[-empyre-] food, health, politics, and poetics

[Amanda McDonald Crowley]

Hi -empyrians,

So, as an update on my week from kitty hell: by Thursday morning, I seriously thought I would have to have my eldest cat put down. He's only ten or eleven, and he is only a cat, so while I do love him, I wasn't ready to undergo many more serious medical interventions. He was vomiting and shitting blood and we were all a sorry mess (quite literally). As often happens with pets, the results of tests were inconclusive, without additionally extremely expensive tests, so we went with the assumption that he has IBD - Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Kinda the equivalent of Crohn's Disease in humans. So the vet gave him a huge shot of steriods, and I am now administering a fairly high dose orally twice daily. The effects were almost instantaneous and he is so much better. I can't tell you how relieved I am.

But the reason I even bring this up here, is because once he has healed, it is a disease that should be able to be managed (at least in large part) through diet. And of course the vet has recommended prescription diets, which are (again, of course), produced by the big ag-/ pharma- industrial complex: Hill's is owned by Colgate Palmolive; Royal Canin is owned by Mars Inc; Purina is owned by Nestle... And of course these companies also produce the crappiest cat foods available at corner stores and bodegos that he would have eaten as a young cat, that more than likely contributed to his disease (he spent the first year of his life on the streets, and in Brooklyn cats don't need to hunt for food: locals usually leave out cheap food for street cats). 

So now I am doing research into other options for simple actual foods that he might eat (he won't eat food-food - probably also a result of his early diet -- ostensibly the equivalent of McDonalds for cats); and exploring options to ensure that he has the right gut bacteria to help him combat his illness without the need for huge doses of prescription drugs (and food).

Which brings me to one of the really super contributions that Leila made to this discussion: in her discussion of ecoarttech's OS FERMENTATION project, Leila describes that Fermentation is not the GOAL of the project! What she outlines is a truly poetic example of what I would describe as a research based art practice, one that invites the audience along on a journey of discovery and inquiry (and one that is relevant to much of my current cat-diet-research, as if that wasn't obvious). We learn through participation. But using this model as part of an art practice is not simply a didactic exercise. As she writes: "These acts exist in a space between utility and imagination, because practical applications and environmental ethics."

And I love that Leila also draws an analogy between their practice and that of Sean Leonardo's "I Can't Breathe" project, where he uses a discussion, and in fact also an action, in self-defense tutorial to raise bigger questions: the performance project is a "practical experiential platform", in much the same way as OS FERMENTATION. I have been fortunate to see the performance a couple of times, and while it is not directly related to this discussion, I'd recommend others to check it out online: it is spine tinglingly brilliant. 

So for me, I think its really important to emphasize that through this kind of a "research based art practice" artists compel us to address, as Leila also quoted Christiane Paul, the questions that we didn't even know we needed to ask yet.

Amanda


On Mar 21, 2016, at 12:27 PM, Leila Christine Nadir wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> 
> 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/. 


--
Amanda McDonald Crowley 
Cultural Worker / Curator
http://publicartaction.net

@amandamcdc