<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="2">Hi everyone!<br><br>I
have really enjoyed this discussion hosted by Amanda and am honored to
be part of a dialogue that includes so many brilliant artists. And
thanks, Renate, for making it possible for us all to come together via
<span class="">empyre</span>!<br><br>Some background: I'll focus on my creative work here, which I undertake in collaboration with Cary Peppermint. <span><span style="font-family:Arial;color:black"><span>Our practice </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial;color:black">explores
evolutions of ecology, food, media,
and memory in industrialized society. Our engagement with that thing
called "the environment" includes geographical, natural, and virtual
spaces but also </span><span style="font-family:Arial;color:black"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:black">the wild ecosystem of the human gut and </span>the
interspecies and ecological relationships at play with every meal we
eat. Our goal is not to create solutions to the world's problems so much
as to simply adapt artistic methodologies to working with the public in
order to figure out, What is this world we live in? What can we know?
What have we forgotten? We create participatory situations and social
sculptures in an effort to bring to life new modes of </span><span style="font-family:Arial;color:black"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:black">feeling-perception</span> and poetic visibility. <br><br></span></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="2"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:black">Here's what we're working on these days:<br></span></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="2"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:black"><br></span></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="2"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:black">EDIBLE ECOLOGIES<br></span></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="2"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:black">This is a series of projects that </span><span style="font-family:Arial;color:black"><span style="text-align:left">work collaboratively with local communities (human, microbial, and
ecological) to resuscitate endangered food practices in order to facilitate
recovery from a cultural memory disorder that we call “industrial
amnesia.”</span> Our use of a discourse of "problems" (amnesia) and "solutions" (art will help!) here is not accidental. As environmental
artists, we are often pushed to articulate our work in a scientific
manner: What's the problem? What's the solution? We find that highly
problematic because it closes down new ways to imagine, to think, to
experience and perceive. So we are adopting that discourse to make our
non-practical, non-instrumentalist artistic research "legible" while
attempting to break it at the same time. Cultural memory might be a
problem. Not just climate change. </span><span style="font-family:Arial;color:black"><span><span>As
Christiane Paul said so succinctly at our recent panel discussion at
NYU, "Art asks the questions we didn't know need to be asked."</span></span><br><br></span></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="2">ECOLOGIES OF INCONVENIENCE<br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="2">For many years I have been teaching </font><font size="2">Nikolaus
Geyrhalter's film "Our Daily Bread" in my Food Studies courses. It
depicts scene after scene of industrial food processes, some mundane,
some horrifying. But what bothered me about this film was that it didn't
raise that many questions for my students. A few scenes stuck out for
them, especially the ones depicting labor, which is often absent from
even the most well-meaning food advocates these days, but otherwise, the
students all felt like, "Yeah, things are fucked up. We get it."<br><br>Ecologies
of Inconvenience (which is currently in sketch form) tries to complicate the inquiry begun by "Our Daily
Bread" by posing contradictions, tensions, and unresolved questions, by
actually dealing with the dilemmas that we all face in being immersed in
industrialized food but wanting alternatives. It is also is
autobiographical. For over a decade, Cary and I have been maintaining a
wilderness studio for half the year on a remote 50-acre property in the
woods. Our dwelling there is off-grid, like really off-grid, with no
budget or fancy infrastructure, and so we have pioneered all sorts of
D.I.Y. systems to run water, to use a toilet, to manage waste. These
break down all the time, and we have to reinvent the wheel constantly.
The other half of the year, we live in a city with all the modern
conveniences. Building off this experience, and all the questions it has
inspired for us, Ecologies of Inconvenience juxtaposes industrial
infrastructure of food commerce with a series of personal gestures
performed by us that detail slower, more primitive practices.
