Food, food culture, food as culture and the cultures that grow our food

Category archive for: Food + Art

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This weekend:
Massive Dutch protests against the obliteration of cultural funding!

Dutch text below is not a direct translation. Imagine this: you're an internationally recognised Dutch cultural institution of art/design/media culture. You have a substantial collection; media art, landscape art, but also paintings/ sculptures/ installations/ photography/ film/ design object... Read more

Posted on June 25, 2011 14:01

Phytoremediation at ARCAM
The shipwreck
contains the ship

The Shipwreck Contains the Ship, Urbaniahoeve installation at ARCAM in conjunction with Farming the City Saturday 7 May at 16.00h, is the closing event of the Farming the City exhibition at ARCAM. URBANIAHOEVE's phytoremediation installation on ARCAM island, titled 'The Shipwreck' will be dism... Read more

Posted on May 6, 2011 23:09

Do AND talk

Some folks are all talk and no do, but this last year, I've been all do and no talk. Apologies for my extended absence and may this post mark a movement towards striking a balance between the two. Foodscape Schilderswijk: kids initiating the planting of the Wellington Hof Plum Orchard In th... Read more

Posted on 21:32

DIY Mmmmuseum of
Oven Typologies

Our first tamped earth oven lacks some structural-integrity Hey there lovers... of food-system infrastructure, this weekend (June 26 & 27) from 13.00h we will pilot the DIY-Mmmmuseum of Oven Typologies (Dutch acronym is DHZMOT) at Art at the Pool during the Sloterplas Festival in Amsterdam. (Li... Read more

Posted on June 25, 2010 15:35

A time to meet,
a time to compost
your jack o’ lantern

Time to Meet jack o' lantern gifted to the UM dinner by Alowieke of Transition Town Utrecht. When Guus Beumer, artistic director of the Utrecht Manifest: Biennial for Social Design, asked me what I would like to contribute to the 2009 edition, I responded with a programme called Ultimate Meetin... Read more

Posted on October 14, 2009 16:31

Not piss poor,
fertilized with pee

Didn't go to the farmers' market this Saturday One of the reasons I gave my Amsterdam kitchen garden the name Slim Pickins was to show that even a postage stamp-sized garden with a relatively little crop could serve up a surprising amount of food. But the real reason was that it had piss poor s... Read more

Posted on September 13, 2009 21:16

Foodscape Schilderswijk,
Den Haag’s CPUF

A scenario for planting espallier-style fruit trees in the Schilderswijk. Illustration by Jacques Abelman. As part of STROOM Den Haag’s (Centre for Art and Architecture) multi-year programme FOODPRINT, I have been commissioned to design a foodscape. Actually I am designing a Continuous Producti... Read more

Posted on September 8, 2009 20:21

Speaking of the Future…
how ’bout that market?

Market of the Future poster-child Juli Mata You're probably wondering how the future turned out. Last weekend's was a culmination of the test-phase with FREEHOUSE's de Markt van Morgen / the Market of the Future, in Rotterdam Zuid's Afrikaanderwijk. Lucky Mi Fortune Cooking has been experimenti... Read more

Posted on June 15, 2009 17:45

Rethinking the
Market of the Future

Market folk, people from Rotterdam's Afrikaanderbuurt and artists renew one of the Netherlands' largest open-air markets, the Afrikaandermarkt. My involvement in this mega project is one of the reasons I've written so little in this blog the past year. So much to write about, but no time to writ... Read more

Posted on June 5, 2009 23:35

Slim Pickins
restaurant review

Ground-elder ravioli & goutweed pesto with locally foraged kale flower, spinach and mint Within hours of the posting Slim Pickins was already fully booked. Plagued at its very inception with limited seating, the urban kitchen garden restaurant located on the edge of a raised bed was forced to d... Read more

Posted on May 5, 2009 14:03

Slim Pickins,
the occasional garden restaurant

Slim Pickins garden staff help with the weeding Studio Culiblog is proud to announce the opening this Sunday of it's new minimalist concept restaurant in Amsterdam Noord. Slim Pickins is an outdoor micro-eatery situated on the edge of a raised bed, in an urban kitchen garden, serving up the occ... Read more

