Thomas Pausz, Dandelion Project, 2016.
| Dates: | 7-11 September 2016 |
| Venue: | Delfina Foundation and offsite locations |
| Time: | Wednesday 18:00 – 21:00 Thursday – Sunday 11:00 – 18:00 For other special event times see below |
Our current post-Brexit climate means that trade relationships between the UK and the rest of the world are being put under close inspection. What this dramatic turn of events means for agricultural production in the UK is yet to be determined, although many are already experiencing the effects of an economic downturn.
Over the past two months at Delfina Foundation, resident and associate artists have been exploring a host of topics that have rapidly become increasingly urgent, highlighting the structural shifts taking place within the current food system.
Through Markets, we have explored the nature of the consumer market and how it operates through trends and fads, for example in the work of Forager Collective. Yet this has also included an interrogation of the global food economy and what strategies, local and transnational, can be adopted to circumvent or undermine it, as with Fernando Garcia-Dory’s INLAND project.
Movements of people are explored in Kathrin Böhm’s new film about the shared ‘foreigness’ of todays (now threatened) eastern European fruit pickers working in Kent and the east London communities who migrated to the same rural landscape for working holidays in the early twentieth century. Furthermore, movements also encapsulate the groundswell community organized initiatives which seek to make real change, from the utopian Diggers explored by Jane Levi to the Chemurgy movement that features in the research of Thomas Pausz.
Open for five days and bringing together the activities that have taken place during the course of The Politics of Food: Markets and Movements season, this extended programme offers a hub for the public to drop in and experience the work of both resident and invited artists.
Whether you choose to enjoy a drink and bite to eat at the bar, stay for a community meal or book yourself in to one of the field trips, this programme will offer food for thought about our relationship to what we eat through the work of the artists, historians, designers and scientists at Delfina Foundation.
Participating artists include: Kathrin Böhm, Fernando Garcia-Dory, Kate Rich, Chris Fite-Wassilak, Jane Levi, Laura Wilson, Tomáš Uhnák, Thomas Pausz, Deepa Bhasthi, Melanie Jackson and Dr. Esther Leslie, Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad, with more to be announced.
Programme Overview
WEDNESDAY, 7 SEPT
• Film premiere of Foreign Pickers and talk with Kathrin Böhm and Dr. Toby Butler, 19:00 – 21:00
• Project Displays
• Pop-Up bar
THURSDAY, 8 SEPT
• Walking tour with Tomas Uhnak, The Politics of Societal Digestion, 09:00 – 17:00
• £3 Community Meal with Tomas Uhnak, 18:00 – 20:00
• Project Displays
• Pop-Up bar
FRIDAY, 9 SEPT
• Hop-Picking Field Trip with Kathrin Bohm, 09:00 – 19:00
• £3 Community Meal with Thomas Pausz, 13:00 – 15:00
• Project Displays
• Pop-Up bar
SATURDAY, 10 SEPT
• Brexit and Food Talk with Professor Tim Lang, 15:30 – 16:45
• £3 Community Meal with Forager Collective, 13:00 – 15:00
• Project Displays
• Pop-Up bar
SUNDAY, 11 SEPT
• Performance Lecture with Melanie Jackson and Dr. Esther Leslie, Unreliable Matriarchs, 16:00 – 18:00
• £3 Community Meal with Jane Levi, 14:00-16:00
• Project Displays
• Pop-Up bar
Event details
POP-UP BAR
Delfina Foundation
Drop-in
An onsite bar serving drinks and snacks throughout the day with all refreshments on offer conceived by artists in the programme.
Menu to be announced.
£3 COMMUNITY MEALS
Delfina Foundation
Drop-in
Resident artists host a conceptual meal for everyone and anyone to join in for a £3 contribution. Each meal will be unique:
Thursday 18:00 – 20:00 // Tomáš Uhnák
Friday 13:00 – 15:00 // Thomas Pausz
Saturday 13:00 – 15:00 // Forager Collective
Sunday 14:00-16:00 // Jane Levi
PROJECT DISPLAYS
Delfina Foundation
Drop-in
Displays of projects developed through the residency season including a newly commissioned film by Kathrin Böhm, an exploration of the full-use of the dandelion by Thomas Pausz, a display of Fernando Garcia-Dory’s INLAND project and work by Laura Wilson with more to be announced.
