George Carlin, who was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, author, and actor, raging about stuff. He is noted for often touching taboo topics of American culture and commenting on contemporary political issues. A good laugh! (And thanks Colby for the hint! :)
Filed under: 5/5, Food | Tags: agriculture, city, consumption, food, overproduction, salvage, waste
The Gleaners. Jean-François Millet. 1857
Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers’ fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest. Some ancient cultures promoted gleaning as an early form of a welfare system. (Source: Wikipedia)
Agnès Verda’s documentary ‘Les glaneurs et la glaneuse’ (The gleaners and I/Elämä on kaunis in Finnish, which means: Life is beautiful!!), released in 2000 (more about the film here, and a preview of the movie can be found here), is about people, who collect thrown-away things, ranging from food over household articles to tools and furniture, with different motivations such as simply economical necessity, political and ethical protest against abundant consumerism and food production, and holistic life philosophy. As you might have already heard and seen in the documentary ‘Taste the Waste’, optically incorrect products are already sorted out before they even reach the market, left to rot on the fields. The same thing happens in the supermarkets- as soon as there is a brown spot on a banana, it goes to the dump, without even asking the customers if they are even keen on buying only perfectly sized, monosized, green bananas.
It is assumed that customers want shelves to be exploding with variety and a plethora of neverending products, even half an hour before closing time. This leads to an abundance of edible and still valuable food, turning all in the sudden into unwanted waste and being thrown away, even though the term ‘waste’ does not even do justice to the latter. One might think, that the employees could at least diminish small parts of the ‘waste’ for their own needs, but no: that would be theft and against the law. One might think then, well, the food that is still good and harmless to health could be distributed amongst the poor- but no, hygiene laws in Finland are so strict that even that is forbidden, and the ‘waste’ goes to the bin.
No wonder that a movement started to spread worldwide: dumpster-diving (in Finnish: dyykkaaminen). In 2002, YLE has screened a documentary about a community in Espoo, that only lives from discarded food and stuff found on dumpsters. You can watch it online here. The term literally means to dive for valuable goods in dumpsters. One might be disgusted by the pure thought of eating waste, but the edibles that can be found are usually in shockingly good state and can hardly be called waste. Dumpster diving is rather about salvaging goods that are thrown away only because crazy hygiene laws, insane competition amongst shops, and distorted perspectives on the value of things call for it.
In Germany and the States one can find so-called foodbanks, charity organizations that collect unwanted supermarket and wholesale food and distribute it amongst the needy. The world’s first food bank is the St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance in Arizona, called into life by John van Hengel in 1967. According to Wikipedia, similar concepts can also be found in other European countries such as Iceland (since the financial crisis), Austria, Spain, and Switzerland.
Here some interesting links:
http://dyykkarit.net/ (Finnish dumpster-diving website)
http://freegan.info/ (American site with many links to worldwide networks)
http://www.endhunger.org/gleaning_network.htm (American gleaning network)
http://www.berliner-tafel.de/(German Food Bank in Berlin)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_bank (About the history of food banks and their practice)
Filed under: 5/5, Bread, Food, Production, Recycling | Tags: consumption, food, knowledge, overproduction, salvage, waste
We throw away 50 % of the food that is produced. Yes, fifty percent! 500.000 tons of bread is thrown away yearly in Germany. Since bread has the same heating value as wood, we could spare one nuclear power plant if industry would make use of that fact. The food, that is thrown away in Europe, would be enough to feed the world’s starving population not only once, no, twice! For the production of the ‘trash bread’, an area of 200.000 hectar would be needed and as much greenhouse gases blown in the atmosphere as 300.000 cars would emit. A reduction of the trash to only half of its amount would mean a 10 % reduction of greenhouse gases – as if every second car would be erased from our streets. (Source: http://tastethewaste.com/media/file/ARD_Frisch_auf_den_Muell_PM.pdf)
Valentin Thurn’s recent documentary ‘Frisch auf den Müll- Die globale Lebensmittelverschwendung’ was shown Oct. 20 th 2010 on the German public TV channel Das Erste (at 11:30 pm – what kind of screening time is that for such a relevant interesting topic??). Anyway, thanks to the internet and livestreaming, you can watch the video in three parts on Youtube, unfortunately, it is only in German, but they are also going to screen English versions under the title ‘Taste the Waste’ internationally, if I understood right.