Posted on April 21, 2009 23:49

Michel Blazy’s microbial art

A pond of fermenting tea with fungal lily pads The lacto-fermentation of cabbage wasn't the only kind of microbial art and design going down in St. Etienne at last month's biennial. Michel Blazy created a most beautiful live installation of Givernyesque pools of living kombucha colonies. For th... Read more

Posted on December 18, 2008 12:44

Utopia is near

Back in the saddle after a fun and hugely productive work period at the Saint-Étienne Internationale Biënale du Design where I was invited to show the Lucky Mi Fortune Cooking project in the City Eco Lab. John Thackara brought together a burgeoning toolshed of projects that demonstrate how commu... Read more

Posted on December 9, 2008 17:52

Ayn Hawd bread story

At the beginning of my first week in Ayn Hawd, if Noga and I opened our windows just right, we could create a lazy crosswind that would exhale her curtains, just as it inhaled mine. Exhale mine, inhale hers. Slow puffs of curtain with the power to close eyelids. Exhale hers, inhale mine. But ... Read more

Posted on September 2, 2008 23:02

Saosan’s carob syrup

A sloppy fig branch roadblock fuels fires burning purposefully under two steel pot stands, each supporting a blackened aluminium cauldron. You can feel the heat halfway down the street where unpredictable gusts of smoke inevitably find your eyes, turn your head for a breath of, oh the parfum of ... Read more

Posted on August 26, 2008 10:47

Soft landing in Ayn Hawd

The tickly prickly pears of Ayn Hawd Two days ago I arrived in Ayn Hawd, to start producing my farmer's market installation for the One Land project and Platform Paradise exhibition. In 2004 the Palestinian village of Ayn Hawd received widespread recognition when architect Malkit Shoshan (NL/IL... Read more

Posted on August 23, 2008 14:36

Kids loved us,
loved our food

Chef Paul says 'Eat your pumpkin RotiRol' Lucky Mi, purveyor of in-situ snacks, enjoyed its new-kid-on-the-block status and dished up some Surinamese fusion food in our spanking new snack laboratory at the Zuidoost Kwakoe Festival this weekend. We dodged tropical size raindrops, gave the lab it... Read more

Posted on July 8, 2008 22:09

Lucky Mi Fortune Cooking

Local sk8r boi enjoys the coconut cassava bonbon with newly aromatic herring. In the past year I've been working with community food entrepreneurs; cooking studios, restaurants, small food stores, and local vegetable growers strengthening networks to innovate snacks that could be sold locally. ... Read more

Posted on June 19, 2008 22:33

A F.A.S.T. food market

Gifted organic olive oil and za'atar from Ein Hud, an unrecognised village in Israel Sustainability issues aren't only about green, sometimes they're even more fundamental than that. Food and food systems are an integral part of that story because food and agricultural policy is commonly used f... Read more

Posted on May 27, 2008 0:23

Butterflies in my stomach

The date and milk-based cocktail 'representing' the Afrikaanderwijk is not pictured here because although scrumptious, it was not photogenic. That's always a problem with dates. Kruiskade Blossom Cocktail - chrystanthemum tea drinks in tetrapak - organic chysanthemum flowers - sour cher... Read more

Posted on May 8, 2008 6:10

Fredie Beckmans’ interior life

Dear Fredie, On Queen's Day, we had a party in your house. We overruled Katja, to whom you have been so kind, letting a relative stranger stay in your home while you're away in Berlin. She just wanted a traditional Queen's Day, one in which you simply get drunk and slut it up on the streets. I... Read more

Posted on May 7, 2008 19:16

Imagining Kate

="Come Back Kate film still by Quirine Racké and Helena Muskens used entirely with permission The Kate Bush Party at Mediamatic this Friday evening promises give-us-a-twirl dress-up, lighters-in-the-air sing-a-long and a generous format screening of Quirine Racké and Helena Musken's poignant art... Read more

Posted on April 9, 2008 23:36

Cooking and constructing,
food as a real design platform

Vegetable ink production and 'pantonization' by Daniera ter Haar and Christoph Brach Platform 21's Cooking and Constructing is food as a real design platform, in a real design platform. There is reason to applaud this very real design laboratory which will be open for the coming 8 weeks. The wo... Read more

Posted on February 12, 2008 23:24

A pinhole for yer piehole

Justin Quinnell's in mouth pinhole photography, image used entirely without permission Read more

