The Invisible Dog (New York City) and BUoY Arts Center (Tokyo) are thrilled to present an 11hour-performance by Julie Dind, as part of NAFAS TOKYO.
This performance is part of NAFAS, an international festival exploring the relationship between art and food with an exhibition of 60 artists and a series of performances, workshops and events. Discover the full program here
Neurodivergent Pickling proposes to invite neurodivergent gestures into the basement of BUoY. The process of making Persian pickles [Shoori شوری] turns into an endurance performance. This performance offers a reflection on culture and rituals. It points to cooking as a way to remain connected to one’s cultural roots and to the culture minoritarian individuals co-create - through the reinvention of pickle making as a neurodivergent ritual.
The recipe for this mixed-vegetables pickles comes from artist Niyoosha Ahmadikhoo's great aunt who lives in Tehran. Two foreigners in the US, Niyoosha and Julie first met when they shared the same apartment in Brooklyn, and became friends. When Julie started her PhD at Brown University, Niyoosha visited her in Providence, and gifted her a jar of pickles.
In 2021, Niyoosha invited Julie to spend Thanksgiving break making pickles at her New York apartment. Niyoosha's family recipe, which demands for the vegetables to be laid to dry on a sheet prior to pickling, encountered my own autistic obsession for a(u/r)tistically lining up objects.
Over the course of that afternoon, Julie turned her living room into a neat arrangement of vegetables. Their friendship hence gave rise to a ritual at once obsessive and colorful.
For NAFAS Tokyo, the performance will pay homage to their friendship, and connect Tokyo, New York and Tehran. Though Niyoosha won't be present in person, she will be present in spirit, and one of Julie’s local friends will take on her role cutting and peeling the vegetables.
Neurodivergent Pickling was presented for the first time during NAFAS New York in 2022
Julie Dind is an autistic butoh performer, academic and multimedia artist. Her work autistically explores Autistic modes of performance. She is currently a PhD candidate in Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University. Since 2012, she collaborates with multimedia artist Rolf Gerstlauer on an autistic-artistic project titled “Drawing NN inside butoh", engaging in transdisciplinary research-creation works. She currently working on an artistic research-project on performance and autism at the University of Tokyo.
Location
BUoY Arts Center / Basement
49-11, Senju-Nakacho, Adachi-ku,
Tokyo
Admission:
Free
Date
Saturday September 26, 2026
From 9am to 8pm
Duration: Ongoing performance from 9am to 8pm.
Audience is free to enter, leave and come back at any moment.