Bite the culture

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Aural Oral

Artist – Grace Gloria Denis

Aural Oral is a series of site-specific studies and sensorial junctures in agricultural research, offering a sensorial reflection on processes of cultivation and consumption. The meal pairs an auditory archive of its ingredients with its ingestion, implementing various microphones to transmit a series of recordings of culinary and cultivation actions coupled with environmental sounds from the site of production. Each accompanying track sketches a sonic cartography of the dish, amplifying the micro-actions of both the farm and the kitchen, proposing resonant reflections of its cultivation and consumption to extend beyond the domain of the gustatory. Aural Oral draws reference to acoustemological research, as coined by Stephen Feld, that valorizes methodologies of “knowing-with and knowing-through the audible.”

The first track proposes a symphonic introduction to the world of mezcal fermentation, illustrating the slow and effervescent transformation of the fibers and liquid romanced by yeast. The second track surveyed the soundscapes of Xochimilco during the construction of a chapin, an ancestral soil bed technology, at Chinampa Tlazolteotl. Chinampas, descending from the Nahuatl word chinamitl denoting “hedge close to the reed”, are an ancient sub-irrigation agricultural system, using rectangular areas of fertile land fabricated upon shallow lake beds. This delicate lacustrine ecosystem consists of alluvial soils, dotted with clay and basalt, and can produce up to seven harvests per year. This action transpired from an invitation to participate in Cocina Colaboratorio’s Archivo Biocultural Vivo, navigating the soundscapes during the construction of the chapin; from the gathering of natural fertilizer to the collection of mud solely accessible via canoes. This dish was paired with fresh produce from the Xochimilco-based agroecology initiative, Colectivo Ahuejote. The third track presents an amalgam of sounds recorded while cooking with fire; the crackles of dry heat undulate into a rhythmic score that presents the recipe as that of a musical composition. The fourth track explored the juxtaposition of buzzings inherent to Huerto Tlatelolco, an urban garden dwelling on Paseo de la Reforma, contrasting the whirring of cars on the highway to that of the melodic bumbling of bees, highlighting various forms and velocities of movement at the garden. A sonic survey of the site collocates two audible rhythms, that of the natural cadence of the garden next to the throbbing pulse of the city. The stark contrast of two temporalities, that of the urban and the transposed-rural, posits a contemplation of momentum within the metropolitan context.

Part I: Mezcal Fermentation in the palenque of Yola Mezcal

Part II: Chapin Construction with Cocina Colaboratorio at Chinampa Tlazolteotl

Part III: Guajillo, Ancho, and Morita chiles slow roasted on fire

Part IV: Soundscapes of Huerto Tlatelolco

Native Plants

Artist – Fallen Fruit

“Native Plants” is an asynchronous repeat pattern from Fallen Fruit, created using photographs taken at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Cranbourne during a visit to Melbourne in 2020. It features banksias, kangaroo paws, and other flora among the hundreds of indigenous species preserved in this pristine ecosystem.
Using the medium of wallpaper, David and Austin / Fallen Fruit create unique designs inspired by seemingly local flora and fauna. “Natural History” 2020, takes its subject matter from Australia and critically combines introduced species of birds and plants together with indigenous ones, many of them drawn from images held in the NGV Collection.
“Native Plants” draws into focus the complex and dynamic relationship between historical and contemporary ideals of beauty and nature, religious ideology, and narrative themes of colonialism and how they function as storytelling in Western art. This is a detail of an immersive artwork created for the European Galleries at the NGV.

Music by Andrew Stanley (of Yolanda Be Cool).

Public Gathering at the Monument to Sharing

Artist – Fallen Fruit

“Public Gathering at the Monument to Sharing” is a digital collage made with recontextualized anthropomorphic fruit characters originally created by the public for “Fallen Fruit Magazine” – mainly from their participatory project at the V&A Museum in London, and also various cities around the world.
The characters are gathered around the “Monument to Sharing,” the artist’s permanent installation artwork in Los Angeles’ State Historic Park. It is an installation of 32 orange trees meant to be shared with everyone.
This image was created in 2021 to celebrate the launch of the Endless Orchard – Fallen Fruit’s collaborative non-contiguous public sharing orchard. Join them in creating the largest edible artwork in the world.

