; is their appeal purely because of the health sticker attached to them. And in truth, that is part of it. Having a really varied, tasty salad that is filling and aesthetically vibrant makes me feel good about myself. However, it can also make others feel as equally bad. The words ‘I had a salad’ are incredibly loaded and can be akin to a live explosive. “Can I please have the Caeser salad with dressing on the…” BOOOOOOOOM and the sound of flapping pizza dough spinning through the air whilst you get pummeled by Pollo ad Astra and American Hot in Pizza Express. However, there is an alternative side to the salad that most people miss and if played out correctly can change the conception of ‘having a salad’ forever. Salads are made up by lots of individual leaves that create a multitude of tiny nooks and crannies to encase (and hide) loads of different bits of food that taste much better than the actual salad leaves. Try imagining your salad as a porous sponge or maybe one of those fossils with loads of long tubey holes running through it that you bought on school trips to the Butterfly Farm in year five. Basically, something with a multitude of holes into which you can put other things. Because lets be honest, everything tastes better stuffed. So instead of ‘tossing’ your salad, try ‘stuffing’ it! And I have just realized that the past two sentences are full of genuinely unintentional sexual innuendoes. So if you have sniggered even slightly then I think you should take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror.