Yuri Kalendarev

SALT AND BREAD at the State Russian Museum. Detail of installation. Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Salt, 1 ton. Light. Black bread, 1500 loaves. Fiber optic.

1994, Russia

Theorizing Method and Madness.
New Testament: "Ye are the salt of the earth" (St. Matthew 5:13). 

He knew what salt meant in the common imagination.
Salt is rarely a symbol. Salt is the literal that is the basis of the symbolic.
Just as bread needs salt, salt defines what the politics of bread is about. Salt is the essence of bread. 
The Poetics of Salt 
Prakash Kona  http://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/ctheory/article/view/14974/5874 

View of the part of exhibition space with the SALT AND BREAD installation in the State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia. 1994. The main part of the installation consists of 1500 loaves of black bread “streaming” through the Museum window and of 1 ton of salt on the floor, lit with a blue light passing through the salt with fiber optic system.