Sliding Scale Hotel Omelet Buffet (Omelet Bar) was a series of performances that started on May 22, 2024. Drawing inspiration from the bespoke omelet option at a breakfast buffet, I set up an omelet bar on the street to make food for the public. Sometimes I appeared to be running a foodbank and other times I was received as a hustling chef that might be trying to develop a social media presence. The motivation was to make myself useful.
As over competence plagues humanity, and advancement gets confused with unnecessary technology I tried to simplify my approach to making art by spending the morning making breakfast for strangers outside on the public sidewalk. Sometimes I feel like simplicity is a far away place in a jungle, but it can be here. Robbing the white table cloth experience from being something only enjoyed by a few, O’Brien installed the experience on the street, and served a population of a wide variety.
Only half of the 21 performances were filmed, most often by Andy Chinn, a local and professional Director of Photography. The presented video is composed of edits based on the variety of interactions. As heard in the voiceover, many of the encounters were not filmed. To record the days that were not videoed, writing became the tool. Writing extruded a different type of memory than the camera. The voiceover, fluctuating from novelistic to personal, is a form of alternative narration bridging the gap between public and private.