The movie has its own website in English and German, where you can find articles and more information and can also take action by spreading the word and uploading own articles and experiences.
Filed under: 4/5, Art, Design, Projects for inspiration | Tags: activism, city, consumption, participatory, simple living
ÄOM? What? Ah, Älä Osta Mitään, that’s what it stands for! Yes, Finland also has it, the infamous ‘Buy-Nothing-Day’. Introduced in 1992 by artist Ted Dave and promoted by the consume-critical Adbuster magazine, BND has been celebrated in by now 65 nations worldwide, typically on the Friday following North American Thanksgiving, and the following day internationally. This year, it will take place November 26th. Here a link to the Finnish website about the event, set up by Luonto-liitto ry. Public opinion about the event is divided, but I think it is a very fine occasion to reconsider shopping behaviours, not only for that one day, but in general and in a sustained way.
Which reminds me of a protest action done a few years ago in the busiest shopping street of Vienna, right before Christmas. :)
Filed under: 4/5, Art, Bread, Design, Food, Making of, Network, Workshop | Tags: activism, city, consumption, event, experimental, food, local, näkkileipä, participatory
Last night, I finally had a meeting with Antto Melasniemi, co-owner of the two Helsinki restaurants Ateljé Finne in Töölö and Kuurna in Kruununhaka, to schedule and plan the 4th event of the 5-series, which deals with the consumption step (4/5:CONSUME). The day before, I bumped into Salla Kuuluvainen, who played an important role in the oven workshop and is generally active in urban gardening and food activism. I invited her along, and she immediately joined forces. So now, there is a team!
Since Antto is busy travelling the next week, we moved the event to the 29th of Nov., a Monday, which is the usual day of rest of the location (restaurant Ateljé Finne). The rough plan is to create an ephemeral dinner, meaning that literally nothing will be left after the meal, no tools, no crockery, no cutlery. We will organize an afternoon workshop for creating those ephemeral objects for 10 people, who will invite one avec to join us for the dinner following the workshop. Antto, Salla, and I will complete the edible objects with dishes that will be kept in secret. Stay tuned for updates!
Filed under: Network, Theories | Tags: activism, city, community, participatory
Harvest talkoot//Source: http://www.erm.ee
Have you ever heard that word before? Me either! First time I encountered the term was in the context of the oven building workshop in the Summer, when the word was mentioned to describe the building process as an ‘urban talkoot’. The word exists in different cultures with similar meaning, such as ‘bee’ or ‘barn raising’ in English, ‘imece’ in Turkish, ‘talgod’ in Estonian, ‘dugnad’ in Norwegian, ‘kaláka’ in Hungarian, ‘gadugi’ in Cherokee, and tłoka in Polish, or ‘Nachbarschaftshilfe’ in German.
In Finland, it is an old tradition to help our your neighbour or the community in a village with volunteer work to build e.g. a barn, a house, an oven, or to harvest the fields. This tradition is still alive in old neighbourhoods on the countryside and at Finn’s mökkis (cottages). Andrew Petterson, a researcher in media lab at Taik in Helsinki, has written the very interesting paper ‘A Buzz between Rural Cooperation and the Online Swarm’ about the word ‘talkoot’, analyzing its lingual origins and meaning, and comparing it to contemporary internet practices. According to him, internet communication and web activity enlarge the ‘social capital’ of a society, referring to the term defined by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. “Social capital is a sociological concept, which refers to connections within and between social networks. The core idea is “that social networks have value. Just as a screwdriver (physical capital) or a college education (human capital) can increase productivity (both individual and collective), so do social contacts affect the productivity of individuals and groups”.” (Wikipedia/Putnam, Robert)
With the expansion of big cities, social bonds between neighbours got lost. Whilst we may not know the people who live next door, we might talk online to strangers from the other side of the world, give advice and ask for help. Still, it seems that virtual social networks are indeed reviving real life social bonds, which is a very promising sign for the future. Comparing it again to the fine example of the oven workshop: instead of direct neighbours, it was mostly anonymous strangers who gathered via internet platforms, but real life social bonds were the result of it!