Posted on December 27, 2007 15:40

Robo Cocktail

Erik Hobijn poses with the Mothuh of all mojito makers At last weekend's party for the youth of today, artist Erik Hobijn demonstrated the explosive power of his handheld cocktail launcher and created some unexpectedly delicious chunky style mojitos. Officially speaking, this cockbot is more of... Read more

Posted on September 3, 2007 21:31

The arabised ‘H’ of EL HEMA

Joann digs EL HEMA packaging, image of the chocolate letter 'H' by Mediamatic used entirely with permission EL HEMA, an Arabised version of the Dutch five and dime, will be selling chocolate letters for the disputably secular Dutch winter holiday Sinter Klaas. The Arabic letters are in one of t... Read more

Posted on August 25, 2007 10:49

Controversial snacks and mild-mannered symposium

Wandering Banquet's wheat meat piéce montée was not just another secret ingredient. You hear me talkin'? Dutch fire marshalls the world over will be unhappy to read that last Friday's Food, Art and Science symposium at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht was filled way beyond capacity. Lab meat is a... Read more

Posted on July 7, 2007 12:58

Gimme some sugar, Sugar

Things about to get sticky at the van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven (Jan 2007) Sugar Storm by Zoro Feigl At Amsterdam's Rietveld Academy exam show this weekend visitors could tuck into this beautiful candy floss installation by Zoro Feigl. Aside from the tip of the cap to Fischli & Weiss, Roman Sign... Read more

Posted on July 3, 2007 11:02

Lab meating Friday
food, art & science
snacks & symposium

Listen up, why am I pink? Tissue Culture and Art's Extra Ear 1/4 Scale, used entirely without permission As part of the exhibition Genesis, The Art & Genomics Centre at the University of Leiden, in sweet collaboration with the Centraal Museum in Utrecht have organised a symposium on the subject... Read more

Posted on June 28, 2007 12:03

Exhibition the Edible City
at the NAi-M closes

The Edible City exhibition at the NAi-M (the Netherlands Architecture Institute) has finally come to a close. Showing more than 40 architectural, design and urban planning projects, the exhibition was about food systems and the urban environment. There was a time when city-dwellers could more or... Read more

Posted on June 27, 2007 15:09

Edible Estates breaking ground in London

Butternut squash and nasturtiums about to go vertical Looking to get your hands dirty in London this weekend? Edible estate agent Fritz Haeg will be breaking ground on his 4th edible estate, this time in collaboration with the Bankside Open Spaces Trust (BOST) and commissioned by the Tate Moder... Read more

Posted on May 26, 2007 12:43

Monument of Sugar

Secretly snapped photo of the installation Monument, now on exhibit at the Palais de Tokyo Monument en Sucre is an installation by artists van Brummelen & de Haan documenting an artist attempt to avoid European sugar tariffs by re-importing European sugar dumped in Nigeria back into Europe as a... Read more

Posted on May 9, 2007 13:24

Life ain’t no picnic

The annual Queen's Day cleaning uncovered this old art skool photograph. It's 1993 and the lady-colleagues and I are in a picnic performance sporting a red and white checked gingham ground cloth with built-in shorts. Read more

Posted on April 30, 2007 13:07

Bloom where you are planted

Planting edible flowers amongst sunflower seedlings House plants are so passé. And I've really had it with demure windowsill herb gardens. They're visually predictable and don't yield significant crop for my leafy green rich diet. Because I'm involved with projects that involve me recommending... Read more

Posted on April 23, 2007 15:07

Pomtajer is the New Cocoyam
a friend of kugel and latke

Food is synonymous with identity and culture. And in case you hadn't noticed, cultural identity is all over contemporary art these days. Amsterdam artist and culinary historian Karin Vaneker has been studying the dynamic history of the tropical tuber called the New Cocoyam, aka Pomtajer (say puh... Read more

Posted on April 19, 2007 13:00

The Edible City

For the past few months, together with colleagues Hans Ibelings and Anneke Moors, I have been curating an exhibtion for the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Maastricht titled the Edible City. The exhibition is about the urban environment and its food systems. There was a time when city-dwel... Read more

