Procreative Dinner - 2013

Between 2009 and 2013 Prune Nourry, investigating the advances in biotechnology and in vitro fertilisation, staged a series of Procreative Dinners combining art, science and gastronomy, with a scientist and a Michelin-starred chef. After a visit to a "sperm bar" and selection of their child's donor from a catalogue, in the manner of the Nobel Prize-winning men's sperm bank in the 1980s (shut down shortly after its creation because it was considered eugenicist), guests headed for the "egg bar" where a named egg awaited them: procreation was ready to begin. The menu followed the different stages of medically assisted procreation, making in vitro fertilisation a cocktail, the selection of frozen embryos and the choice of the child's sex a starter, the choice of the child's sex a main course, childbirth a cheese, bottle-feeding or breast-feeding a dessert being the artist's nipple in marzipan on panna cotta.