Allan Wexler

Michael Yarinsky @ Tangible Space

In this episode of Vanilla Club Podcast, we are joined by visionary artist and teacher, Allan Wexler, to explore the groundbreaking Farm is Table project. With all the distress in the world at the moment, we couldn't think of a more welcome time to go "back to the country." In this case, with a small dose of wryness (we love it!) Allan takes us "into" the country, or, the farm, so to speak, quite literally.

Allan, whose corpus of work spans architecture, fine art, and visceral, experimental culinary experiences, takes us mise-en-scène of a dining concept that's rather "earthy," shall we say. This is a loaded word "earthy;" is it earthy in the sense of "crunchy" and "granola" sort of au naturale? Or is it earthy the way that "tu" is suggestive of in Chinese parlance: base. Allan challenges all of these notions, and with a righteous, and hard-earned absurdist touch. Farm is Table has caught much attention on the interwebs, and spawned a number of copycats in the flesh.

Co-created with architect Michael Yarinsky of Tangible Space, the project is a playful reimagining of the farm-to-table experience. Farm is Table literally integrates the table into the earth, with diners seated in a trench carved between rows of trees, and hand-picked wildflowers serving as the table centrepieces. This immersive design transforms a simple meal into a multi-sensory exploration, both playfully jousting with and seriously interrogating conventional notions of dining and art.

Allan's work reminds me so much of Walter De Maria's New York Earth Room, which I visited in 2001 as a student at Tisch. The Earth Room was a gallery space with white walls, displaying a pile of dirt--- and here is the key---and displaying nothing but that pile of dirt (maybe it was more like a bed of dirt, as it was spread relatively evenly). It was "found art," it was so natural, but marrying a $0 commodity to $$$$ commercial-residential Manhattan property constraints was so ludicrously unnatural; it was so simple, but so improbable; so real (what is realer than a pile of dirt?), but so abstract. I was enthralled. It is my favourite installation ever in NYC. Allan's work harkens back to this tradition, and in the episode you will see that Allan can effortlessly place himself and his work into a much broader critical context. He poses some of the same questions as De Maria, and from the first moment I encountered Farm is Table, I'm like whoa!

Allan also situates the project within a particular lineage, linking it to F.T. Marinetti’s 1932 Futurist Cookbook, which was all about merging culinary and fine arts through provocative and absurdist meals. Farm is Table is, in many ways, a modern update of this avant-garde spirit. We also touch on some of the other project's from Allan and Michael's New Futurist Cookbook, which they are hoping to release in the near future.

Simple vs complex is a recurring theme on Vanilla Club Podcast. It seems that the virality of Farm Is Table has a lot to do with making the ordinary into something extraordinary. And as Allan reminds us in the podcast, "You don't need to use expensive materials or complex construction. You can work small. You can work from a corner of your apartment and make amazingly important work."

We hope you enjoy.

This episode is a first for the show: a live, walking conversation recorded on-premises at Vanilla Club, on the lush Cassowary Coast in Tropical North Queensland, before picking up later in the urban jungle of Sydney. (Please give me some credit for my assimilation into Aussie culture--- if you watch the video you will see I am reppin' the "high-viz," screaming neon orange hat, and a ripper of a neon yellow vest, thank you!) What unfolds here isn't a typical interview, but a shared journey through neolithic rainforest, across rivers with “potential for crocs,” and into deeper reflections on place, and community.

Our guest Danny Kinzer, is a former high-school classmate of mine. Physically speaking, imagine a composite of Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa; you get the picture stature-wise; but Danny has a better smile than either of them on their best day, and is one of the warmest braddahs you'll ever meet. Danny describes himself less as a storyteller and more as a voyager, guide, and student of relationship. He has worked in education and some adjacent spaces with some big names like National Geographic, Hōkūleʻa Crew, and The Biomimicry Institute, and has been associated with some stellar institutions, but a name-dropper he is not. And the tenor of this conversation is a lot more subtle. So we will just go with the braddah-ship.

As the walk begins, the conversation opens into the Hawaiian ecological concept of "kipuka" - pockets of life that survive disruption and seed future regeneration. Vanilla Club becomes a living example: a working farm that also acts as a sanctuary, and a meeting place for human, animal and plant life.

From there, we flow across disciplines and life chapters. Danny reflects on stepping away from competitive sport, when he realised the game mattered less to him than the people. That same instinct, to choose meaning over metrics (and the persistent, omni-optimisation that surrounds so many of us), threads through his studies in neuroscience and psychology, his later work in biomimicry, and a life shaped by walking, wandering, and listening.

Rather than chasing famous destinations, Danny speaks about “Lake Okobojis”: ordinary places made extraordinary through relationship. A small island village in China reached on foot. A spontaneous visit to Anaconda, Montana. Swimming mangroves in Bali. Danny is the type of guy who would be down grabbing a bag of rice and heading upriver in to the wild, and I just love it. Tripadvisor... schmipadvisor

The ocean emerges as a central metaphor - less a boundary than a vast connector, “a million rivers flowing at once.” Living in Hawaii, Danny shares how voyaging canoes and intergenerational knowledge have shaped his understanding of community, where children, elders, and ancestors are all part of the same crew. If I said it it'd be cliché, but Danny just lives the Aloha spirit.

Returning to the Cassowary Coast, the conversation closes where it began: with gratitude for a place that feels alive, unfinished (in a good way!), and willing to move without a fixed destination.

We hope you enjoy.

vanilla.club

In this episode, we are joined by Alex Woo, director of the Netflix hit "In Your Dreams."

As founder and CEO of Kuku Studios, Alex is a business-creative hybrid - something he is all too modest about, but something that is a key part of Alex's secret sauce.

Alex is also a dear friend and classmate. We went to the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU together. I don't have any beer pong gone wrong stories to share, or drunken late night hijinks to tell, probably because Alex was in the cutting room, perfecting his craft, all the way back to the last millennium. I can tell you that even in high school the lore was that Alex was destined to be a master filmmaker.

We also learn plenty of tidbits about the movie making process. Alex gives some specific examples of how particular jokes get woven into the film---sometimes they are core elements in the early script, other times they are monkey-wrenched in there---like a particular "Don't Cha!"

Alex gives some vignettes of his childhood in the States and the Hong Kong, and how certain cultural and family experiences came to inspire the film.

Ultimately, 'In Your Dreams' really reminds us why storytelling is king, and why in a media landscape filled with lots of mediocre and increasingly AI-generated content, parents should opt for the high quality choice, like In Your Dreams.

We hope you enjoy.