[2018] OatFace workshop, food art Liep\u0101ja

Anna Priedola

Food in Art and Culture: Relational Aesthetics of Sustainability and Exchange.

[Longer version in Latvian: Priedola, Anna. E\u0304diens ma\u0304ksla\u0304 un kultu\u0304ra\u0304: saimniecisko attieci\u0304bu este\u0304tika. Scriptus Manet, 2019, 67 \u2013 83.]

Keywords: food, art, sustainability, communal art, creative workshops.

"Food as a mirror reflects the social and interpersonal (as well as interspecies) relationships in a given culture, howerver it has been used as a material in arts only since the 20th century when artists looked for new, not strictly representative, forms of expression. In this article, art practice where food is used as a material to depict or challenge the economic and power relations within a particular food culture in the context of sustainability is described \u2013 covering both a review of contemporary art practices within the field of exploration, and a case study of author\u2019s art project consisting of four creative workshops and discussions about food in art and culture.

First to propose an improving change of food culture according to the technological, economic and ideologic achievments were artists from Italian Fututurist movement it the 20th century 30ies. They also found great aesthetic qualities of food as a material of art, and meals as performance. Nowadays, at a time of acceleration of a rapid technological growth and economic uncertainity, Neo-Futurist initiative of experimental aesthetic cuisine has developed in Mediamatic Stichting art centre in the Netherlands, mostly connecting people to the origin of the commodities they consume through labour performances, touch, smell and other senses.

Despite the notion that biodiversity is fundamental for a sustainable development, global commercial production accelerates the growth of monocultures. Artists react to the process by promoting alternative food production and consumption methods which is based on peer-to-peer sharing. For example, Latvian artist collective Primitive Group has developed an advertisement campaign for free peer-to-peer exchange commodity \u201cT-Shroom\u201d (kombucha drink and starter for home brewing) in 2002.

During her own communal art project author has organised four crative workshops and discussions in Liepaja to explore the cultural and economic background of certain food technologies, the power relations behind them, and how to design those in a more sustainable fashion. Topic of the first workshop \u2013 fermentation \u2013 has inspired many artists as it manifests a symbiotic relationship between different cultures. Food production often triggers ethical questions about human relationships with other species. With the means of fermentation artists show that human life is supported by the internal microorganisms, thus also challenging the understanding of individuality and subjectivity. One of a trend, artist Andrew G. Paterson produces Bacterial Love Letters from an edible paper covered with a fermented edible ink to establish a healthy relationship with his gut microflora.

Artists and participants explored various understandings of the term \u201csustainable food\u201d in the second workshop and discussion lead by the author and slow media art practitioner Maija Demitere who struggles for self-sustainablity, and measures her success in the process. Although author looses the time she could use for economic activity while gardening, she also gains health and entertainment while producing food for herself. Other artists concerned with sustainability issues suggest domestic, local, and even mobile production of fast growing, calorie dense food, like algae (Erik Sjödin Superfood) or ants (Zane C\u0113rpi\u0146a). Others suggest human has to change to provide a sustainable future, for example, edit their metabolic enzymes to consume cellulose and trees (Gints Gabr\u0101ns Foood). Workshop participants also provided their own Sustainability Recipes which differed greatly.

Participants explored food as a material for expressing information and visualising data in the third workshop creating edible and \u201cData Recipes\u201d which represent food production statistics and power distribution in the field. Products and produce often carry certain symbolic connotations or associations wich add yet another semantic layer to the data visualisations when they are carried out in food, not to mention the multisensory experience the consumption of such artwork can provide.

Final workshop was dedicated to experimenting with food hacking, and think of creative applications for common food stock, often to initiate alternative peer-to-peer resource sharing or self-sustainable systems like composite material building blocks hardened by a mycelium for a living space that also feeds the owner, proposed by Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas.

Although often critical (according to the global commercial food production), sustainable art practices also provide an optimistic perspective providing prototypes for a different yet guaranteed future and introducing working with food both as a material and narrative in arts."