Music by Andrew Stanley (of Yolanda Be Cool).

Plastivores

Artist – Natalia Carminati (Food Cultura)

2017
Food art, artistic intervention and installation
Haribo bear, homemade baby marshmallows, ziploc bags, stickers, helium balloons, sticker on original Haribo Gold-Bear packets
Variable dimensions

Dominated by the same principles of any other market, the food industry mass-produces edible products that are visually appealing, while nutritionally appalling and even toxic for both our physical and mental health. Plastivores is a project that conjugates different lines of action to reflect on how the visual value of food has taken over the nutritional value of what we eat. The project integrates fieldwork research, art intervention and the creation of a candy that works on the limits of what we consider edible.

Obtaining the right color

Artist – Natalia Carminati (Food Cultura)

2018
Collective action and installation
Dough for bread and food colorants
Created with Anna Irina Russell

Obtaining the right color explores how visual perception influences our eating behaviors. Bread, as the basic food of every diet and faithful companion of each dish, becomes a game of colors and shapes utilizing the very popular Paella colorant Dani. In this way, bread becomes a meeting point in which, without previous indications, the participants of the Paella Laboratory must decide if it is part of the prop or if it is edible, and if so, how it’s distributed. A second element, this time in the form of a game, invites participants to touch, interact and play with the display they are in, experimenting with the visual value of the food and the decision of what is and what is not edible.

Ask Me if I believe in the Future

Artist – Carolien Niebling

Food accounts for over a quarter (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions. Let this sink in for a moment, it is a lot. But somehow it is also understandable because food is a basic need. What is more difficult to understand is that 6% of this food is wasted and not even during production and harvesting but after, during transport, storage, in the supermarket, and at home. It is time for that to change.

“Future-Proof Plating” gives us a fresh look at natural foods that are not yet part of our daily diet, but should be. Macro photographs of algae and edible plants printed on textiles beguile the eye with their striking textures and shapes. Carefully placed arrangements of sea plants are embossed on ceramic plates. All these edible seaweeds have been purchased from food shops or online, rehydrated, and celebrated for their aesthetic appeal for us to think about an alternative future for food and for our planet.

We have completely lost touch with the origin of our food and the effort that goes into growing or rearing it. This results in a lack of respect and knowledge of our food, and thus is it easier to throw food away. This project created eating plates that bridge the gap between what is on the plate and where it comes from. Showing the beauty of edible seaweed.

Light, smell, atmosphere, memory, colour, sound, texture, and presentation of a dish, influences the experience and even the actual taste. When we talk about food, we tend to describe it in terms of its flavour – what we experience with our sense of taste. The design of these plates plays with our senses and reveals the beauty behind our food. The textures are captured so precisely by the porcelain that it almost seems the real material.

Market of externalities

Artists – Sonja Stummerer & Martin Hablesreiter

Would you pay € 35 for a chicken or a loaf of bread? No?
Well, that is quite unfair, as so much value has gone into its production!
Let’s analyse the price we are unwilling to pay: the poisons we spread in the environment for a simple meal, encouraged by the awesome power of the food industry.
We pay for herbicides and pesticides, and machinery for harvesting and transport, but we don’t pay for their impacts on the health of the planet and its people … Sit down, relax, close your eyes and savour your chips, your noodles, your bread. Is it Glyphosat, Azoxystrobin, Atrazine, Chlorpyrifos or is it gas, gasoline or coal?
What are you eating?

The short films are interpretations of the cultural value:consume.
Fairness is keeping decisions free from any form of discrimination. Does that mean that fairness is an ethical
value? And do we need a debate about the environment too? Do we all (7 billion human beings) have an equal right for a fair environment, which keeps us healthy and wealthy? Should we say that sustainability is an issue of fairness?
Notably, the artistic approach to sustainability sets into motion the reexamination of living conditions in the areas of “Third World”, which supply raw foodstuffs to the globalised “world market” for the benefit of the “First World”, or of the effects of “climate change” to present and future biological and social systems. So, we are talking about fairness, isn ́t it? A discussion on sustainability also means investigating the question of why “we” Europeans consider living sustainably such a challenge.
The current way of living, including ethics, such as the belief in a steadily growing market economy, the necessity of constant consumption, or the desire for so-called supermarkets, seems to hinder us from reaching a fair way of living.
climatico” sui sistemi biologici e sociali presenti e futuri.
Quindi, stiamo parlando di uguaglianza, non è vero? Una discussione sulla sostenibilità significa anche indagare la questione del perché “noi” europei consideriamo una sfida vivere in modo sostenibile.
L’attuale stile di vita, compresa l’etica, come la convinzione di un’economia di mercato in costante crescita, la necessità di un di un consumo costante o il desiderio dei cosiddetti supermercati, sembra impedirci di raggiungere un modo egualitario di vivere.