FIELD TRIPS
Off-site
Booking Essential
Walk: The Politics of Societal Digestion
Tomáš Uhnák
Thursday: Walk: 09:00 – 17:00 // Meal: 18:00 – 21:00
Taking as his inspiration the playful use of Dérive – psychogeography by the Situationists, resident artist Tomáš Uhnák will deliver a day of meanderings through London, visiting various places that tell the story of London’s relationship to the vital source of nutrition and taste, suggesting their social and political implications. Drawing on his experience from the Initiative for Food Sovereignty, founded in the Czech Republic on the principles of the movement La Via Campesina, participants on the journey will be part of informal meetings with various experts, farmers and activists. Speakers include Nafeez Ahmed, writer and journalist, and Ben Richardson, Associate Professor in International Politics Economy at the University of Warwick, with more to be announced. Walkers will experience talks and tastings in unexpected locations to offer new perspectives in social interdependency.
Following the walk, participants will be invited to Delfina Foundation to prepare and eat a meal based on Vincent M. Holt’s 1885 manifesto Why not eat Insects? – a socially charged text that reflected the worsening deprivation of the working classes in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Hop Picking Trip to Kent
Kathrin Böhm
Friday 09:00 – 19:00
An opportunity to join a day of hands-on hop picking in Kent. The hops picked on the day will be used by Kernel Brewery (Bermondsey) to make a special green hop beer, which will be part of the 2016 Company Drink’s range.
Company Drinks was set up by international arts collective Myvillages in May 2014 as a way to revive this extraordinary urban-rural relationship and link it to the set up of a new community drinks enterprise. The plan for the new company was not only to pick, but to keep the crop, make the drinks and trade them directly with all profits feeding back into the collective endeavour, completing a whole cycle of production, trade and reinvestment.
LIVE EVENTS
Delfina Foundation
Wednesday 7 September
18:00 – 21:00
Launch of Bar and Project Display
An open evening to sample the first of the pop-up bar offerings and a viewing of the project displays.
19:00 – 21:00
Film Screening and Talk: Foreign Pickers
The premier of the film at Delfina Foundation will be accompanied by a talk and the launch of two new Company Drinks beverages which result from the trips to Kent in 2016: a Thinning Soda and a Gleaned Cider. With Dr. Toby Butler, University of East London.
Saturday 10 September
15:30 – 17:00
Talk: Brexit and Food
Professor Tim Lang shares his perspective on the impact of Brexit on the UK food system
Sunday 11 September
16:00 – 18:00
Performance Lecture: Unreliable Matriarchs
Melanie Jackson and Dr. Esther Leslie
Milk is an ur-substance, a primary medium. It is the first substance to enter the mouth, to touch the tongue, to fill the belly. Milk is also promiscuous collaborator and one of the most technologised liquids on the planet. It is at once a cipher of standardisation and modernity, and endless innovation. It teams up commercially with a bestiary of cartoon avatars, and a dazzling spectrum of synthetic colour. It is an industry that has pioneered the application of big data, assisting milk’s accelerated abstractions into chemical components, economic actions, bodily manipulations and it has provided the model for other industries to generate their algorithmic futures. They explore Milk’s ability to act as a spectrometer – an apparatus that can reveal to us the defining characteristics of an epoch.
Programme supporters
With thanks to Delfina’s patrons and partners, as well as those who have supported artist projects directly:
Acción Cultural Español (AC/E), Al Serkal Avenue, Arts Council England, Czech Centre London, Charles Wallace India Trust, Cockayne – Grants for the Arts, Hybrid Platform Berlin, Icelandic Arts Fund, Icelandic Academy of The Arts, Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation, The Keir Foundation, Kingston University, The London Community Foundation, Nicoletta Fiorucci, Outset, Stanley Picker Gallery, Walton Family Foundation and Delfina Foundation’s family of individual supporters.