Lunch/Performance | The Art of the Tuna Fish Sandwich: Performing Alison Knowles' The Identical Lunch

Join Prof. André Lepecki and Prof. Jeannine Tang (Department of Performance Studies, NYU Tisch) for a lunchtime conversation catalyzed by Alison Knowles’s performance The Identical Lunch, based on the artist’s habitual order at NYC diner Riss Foods: “a tuna fish sandwich on wheat toast with butter and lettuce, no mayo, and a cup of soup or glass of buttermilk.” From 1969 until the artist’s death in 2025, numerous artists, friends, and strangers ate variations of this lunch with Knowles across the United States and internationally, writing about their experiences as performers and documentarians of this iconic work. Honoring this legacy, discussion will situate the performance within the Fluxus contexts for Knowles’s art of everyday life, ritual, and relation. It will also consider the implications of posthumously activating this communal performance, including changing food cultures such as the recent viral spread of the humble tuna fish sandwich. Attendees will dine on Knowles’s signature meal, and vegan alternatives will be available. 

Photo Caption: Alison Knowles, George Maciunas Performs the Identical Lunch, 1968–69, realized 1992. Screen print on canvas, 19 x 18 in. Collection of Hannah B Higgins and Joseph Reinstein. Photo: Robert Chase Heishman