what is a spirit cooker

A Spirit Cooking is a performance art piece created by Marina Abramović in 1996. It was originally a cookbook of "aphrodisiac recipes" that served as evocative instructions for actions or thoughts. The work was inspired by the popular belief that ghosts feed off intangible things like light, sound, and emotions. In 1997, Abramović created a multimedia Spirit Cooking installation, which included white gallery walls with "enigmatically violent recipe instructions" painted in pigs blood. The instructions included phrases like "with a sharp knife cut deeply into the middle finger of your left hand eat the pain". The work is considered a comment on humanity's reliance on ritual to organize and legitimize our lives and contain our bodies. Spirit Cooking later evolved into a form of dinner party entertainment that Abramović occasionally lays on for collectors, donors, and friends. However, some internet users have linked it to conspiracy theories, including #PizzaGate, which claimed that Abramović and John Podesta were involved in a child-trafficking ring run out of a pizza parlor. Abramović has denied these claims and stated that the dinner involved her cooking a few simple dishes for about 20 people who had donated to her art institute.