How to Become an Alpha Male in Uncertain Times was a participatory olfactory performance staged as a half-hour self-improvement course. Borrowing the language of motivational coaching, “bro culture” and alpha-male ideology, the work invited participants to collectively produce courage through a simple domestic action: cutting and frying onions.
Participants were asked to choose from four types of onions and decide how to cut them. When asking for instructions, they were reminded that in life one must make one’s own decisions. The onions were then fried, gradually filling the space with a strong, ordinary, inescapable smell. Some onions made participants tear up, quietly disturbing the familiar idea that “men do not cry.” At the end, the cooked onions were shared and eaten together.
Through humour, scent and participation, the performance treated masculinity not as a stable identity, but as something rehearsed, consumed and socially produced. Echoing Judith Butler’s understanding of gender as performative, the work turned the “alpha male” into a recipe — fragile, absurd, tear-inducing and edible.