Just for 4.25€

Artist – Natalia Carminati (Food Cultura)

2018
Installation
McDonald’s Quarter Pounder, purchase ticket, golden base, 2500 liters of empty bottles of water, iron structure, flexible pvc
Variable dimensions

Just for 4.25€ is a project that meditates on the sustainability of the processes of industrialization of all contemporary productions. The project stems from a collective action proposed to Fabra i Coats’ community and different neighborhood entities of Sant Andreu with the purpose of collecting all the empty bottles of water that were consumed daily during a month. Throughout September 2018, hundreds of bottles of all sizes were gathered. However, this volume amounted to 1500 liters of empty water out of the 2500 liters of water consumed by the food industry to produce a burger of 250gr of meat. In this way, the collective action allows us to dimension the massive and constant exploitation of water that’s never to return to its territory nor is economically compensated.
This action is materialized in a final installation that questions the alarming emptiness regarding sustainability policies and the need to meditate on how we understand natural resources, as well as identify how we relate and coexist with nature through our everyday life decisions.

Biomaterials

Artist – LABVA

WE COOK
We return local organic agroindustrial waste back to the productive cycle through the creation of a biomaterial. Consequently turning food waste into objects intends to keep the matter flowing while avoiding the waste stream.

WE CRAFT
We craft polymers from algaes, fish offal, native potatoes, and food waste such as avocado pit, to create new biofilms in a kitchen. These extractions are made artisanally, using low energy and inexpensive tools and materials.

WE GROW
Using biological growth instead of expensive and energetically intensive fabrication processes to convert organic waste in new and environmentally friendly biomaterials.
By brewing native materials we seek to promote material autonomy using local and abundant resources.

WE TEACH
New local materials and its divulgation allows us to reconnect territory, culture and technology. We believe that, in the face of an environmental crisis, biomaterials pose as an agency tool for communities. Through biomaterials we can experience the biodiversity of a territory as well as the material abundance that lies in the anthropogenic processes. We want to question the materialities that surround our everyday life in order to understand the processes behind them and, therefore, practice sovereignty.

Les Preciouses and Paris Remains

Artist – Gayle Chong Kwan

The Grand Tour was a three year Arts Council England touring project, with accompanying publication, which I developed in the sites of the historic grand tour, in which I explored early developments in tourism with waste, ruin, and contemporary tourist developments, particularly in Dubai. In ’Les Preciouses’ I photographed the discarded and waste food stuff that I encountered on the streets of Paris, this was a series in itself, but also became a partner to and developed into another series of photographs in the project. In ‘Paris Remains’, I collected the discarded food, such as citrus peel, apple cores, banana skins, and other food remains, that I had photographed on the streets of Paris, and created them into a miniature version of the city as a ruin. The inhabitants’ sense of taste has disappeared; leaving only the sensory trace of what once existed. A pathetic monument to the sensory history of Paris. The monumental and ruined landscape is based upon the architecture of the city, imagined as though the city had been destroyed through the loss of taste of its inhabitants. Perhaps an ironic monument to the fate that may have fallen to Paris if it had not accepted the Vichy Regime, or a real mourning for the past sensory history of the city.

Theater of the sun

Artists – David Allen Burns and Austin Young (Fallen Fruit)

2018
Site specific installation artwork created for Manifesta 12 in Palermo, Siciliy, Italy.

When we walked around the city to map fruit that is accessible to the public – We were inspired at how many fruit trees exist in public spaces in Palermo. We found Prickly pear, hybrid lemons, bitter oranges, grapes and more. There are fruits common to Asia and North America and other parts of Europe. Some are known today, but were considered exotic in the past. They all come from other places in the world but they have become a part of the landscape of the city from migration and commerce over hundreds of years. We mapped and we photographed these fruits and flowers to create the wallpaper pattern and accompanying public fruit map. We feel the installation artwork is a portrait of Palermo — both contemporary in design and impact and honoring a long tradition of being a city that is transnational and a blending of world cultures.

