Gimme some sugar, Sugar

July 3, 2007

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 Signer and Pippilotti Rist, I love how the audience can just reach out and grab a wispy cloud of floss from the air. Give the people what they want, Zoro.

If this were a Dutch language blog I could make a joke about Zoro reassuring me that the sugar in the installation was ‘cane’ sugar and not White Death. The Rietveld Academy is named after You-know-who, Mr. Sit on my face - red, yellow and blue (and black). Raw cane sugar is rietsuiker from the Dutch for reed. (What Dutch lacks in sheer vocabulary, it makes up for in poetics.) Folks stood around for ages mesmerised, plucking sugar clouds from the air, catching sugar highs, getting excited about the high-speed interactive cloud watching. It’s like watching fireworks. Bravo.

Sugar Storm by Zoro Feigl

debra at 11:02 | Comments (1) | post to del.icio.us

Lab meating Friday
food, art & science
snacks & symposium

June 28, 2007

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 of food, art and science. It’s going to be an exciting event with all that lab meat, ethics, art and highly controversial snacking. A more thrilling Friday evening is hard to imagine.

Marlein Overakker and Inez de Jong from Wandering Banquets are in charge of the evening’s alimentary entertainment. Chefs cum pioneering food designers, they know their way around the kitchen and have designed a menu of snacks that correspond seamlessly to the speakers. I’m last after all of those smart people, wondering if that makes me the icing on the cake…

Victimless Leather Jacket, by Tissue Culture and Art, used entirely without permission

In preparation of my presentation in Dutch
(Smart + Dutch + Slanguage = Eeeeks!!!!)
I have been having the hardest time finding worthy Dutch translations for the following English words. Please feel free to help me out in the comments. The list reads like a poem, don’t you think?

whole foods = ?
plant based diet = ? (It’s not plantaardig…)
environmental impact = ?
resource intensive = ?
livestock population = veetelt populatie?
food technology = voedsel technologie
food scientist = voedsel wetenschapper
disconnected = vervreemd
nutrient = nutriënt?
nutrition = ?
nutritionism = ?
processed food = ?
encountered = ?
entitlement = ?

And not necessarily in that order.

Here’s the lineup:

19:00 - Opening
19:20 - 1st controversial snack
19:30 - Prof. Henk Haagsman, Meat Scientist, University of Utrecht
19:50 - Prof. Michiel Korthals, Ethicus, University of Wageningen
20:10 - short pause for thought and 2nd controversial snack
20:30 - Dr. Cor van der Weele, Ethicus, University of Wageningen
20.50 - 3rd controversial snack
21:00 - Debra Solomon, artist/designer/culiblog.org
21:20 - 4th controversial snack
21:30 Panel discussion thankfully w/moderator Annemiek Nelis: Prof. Henk Haagsman, Prof. Michiel Korthals, Dr. Cor van der Weele, Debra Solomon

Useful links:

The lowdown from the Centraal Museum website in Dutch
Event begins at 19h sharp - remember, it’s organised by scientists.
Event costs € 15,- snacks and drinks included and registration is absolutely obligatory. Remember, scientists and philosphers are very serious about restrictions.
Art & Genomics Centre
Anne Kienhuis, scientific manager
Leiden Institute of Chemistry
Tel +31 (0)71 527 5782
Fax +31 (0)71 527 5274
The Wandering Banquets website
Tissue Culture and Art
TCA’s Victimless Leather Jacket
TCA’s extra ear 1/4 scale Is that for not listening to the whole story?

debra at 12:03 | Comments (12) | post to del.icio.us

Exhibition the Edible City
at the NAi-M closes

June 27, 2007

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 less provide for their own alimentary requirements aka food sovereignty. But since the Industrial Revolution, the chain of food from field to fork has greatly increased in length and has even evolved into a lace-like structure. If you missed this iteration of the exhibition, chances are you will have an opportunity in the near future to have a look, see and do.

To celebrate a job well done and some much anticipated spin-off, NAi-M director Guus Beumer and NAI-M staff generously hosted a delicious luncheon, amidst the burgeoning exhibition growth, inspired by the foodstuffs grown in the exhibition itself and prepared by local restaurant de Bisjop. My co-curators, co-designers and co-sustainable landscape design colleagues were there, as were a goodly number of the exhibition’s participants and of course illustrious and engaged guests from the region and the exhibition’s sponsors. And quite a handful of folks that had travelled from far, far, far away.

Havest Luncheon speakers included:

Fritz Haeg (Edible Estates) gave a brilliant presentation that folks are still talking about.
Marleen Kaptein (EVA Lanxmeer) had everyone literally at the edge of their seats. Kaptein admits to being the last person on earth who would’ve thought that the subject of permaculture could be so dang thrilling. Applause!
Daan Josee from Arhictectenbureau Kristinsson filled us in on the dirty details of closed system living in their project Zonneterp
Martijn Verkuijl from E-concept spoke about a number of their projects - including SCORE! part of the EU’s central support structure for the UN’s 10 Year Framework of Programs for Sustainable Consumption and Production.

Sir Fritz Haeg of Edible Estates

Afternoon luxuriously turned into drinks and drinks turned into evening drinking which turned into eating (the most amazing Chinese food I’ve ever put in my mouth - You go Maastricht!) and later we tacked on a bit of drinking for good measure. It was one of those perfect 16 hour days borne out of the knowledge that at any moment, during drinks, during the flattering discussion, during the shootin’ of the shit about urban agriculture and the designed environment and the need for discrete design commissions, during the deep kissing, that an urgency may suddenly arise to extract a pen from a tangled curl and start collaborating. Oh, the glamour…

The Edible City exhibition was based on an idea by Guus Beumer and is curated by moi-même, Debra Solomon (culiblog.org), Anneke Moors and Hans Ibelings. The exhibition design is by Event Architecture, in collaboration with Hans Engelbrecht and Margriet Visser (de Groene Stap) and the graphic design is by Experimental Jetset. Beautiful! BTW: the poster that the Experimentals made for the exhibition along with the poster of the Jean Prouvé exhibition now running at the NAi-M has been taken up in the collection of the MoMA. Proficiaat Dame en Heren!

The Edible City presents a diverse range of proposals and strategies to produce food in or near the city and that offer the opportunity to experience the city in a different way. As befits the subject, much of the exhibition was itself edible. As of today, it will all be edible somewhere else.