[-empyre-] week three: ArtTechFood

Tue Mar 22 23:14:03 AEDT 2016

Hello!

Thanks so much Amanda for inviting me to this conversation. I too have
really benefited from the update on current practice that these
conversations have brought and am honoured to participate. Thanks for
providing the link to the "Thriving in Uncertainty" essay about the value
of lying in fallow. I also feel that this is my current state, as I am on
maternity leave, and while this isn't at all the same as being idle, it's a
welcome change of focus that cultivates a different awareness and does
close a temporary door on 'business'. If work is an addiction, then I am
reminded of the scene in 'Coffee and Cigarettes' where Iggy Pop and Tom
Waits agree that the 'best thing about giving up smoking is that you can
occasionally still have one'. And so this discussion with you about my work
in food+art+environment is a little like my cigarette break from being a
new mother!

A little background: I started www.carbonarts.org about 5 years ago from
Melbourne Australia, after a career as an environmental economist and
sustainability consultant. My projects under this umbrella include public
art commissions, exhibitions, and events/ performances - all designed to
affect the sustainability of our systems (food systems included). Over that
time I have gradually softened what began as a very agenda-driven,
instrumentalist approach to curation and creative production (artists can
help!) to embrace the more poetic and open-ended. But that tension is
always there, I guess driven by the urgency to act on so many crises and to
'make a difference'.

Some of the first projects I produced were a suite of events with Natalie
Jeremijenko, where we took her Cross(x)Species adventure club collaboration
Down Under, with nine performative dinner and cocktail parties across three
cities/towns with themes specific to Australia, such as 'A Dinner of
Drought and Flooding Rains' at the Arc One Gallery in Melbourne. This film
(sorry it's a bit long at 20 minutes) documents the project:
https://vimeo.com/48123242

Natalie's rhetoric about eating to support biodiversity (or selecting for
foods with a positive impact) as an ethically and imaginatively superior
approach to avoiding impact by avoiding eating (certain things), influenced
the development of The Australian Future Foods Lab. Our first project from
AFFL was a collaboration with artist, Janet Laurence, that brought
attention to native Australian foods and our national identity. Here's a
short video of one of the outcomes of that collaboration:
https://vimeo.com/62839514

In both projects we were interested challenging food taboos and traditions,
but also with aligning ourselves to emergent and traditional food
industries that had positive impact, particularly where the harvesting or
cultivation of foods contributed to the viability or repair of an ecosystem
or ecosystem function. There's ample evidence that we created extraordinary
and memorable experiences for those who attended these events, but for the
transformative impact beyond these audiences these projects needed to be
much more long term (and better funded!). What would these more impactful
projects have looked like?

A few years on, whilst on this maternity leave, I find myself developing a
new food+art+environment project, in my new home in rural Victoria (1.5
hours outside of Melbourne). [this addiction to work is real!] And so I
wonder if I could use this opportunity to hear from some of you about the
choices I face in designing this project. It will involve three partners: a
vineyard, a landcare organisation and a rural arts funding body, and
ideally three local artists. The working title is 'Expanded Terroir', from
the French term that explains the affect of a habitat on the properties of
e.g. wine. The vineyard is home to 20 endangered species, many of them
birds, and is embarking on a series of projects to protect them mostly by
creating new habitat. The vineyard is also home to a talented chef, who
cooks there on a Sunday... and an amazing cellar with a rock reef on three
sides...

Beyond creating an holistic, performative and narrative-driven series of
meals that explore local history, habitat and food systems...it would be
great if there were some lasting legacy, a series of new relationships, a
unique experiment... Anyway, I'm still thinking, and will continue to be
inspired by what I'm reading here.

Best,
Jodi

On 22 March 2016 at 03:27, Leila Christine Nadir <lcnadir at gmail.com> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Hi everyone!
>
> 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 empyre!
>
> Some background: I'll focus on my creative work here, which I undertake in
> collaboration with Cary Peppermint. Our practice 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 the wild ecosystem of the human gut and 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 feeling-perception and poetic
> visibility.
>
> Here's what we're working on these days:
>
> EDIBLE ECOLOGIES
> This is a series of projects that 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.” 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. 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."
>
> ECOLOGIES OF INCONVENIENCE
> For many years I have been teaching 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."
>
> 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 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!)
>
> OS FERMENTATION
> 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.)
>
> Our official description of OS Fermentation describes it as all the
> following 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: (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.
>
> 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 "hyperhygienic social order." You can read more about the
> project's start in the American industrial heartland of Omaha here in this
> essay we wrote for ASLE:
> http://www.asle.org/features/leila-christine-nadir-cary-peppermint-ecoarttech/.
>
>
> SCHOOL OF LIVE CULTURE
> 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.
>
> I'm excited to hear from others and to continue this dialogue!
>
> Looking forward and back,
> Leila
>
> *:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*.*.*.*
> Leila Christine Nadir, PhD
> Sustainability & Environmental Humanities
> University of Rochester
> Art//Food//Environment: www.EcoArtTech.net <http://www.ecoarttech.net>
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 18, 2016 at 10:14 PM, Amanda McDonald Crowley <
> amandamcdc at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> Hello -empyre-ians,
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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...
>>
>> Amanda
>>
>>
>> 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
>>  has been called one of the leading voices on the subject.
>> http://www.nicolecaruth.com/
>>
>> 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
>>  lorful marriage of her Afghan father and Slovak-American mother,
>> including their frequent fights about food.
>> http://ecoarttech.net
>>
>> 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.
>> http://www.carbonarts.org/about/
>>
>>
>> --
>> Amanda McDonald Crowley
>> Cultural Worker / Curator
>> http://publicartaction.net
>>
>> @amandamcdc
>>
>> food nostalgia is currently on view at Radiator Gallery until March 13
>>
>> -emprye- currently moderating thematic email listserv conversation on the
>> topic #ArtTechFood through March 2016
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>

-- 

Jodi Newcombe

0410838083
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CARBON ARTS | creative solutions for a changing climate
www.carbonarts.org
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