Filed under: Art, Design, Food, Good to know | Tags: event, experimental, food, season
Some white vegetables
About two weeks ago, my flatmates Samara and Ilona and me sat together in the kitchen, complaining about the long Finnish winter standing right on the porch, knocking quite heavily on the door. Dark mornings, dark nights, and no real joy in the veggie shelves of the supermarket. But… what about the white things, that brighten up the winter? Such as snow? And when it comes to food, there is loads of delicious white edibles, that are actually white, because they rather grow in the dark or under the surface of the earth, and don’t get much light to see.
So the result of our discussion was: the plan of having a white-party (Forces of light), just before Halloween. White food, white drinks, white dresses. I know, it has been sort of done before. But it really gets your creativity going when you limit your choice of ingredients for a dish to solely one colour. You start adjusting known recipes and inventing new ones, and start seeing only the white things everywhere you go. According to popular lore in Italy, eating white (‘mangiare in bianco’) is recommended when you have digestional problems or a stomach flu. It basically means to cut out the sauces, eat plain, nothing fried and too fatty. Most white foods are not as acid and high in histamins likemany red foods, for example.
Marije Vogelzang, the Dutch eating designer I mentioned in an earlier post, actually graduated with a work about only white food that she designed for funerals. According to her, in many cultures, the colour white symbolizes death, unlike in western society. White is, of all ‘colours’, most rich in metaphores and meanings.
Filed under: Design, Food, Production, Theories | Tags: agriculture, community, culture, knowledge, nature, permaculture, simple living
Fuji Eco Park Village, Japan, by Cecilia Macaulay
Last night, I attended a lecture about Permaculture at the Hub Helsinki. My mind is blasted. Jerome Osentowski, director of the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute, was speaker of the night. It got me really interested in learning more about Permaculture, which is a whole philosophy including social, economical, technological, cultural, educational, political and spiritual aspects. Basically, it is a concept about a self-sustained life, independent from governments and states, in accord with nature. The term comes from the two words ‘permanent’ and ‘agriculture’, and “aims to design human settlements and agricultural systems that mimic nature”, Osentowski presented in his lecture. Three basic ethics lead Permaculture: care for the earth, care for the people, and sharing the surplus. From the website www.permacultureprinciples.com, you can find very nice and clear descriptions of the principles, presented in the permaculture flower diagram, which are explained more nearly when clicking on them. Those Ecovillages are like small Utopian realities with a holistic philosophy, that I agree with in many aspects. I would only be careful with a too large body of rules and regulations that need to be followed.
In the discussion after the lecture, the question was raised whether is was possible to use only vegan fertilizers, forgoing animal manures, since Osentowski is making use of the rabbits’ and chicken’s dirt for the plants. I was wondering what could be wrong with using animal excrement, and found an answer of sorts in the internet: Using animal manures would support the meat and dairy industries. But if one raises the animals himself and does not make use of any other products but their dirt? Food philosophy at its best, source of discussion and thoughts; I am seriously troubled.
Here an interesting article about Masanobu Fukuoka’s, a Japanese farmer, philosophy, whose agricultural approach is recommended on the Permaculture website. Another interesting aspect are the alternative economic models proposed and encouraged, such as volunteer work, trading without money, and concepts such as WWOOFing (which I plan on doing next year – I hope to find answers to all my questions!).