We were very inspired by the churches, palaces, and monuments in Palermo – and decided to create a sublime space that would uplift visitors and become a social space. We custom made the installation artwork specifically for the room in Palazzo Butera – the side of the room with the windows is pale blue like the sea and the sky. We call the room the ’Theater of the Sun’ because of the play of light across the walls. Also, the name of the artwork describes that the city of Palermo and its flora performs throughout the year.
The existing ceiling is a mural from around 1763-65 by Gioacchino Martorana and Gaspare Fumagalli. These two artists worked together, and their frescoes are in many of the churches and the palaces in Palermo. The murals refer to the months of the year. But we think of the room as encompassing all of the seasons. In one way this is illustrated by the seeds being cast down into the room to begin again in the new year.

Swale

Artist – Mary Mattingly

Swale is a floating food forest built atop a barge that travels to public piers in New York City, welcoming visitors to harvest herbs, fruits, and vegetables for free. Swale strives to enhance the quality and responsible use of public waterways and land; works to encourage New Yorkers to reconsider our relationships with environmental ecosystems; and aims to change perceptions and policies in order to increase the presence of edible perennial landscapes.

Swale is organized with the help of individuals and community groups, as well as city organizations, in order to reinforce the concept of food and water as part of a cooperatively stewarded commons. Since 2016, Swale has been working toward public food in and around New York City. Swale catalyzed (and continues to help steward) the first 24-hour public foodway in a park in New York City.

Flatbread Society Soil Procession

Artist – Futurefarmers

Soil Procession was a ground building ceremony that used the soil collected from over 50 Norwegian farms from as far north as Tromsø and as far south as Stokke, to build the foundation of the Flatbread Society Grain Field and Bakehouse. A procession of soil and people through Oslo drew attention to this historical, symbolic moment of the transition of a piece of land into a permanent stage for art and action related to food production.

At high noon, farmers gathered at the Oslo Botanical Gardens joined by city dwellers. Tractors, horses, wagons, wheelbarrows, musical instruments, voices, sheep, boats, backpacks and bikes processed to Losæter where the farmers’ soil offerings were laid out upon the site and a Land Declaration was signed.

Grow

Artist – Daan Roosegaarde

Daan Roosegaarde’s latest artwork GROW is an homage to the beauty of agriculture. In the world film premiere GROW appears as a luminous dreamscape of red and blue waves of light over an enormous field. GROW is inspired by scientific light recipes which improve plants’ growth and resilience.
Most of the time we hardly notice the huge areas of the Earth which are literally feeding us. GROW highlights the importance of innovation in the agriculture system: How can cutting-edge light design help plants to grow more sustainably? How can we make the farmer the hero?

GROW consists of a design-based light recipe which shines vertically across 20,000m2 of farmland with leek (Allium porrum). You experience the artwork as ‘dancing lights’ across the huge agricultural field. The light is poetic, and inspired by photobiology light science technologies which have shown that certain recipes of blue, red, and ultraviolet light can enhance plant growth and reduce the use of pesticides by up to 50%.
The film GROW shows the development of this luminous dreamscape and how the beauty of light can help plants. It is also a call for enlightenment during these dark times. GROW can be good for nature but also sends hopeful light to people. It gives a new meaning to the word ‘agri-culture’ by reframing the landscape as a living cultural artwork.

Prof. Dr. Wargent, PhD, Chief Science Officer at BioLumic, world leading expert in plant photobiology: “The project GROW is a fascinating project and supported by scientific research which shows specific light recipes can enhance growth and reduce pesticide use up to 50%.”

GROW is part of the artist-in-residence program of Rabobank. Daan Roosegaarde and his team of designers and experts developed GROW over two years, informed by expert knowledge sessions at Studio Roosegaarde, Wageningen University & Research, Springtij Forum, and the World Economic Forum in Davos. It is the first in a series of dreamscapes by Studio Roosegaarde which show the beauty of combining art and science to create a better world.