Posted on February 26, 2007 2:26

Chirashi sushi
chaotic and unbound

Chirashi sushi as served at Martin Butler's the Girlfriend Experience Chirashi sushi is ‘casually mixed’ sushi, unbound, informal, slightly chaotic. For Martin Butler's Second Life-emulating, audience driven Girlfriend Experience at Mediamatic, I'm calling it DIY sushi. Chirashizushi (ã¡ã... Read more

Posted on February 10, 2007 11:33

The amazing
Sprout (loves) Ikebana
contest

Choreographer Martin Butler's winning entry for the category, 'Fleugalité (bamboo leaf, sango sprouts, rock chives, pea shoots) The amazing Sprout (loves) Ikebana contest was carried out in honour of chef de cuisine Tal Amitai, who was not able to be with us this last week due to the loss of hi... Read more

Posted on January 10, 2007 13:02

Sprouts love ikebana

My neighbours won the 2007 Sprouts Love Ikebana competition for the categories: 6 and under, 5 and under From more than 300 images of the sprouts love ikebana competition this weekend at the Grow Yer Own Dang Food sprout restaurant, these are the first, last and middle ones. We had winners in m... Read more

Posted on January 9, 2007 1:55

Bone up on ikebana

The key to Ryusei-ha ikebana is the approach known as the 'faces of plants.' The arranger is not bound by set rules of composition but encounters the plant materials directly, approaching them with a new attitude. Image used entirely without permission. To celebrate the natural beauty of sprout... Read more

Posted on January 4, 2007 4:46

Sprout Salon Tonight promises to be parfumistic

Culiblog covergirl Iva Supic loves her up some sprouts While in another part of the world a loved one mourns the loss of a loved one, pouring over every verse of the Quran en famille, here in the Polar Circle it rains, blows and pours and we narrowly avert a Sprout War. Now that the dust has... Read more

Posted on December 15, 2006 10:38

Cooking with supermodels

Kitchen Princess Erga always wears herbs, Seattle Public Library carpet by Petra Blaisse Maybe it's the phermones, maybe it's the new varieites of sprouts, (fennel, coreander, sunflower and pea shoots to name a few) but it seems that everything just keeps getting more beautiful at the Grow Yer ... Read more

Posted on December 1, 2006 10:33

Illustrious guests

International art critic Paul Groot inspects the work. Photo by illustrious guest Joost Bottema used entirely with permission Turns out we lingered a bit too long on Mateusz Herczka's phermone exuding garden furniture, but man oh man did we have a good time last night at the sprout restaurant, ... Read more

Posted on November 19, 2006 12:51

Micro-green restaurant officially open

Jeanette likes sprouts because they're seed-related Roqn-ass opening btw. Merveilleuse! The dear friends showed up, the food was devoured, folks asked for seconds (and got them without a wince) we danced our tocheses off until 4ish and the whole thing ended sloppily with bottles of bubbles (cav... Read more

Posted on November 4, 2006 18:56

Meat meeting tonight

Image of First Nations Sioux ladies drying meat used entirely without permission. That should read meat fight tonight! If you're interested in the meat industry and are currently in Amsterdam, you're not going to want to miss tonight's Cross-thinking about Sustainability - Rethinking the Global... Read more

Posted on October 5, 2006 13:37

Soy story: food subculture club visits an exhibiton of Romanian otaku culture

An array of Romanian textured soy products What could be more obvious than the fact that the noble soybean, or rather, the humble hunk of textured soy and contemporary Romanian otaku culture are inextricably linked. You already knew that, right? About one month ago, Mediamatic hosted a most ... Read more

Posted on July 9, 2006 18:13

Here as the Centre of the World, in terms of food

Here as the Centre of the World banquet with local food from Twente and Overijssel. Guests getting giggly on the bubbly. A week and a half ago, my colleagues and I at the Dutch Art Institute (DAI), were in the throes of an international symposium on 'all things periferal' for artists and mediat... Read more

Posted on June 3, 2006 14:35

Anorexia, art, war, rant

The pumpkin dumpling that I just couldn't finish. A little less than a year ago I wrote an entry about SehnSucht, a restaurant for anorexics in Berlin that had opened up sometime in January 2005. Because I didn't have a picture of the restaurant, and because I hadn't visited it (and to this day ca... Read more

Posted on April 17, 2006 19:10

Episode 1, emergency food distribution and the role of the cameras

This entry refers to food distribution as discussed in yesterday's entry about the World Food Programme's computer game, Food Force. video still from Episode 1, © Renzo Martens In January 2004, Dutch artist Renzo Martens produced his forty-four minute art film, Episode 1, a documentation of... Read more