Filed under: Bread, Food, Good to know, Theories | Tags: bread, food, identity
Cover image of the book ‘CrEATe – Eating, Design and Future Food’
You are what you eat – how true is this saying? From my experience of working at the cashier of a supermarket, I have to admit that I cannot withstand making up profiles of the customers, imagining their different ways of living while scanning their groceries. Like all products we buy, consume, and wear, food especially is an expression of how we live and who we are. Of all products, food is the one that gets closest to your body. By eating food, it actually becomes part of our system. It affects our health, our well-being, and the way we look and act. It affects emotions and can arouse memories. In her book ‘Eat love’, eating designer Marije Vogelzang describes eight different dimensions of food, that she provides as an inspiring starting point for people working with food:
– the senses – nature – culture – society – technique – psychology – science – action
Looking back in food history, certain foods obtained specific roles in a nutritional class hierachy and cultural data base, so that eating certain foods distinguished one group from another. To cultivate food and shape it into man-made products such as bread and wine was looked at as an indication of civilitas – Roman and Greek writers such as Procopius wondered e.g. about Lapps, who only lived off hunted animals, without cultivating any food from the earth. Pride of the nutritional and cultural identity, and maybe also the lack of understanding for other food cultures characterized all groups.
Rather than having a ‘plant of cultivation’ such as corn in America, rice in Asia, and wheat in the Greek and Latin worlds, Celts and Germanics were characterized with an animal, namely the pig. Similarily, Germanic mythology often used pigs as a symbol of the origin of life, whereas Greek and Latin writers valued above all all the fruits of the earth, an earth that would give food as a result of human labour. ‘It is from [bread] that the whole world begins’, did Pythargoras write. It was bread that, together with wine, allowed the savage man to become civilized, as can be read in the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest testimonies of Mediterrean culture. What is the definition of civilization, what is the true meaning of culture?
Source: The culture of food//Massimo Montanari; Blackwell Publishers Ltd., Oxford 1996
Filed under: Art, Food, Network, Projects for inspiration | Tags: activism, culture, event, nature, participatory
Interspecies collaborations/ David Rothenberg
A few weeks ago, I have been contacted by a Swedish artist named Jana Fröberg, who studied at the Art Academy of Oslo, where my good friend Tabea is studying now. Somehow, she had stumbled upon my blog, and told me about an art and ecology happening in Oslo she is participating in, Gentle Actions. Shortly after, I got to know Jan van Boeckl, who is a researcher and lecturer in Environmental Art Education, when he attended the 2/5:GROW-dinner at Taik, who tells me about participating in the Gentle Actions event. What a small world! A few days ago, I talked to Tabea on Skype, and she attended the event and got to know, without knowing about me knowing, Jana and Jan. The world is not only small, it is shrinking!
“Gentle Actions is an art & ecology happening with an experimental visual framework that will take place at the gallery Kunstnerenes Hus in Oslo/Norway from the 23rd of October till the 14th of November 2010. It will be an interactive meeting place which combines the transformatory power of art with interdisciplinary ecology. Gentle Actions will function as a social sculpture and gather people engaged in social transformation within the arts, culture, humanities, social and nature based academia together with cultural activists and an actively engaged public. It will be an interactive and collaborative platform that includes dialogues and lectures, various presentations, workshops, discussions, and an extensive film program.
Quoting Jaques Rancière: “Art no longer wants to respond to the excess of commodities and signs, but to a lack of connections. The loss of the “social bond”, and the duty incumbent on artist to work to repair it, are the words on the agenda… It’s not only the forms of civility that we have lost, but the very sense of co-presence of beings and things that constitutes a world.”
As part of the program, Jana and the artists Sandor Ellix Katz and Rebecka Beinart will do something very inspiring and related to my topic:
“Porridge, cutting edge yoghurt, and sourdough bread” – This space will provide food for thought in the form of workshops, space for conversation and the rituals of sharing meals, in addition to a variety of sensory experiences. There will be a rich array of tastes and smells from living cultured foods and sourdough bread, to traditional porridge and wild teas. The duration of the event will be marked through the slow fermentation and growth of living foods occupying the space.
Wish I could be there!
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