In October of 1986, Sandro Dernini received a scholarship from the Art and Art Education Department of New York University to conduct a Ph.D. study on his field of interest about eating art. On October 25, at Fusion Art space, in Stanton Street, managed by Shalom Newman, he presented the Plexus  Serpent Open Call, as closing act of his performance Eating Art: A Refracted Self-Portrait.  It was conceived as an inquiry for his  final paper on Art as Food for the NYU course Phenomenology and the Arts. He invited 23 artists to eat a bocconcino of mozzarella hand-made by the Italian food master, Mr. Di Paolo, in Little Italy, and to report their taste.

One after one, as a performance directed by Herald Vogl, Eve Vaterlaus, Donald Sherman, Mitch Ross, Gianfranco Mantegna, Joan Waltermath, Eve Taitelbaun,  Lenny Horowitz, Carol Drury, Hilary, Franco Ciarlo and Gaby, Paolo Buggiani, Cosimo Leo di Ricatto, Charlie Monrow, Bernd Naber. expressed their individual taste, while be photographed by Lynne Kanter. All photos were displayed on a billboard with an optical refraction triangle, with a Sandro’s comic portrait by Mitch Ross of Sandro through which his I.D. could be perceived as refracted by his cultural social context. At the end, through a collective serpentine dance, the Serpent Open Call was issued to promote the 1987 Plexus event planned in Sardinia as a co-authorship traveling art venture.