SaltWalks: Vancouver, Nanaimo, Toronto

Abstract

SaltWalks (2013-ongoing) is a performance series that takes participants on site-specific salt tasting walks through different city neighborhoods. Each walk begins at a designated meeting point where fellow walkers sample five different salts, including table salt, Celtic sea salt, Himalayan rock salt, Hawaiian clay salt, and Alderwood smoked salt. These tastings are served from a custom salt apron designed specifically for walking. Our savory comparisons initiate far-ranging conversations exploring the uses of salt across time and different cultures. Through an engagement with this elemental mineral, these walks become a pedagogical platform that embodies aesthetic and philosophical enquiries into the importance of this substance to ritual, survival, health, industry and the imagination.