Since 2002, Lucy and Jorge Orta have set up over twentyfive meals in twenty different locations. Each meal takes the form of an act or part of the larger project 70 x 7 The Meal, an opera - in the Wagnerian sense of the word - where many art forms and disciplines converge. The meals propose a new educational, social and environmental debate and the possibility of endless encounters for guests in numbers equal to multiples of seven.

The idea sprung up from the biblical signification of 7 x 7, meaning Ad Infinitum (70 x 7 x, Lc. 17,4), a pretext for a sort of multiplying ritual: manifold encounters of seven guests. Lucy and Jorge Orta have appropriated this ancestral ritual into a series of dynamic encounters, bringing people from different walks of life together to meet, share and debate around a thematic table which becomes a site-specific installation complete with a set of limited edition of Limoges porcelain plates and an ‘endless’ tablecloth. Each meal is composed in response to local contexts, each plate is unique to the occasion as well as the starting point for discussions.

70 x 7 The Meal also serves as a forum to establish collaborations with community groups in South America. The profit from the sale of a special edition of porcelain plates, the series Escuela 21, helps to finance these projects.