Preliminary scenes portray urban quick-marts,
fast-food restaurants, military infrastructure, produce factories, and
industrial agriculture (and more) alongside us building
grey-water systems, slow-cooking with microbial fermentation, making
meals from scratch, cooking with a solar oven, digging out forest
springs, and engaging in other off-grid acts. It's a meditation on </font><font size="2">sustainability,
practicality, reproductive labor, creativity, economics, and the
experience of time in modernity. Climate change might be an "inconvenient truth," but so is the news that technology might not save
us and creating alternative systems is hard work. And we're also interested in the possibility of death, death, and what comes after hope. Initial research and
shooting for this project was done during residencies at CLUI's off-grid
Southbase last year,
and at Bemis. (Thanks to Amanda!)<br><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="2">OS FERMENTATION<br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="2">Let
me start this project by saying that OS Fermentation is not what it
seems. (I'm currently researching how artists "hack" or break teaching
to teach what might not be able to be taught. I recently had a conversation with Shaun Leonardo about this re his "I Can't
Breathe" Self-Defense Workshop. The ostensible
self-defense tutorial is the medium, a practical experiential platform,
to learn an ethics that is not able to be so easily practiced or
articulated.)<br><br>Our official description of OS Fermentation describes it as all the following<span style="text-align:left">
a slow-cooking class,
a healing ritual, and a spiritual revival of interspecies
collaborations and new networks of open-source micro-practices. It
manifests in many ways, one of which was a three-part salon series
created through collaboration with Amanda at Bemis last year: </span></font><font size="2"><span style="text-align:left">(1)
a
reading group about microbiology, public health, and the industrial food
system, followed by (2) a hands-on fermentation workshop for making
veggie krauts,
hard cider, and wine, and two weeks later (3) a fermentation tasting
party, where
participants enjoyed their creations in a communal setting. These acts
exist in a space between utility and imagination, because practical
applications and environmental ethics.<br><br></span></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="2"><span style="text-align:left">Fermentation
is not the goal in this project. We don't simply LOVE fermentation and
have to share it with the world! (That's how most press interprets the
salon series.) Rather, we are using fermentation as a medium and as
medicine in this project: as a way to heal industrial amnesia and
generate feeling-perception of the life that we live, including human
beings as superorganisms, food as a sensual interspecies interaction,
bio-art and citizen science in the kitchen, food democracy and
independence, spiritual engagement with life/death cycles, and what
Heather Paxson micro-biopolitics, the "medicalization of food and
eating," and the modern </span></font>"hyperhygienic social order<font size="2">." <span style="text-align:left">You can read more about the project's start in the American industrial heartland of Omaha here in this essay we wrote for ASLE: <a href="http://www.asle.org/features/leila-christine-nadir-cary-peppermint-ecoarttech/" target="_blank">http://www.asle.org/features/leila-christine-nadir-cary-peppermint-ecoarttech/</a>. <br><br></span></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="2">SCHOOL OF LIVE CULTURE<br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="2">We've
also recently received an ASLE Community Grant for a new project
that will create new emergent micro-networks of food justice in the city
of Rochester, the 5th poorest city in the US, and also a
hyper-segregated society. Bringing together youth gardeners growing
vegetables for their food-desert neighborhoods and undergraduates from
an elite R1 university, School of Live Culture will not only build
community between usually disconnected (or segregated) populations; it
also upends traditional models of how universities interact with their
immediate locales. Through School of Live Culture, statistically at-risk
youth will be the instructors, teaching academically trained
Sustainability undergrad students how to garden, farm, and compost, reversing academic models of environmental management and technoscientific training and expertise. <br></font><font size="2"><br>I'm excited to hear from others and to continue this dialogue!<br clear="all"></font></div><span><span><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><br><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Looking forward and back, <br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Leila</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></span></span></div><div><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><font size="1"><span><span><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><br><div dir="ltr">*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*.*.*.*<br><div style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Leila Christine Nadir, PhD<br></div><div style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span><span>Sustainability & </span></span>Environmental Humanities<span><br>University of Rochester</span></div><div style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Art//Food//Environment: <a href="http://www.ecoarttech.net" target="_blank">www.EcoArtTech.net</a></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></span></span></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Mar 18, 2016 at 10:14 PM, Amanda McDonald Crowley <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:amandamcdc@gmail.com" target="_blank">amandamcdc@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
