The first in the new Sternberg DVD/film series, New York Conversations takes place in a Chinatown storefront converted into an improvised kitchen/restaurant. It documents three days of public conversations and meals among artists, critics, curators and a free-floating public. Brussels-based art journal A Prior invited artists Nico Dockx and Anton Vidokle to facilitate the conversations, and artist Rirkrit Tiravanija – famed for his fabulous cooking – to orchestrate the meals which created the conversation-enhancing atmosphere. Instead of commissioning texts or art to be printed in the journal, the artists decided to publicly rethink the way an art journal is produced. The film explores questions concerning labor in art, the feasibility of artistic freedom, means of reclaiming dignity in art criticism, and whether the event of making the film was, in itself, an artwork. A work in the tradition of underground cinema and conceptual film.