Posted on March 19, 2006 11:17

Drawing Restraint, dragging ambergris

Occidental Guest (bride), production still from Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9, copyright Matthew Barney, used without permission Filled with expectation unsuitable for the company of friends, clutching a fat wad of tickets between fingers reeking of quickly eaten, mediocre sushi, it is u... Read more

Posted on February 5, 2006 20:51

Grow yer own dang food
(part 1)

Image of sprouting bread courtesy of Cygalle Shapiro Back in the eighties, as a student at the University California at Santa Cruz, I lived in a vegetarian commune with a bunch of hippies. As hippies, we produced our own sprouts, yoghurt and salsa fresca for the entire commune, approximately th... Read more

Posted on January 30, 2006 11:52

Rural design conference scheduled for September 2006

(above: Wheatfield, a large public work by Agnes Denes, image copyright Agnes Denes) Chapeau to John Thackara at the Doors of Perception blog who reports today about a rural design conference scheduled to take place September 4-7 2006 (somewhere) in the UK. Just have a look at what's being develop... Read more

Posted on January 21, 2006 11:47

Vegetation and art

(image: herman's meadow, copyright herman de vries) This is an image of a meadow surrounded by farmland. Left to it's own devices, the meadow has developed it's own ecology, separate from the agricultural land surrounding it. The meadow is also an artwork by herman de vries, artist/botanist/pub... Read more

Posted on January 13, 2006 21:56

Fritz Haeg’s Edible Estates
homesteading on the suburban lawn

Start with one suburban home in Middle America (images of Salina Kansas Edible Estate © Fritz Haeg, used entirely with permission) Situated on what was once a massive sugar beet plantation, the iconic housing development of Lakewood is an embodiment of an American Dream in which each single-fa... Read more

Posted on September 26, 2005 12:34

Salad Song

By now we are all well aware of the profound relationship between the citizens of Bejing and Montpellier. Therefore it should come as no surprise when the Occitanian cultural powers that be deem it high time for an 'international biennial' of Chinese contemporary art in their fair city. And why th... Read more

Posted on August 26, 2005 13:06

City Food
wild and edible

image courtesy Marjolijn Dijkman It's not an urban myth, edible food is growing wild in the city. In the Basel street where the artist initiative Filiale is located there are a myriad of little green grocers, representing just as many nationalities of people that populate the neighbourhood. Dij... Read more

Posted on June 29, 2005 16:05

Art is, art was fluid last Sunday

Due to the good company and delightfully engaged audience, artist initiative Artis in Den Bosch showed this Sunday (05.06.2005) that they really know how to throw a happening. Margriet Kemper opened the salon with a presentation of her book, Speak, Image! (unfortunately only in Dutch) in whic... Read more

Posted on June 8, 2005 9:57

Fallen Fruit

Red apples on the left, yellow apples on the right. All of the apples were going to waste. As a fan of food foraging and fruit stealing, and as a woman who had never bought fruit except for bananas, mangos and the occasional avocado until she moved up North to the Polar Circle, I applaud the Fa... Read more

Posted on May 7, 2005 1:58

Re-enact creaming

Mediamatic and CASCO's performance night titled Re-enact was rife with food related performance art. My absolute favourite performer was Nezaket Ekici who oh so diva-liciously turned cream into butter with her bare right hand. It took 24 minutes or thereabouts. Everyone was aswoon! (more...)... Read more

Posted on December 13, 2004 13:47

A Single Grain of Rice

Yi Li Mi = A Single Grain of Rice in mandarin neon. A Single Grain of Rice is a project for a culinarily oriented fasting restaurant that I am initiating. Future entries in 2006 will explain this project in greater depth, but at least I've got the neon sign. technorati tags: fasting, China, neo... Read more

Posted on April 25, 2004 12:49

Recipes for Geese and People
and Jeremijenko’s OOZ

2nd course of the dinner for geese and people was called Vegetable Matter Underfoot, (salad carpaccio) visually references the trampled vegetation at the sides of ponds and lakes where waterfowl like to hang out. Natalie Jeremijenko is developing a zoo without cages, and she's calling it 00Z. T... Read more

Posted on March 2, 2004 17:50


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