Hello -empyre-ians,<br>
<br>
So as we enter week three of our ArtTechFood discussion, I am thrilled and honored to introduce this week's discussants, Nicole Caruth, Leila Nadir, and Jodi Newcombe.<br>
<br>
We've heard from Stefani and Marina on their mapping projects, as well as Hernani's urban ag interventions. Week 2 we had encounters with futuristic and practical art and food strategies from Mary Mattingly and Shu Lea Cheang. And many other interesting projects have been introduced besides. Personally, I have found it really useful to reflect on projects that have inspired me, and discover new ones besides.<br>
<br>
Nicole and Jodi will bring a curatorial eye on food justice and environmental justice issues, and I feel sure that Leila will talk to practical strategies on bio-futures (and pasts) that help us to contemplate more healthful futures.<br>
<br>
Over to our new discussants to talk about their work. I trust that past discussant will chime in as they feel inclined, and that you - empyre-ians might also contemplate contributions.<br>
<br>
I am re:sending this week's discussants bios below, for reference. Check out their web sites: they all do amazing work in this field and beyond...<br>
<br>
Amanda<br>
<br>
<br>
Nicole J. Caruth (US) is a writer, curator, and art education advocate. Her writing has appeared in a range of publications including ART news, C Magazine, Gastronomica, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Public Art Review, Walker Art Center Magazine, and the Phaidon Press volumes Vitamin D2 and Vitamin Green. She is the founding editor of Art21 Magazine (est. 2013). Currently, Nicole is the director of pedagogy and public practice at The Union for Contemporary Art. Situated in the historically African American enclave of Omaha, Nebraska, The Union addresses local social justice issues through an artist fellowship program, exhibitions, performances, youth classes, and more. Deeply committed to helping people live healthfully, in 2012 she founded With Food in Mind, a nonprofit developing art-based approaches to child obesity and nutrition disparities in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. Nicole has written extensively about food in contemporary art and<br>
has been called one of the leading voices on the subject.<br>
<a href="http://www.nicolecaruth.com/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.nicolecaruth.com/</a><br>
<br>
Leila Nadir (US) works as an artist, critic, and creative writer to explore evolutions of food, ecology, community, media, and memory. In collaboration artist Cary Peppermint, shecreates participatory situations that facilitate recovery from a cultural memory disorder they call "industrial amnesia," bringing endangered environmental practices into poetic visibility, feeling-perception, and simple acts of everyday life. Their projects have been supported by Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Center for Land Use Interpretation, NY Foundation for the Arts, NY State Council on the Arts, Franklin Furnace, and numerous academic fellowships. Leila earned her PhD in English from Columbia University, is an Andrew Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow of Environmental Humanities, and currently teaches at University of Rochester as Lecturer of Sustainability and Environmental Humanities. She spends most of her time in the kitchen, and is currently writing a childhood memoir about the co<br>
lorful marriage of her Afghan father and Slovak-American mother, including their frequent fights about food.<br>
<a href="http://ecoarttech.net" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://ecoarttech.net</a><br>
<br>
Jodi Newcombe (AU) founded Carbon Arts following an international career as an environmental economist and sustainability consultant. Her work on natural resource management and policy design, green technology and low carbon urban design inform her work with the creative sector. Carbon Arts generates and evaluates creative models for engaging society in imagining and shaping a more sustainable future. Straddling the arts, economics, science, and technology, our projects foster innovation and dialogue between disciplines and the public as a means to address contemporary environmental challenges. We do this through targeted and timely public art commissions, events, workshops, exhibitions and research. We work with forward-thinking governments, businesses, artists and designers to inject creative talent and thinking into decision-making and to reach broad audience.<br>
<a href="http://www.carbonarts.org/about/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.carbonarts.org/about/</a><br>
<br>
<br>
--<br>
Amanda McDonald Crowley<br>
Cultural Worker / Curator<br>
<a href="http://publicartaction.net" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://publicartaction.net</a><br>
<br>
@amandamcdc<br>
<br>
food nostalgia is currently on view at Radiator Gallery until March 13<br>
<br>
-emprye- currently moderating thematic email listserv conversation on the topic #ArtTechFood through March 2016<br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
<a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a><br>
</blockquote></div><br></div></div>