ACTivate Resident 2026
Daniel Pravit Fethke is an interdisciplinary artist working across film, performance, social practice, and installation. Facilitation is a central part of his practice, and he often organizes workshops, cooking classes, and creative gatherings that center food and recipes as ways to explore identity, narrative, and culture. He co-founded the mutual aid food pop-up Angry Papaya, and has hosted workshops at Dia:Beacon, Socrates Sculpture Park, and the Performing Garage. Daniel has held several artist residencies, including at the Wassaic Project (2024), the Woodstock-Byrdcliffe Guild (2024), and as a Culinary Resident at the Ox-Bow School of Art (2024-25). He has exhibited work internationally in Bangkok, Berlin, Barcelona, and domestically at the Yale School of Art, Recess Art Space, and the Knockdown Center. He recently published an autobiographical Thai-American cookbook through Pratt Institute, where he also received his MFA in Fine Arts in 2023. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn.
2026
ACTivate Residency
Project Statement
Untitled 2026 (Recipe/Requiem/Remix) is a social artwork by Skooby Laposky that will function as a Thai pop-up restaurant, sound installation, and restorative space within the Cyclorama. Inspired by Rirkrit Tiravanija’s cooking-based artworks, the project invites the Greater Boston public to share in a communal meal and a moment of reflection.
Working with Brooklyn-based artist Daniel Pravit Fethke, Laposky will prepare a selection of his late mother Oratai Boonlorm’s favorite Thai recipes featuring horapa (Thai basil) as the central ingredient. The basil will be growing onsite in Aerogardens, surrounding the cooking space and connecting guests directly to the living plants. Meals will be cooked on electric woks identical to those used by Tiravanija, blending homage with personal narrative. The basil plants will be connected to Laposky’s custom biodata sonification system, generating ambient music in real time based on the plants’ physiological responses to human interaction.
This evolving sound “requiem,” incorporating recordings of Laposky’s mother’s khaen, will be presented through a multi-channel speaker system. Visitors are invited to rest, listen, and reflect, nourishing both body and spirit through food, memory, and sound.