CLIMAVORE: Losing Cultures
Project class with Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual & Alon Schwabe)
Room A.UG_24 and Kolosssaal, Akademiestr. 2
Time phase 1: 31.08-04.09., phase 2: online tutorials in September/October, phase 3: 02.–06.11.2020 (all dates tbc)
Teaching language English
Registration until 1 July 2020 by indicating your focus of work, number of semesters and your course of study or class:
The number of places is limited. A notification about participation will follow in due course.
What do you eat in a period of drought? How do you water without water? How did fish turn from a valuable food source into a source of pollution? How could coastal communities adapt to rising sea levels? These and other questions will be addressed in Cooking Sections' workshop structured around the cross-disciplinary framework of CLIMAVORE. Different from omnivore, carnivore, vegetarian or vegan, CLIMAVORE uses diets as forms of infrastructure to explore how to eat as humans change climate. This implies finding new ways to adapt our food production and consumption patterns, as well as our cultural imaginaries to increasingly evident human-induced environmental transformations.
As the global environmental crisis is challenging the fortification of European borders, the workshop will revolve around how climatic changes are contesting food territories worldwide. The correlation between "origin" and "quality" is a modern invention materialised through the complex system of PDO (protected designation of origin) labels and certifications. It dates back to the beginning of the 20th century, when a series of ecological crises and parasite outbreaks in French vineyards accelerated the colonial project in Algeria. These entanglements around disease containment, eco-territorial control and political power struggles are once again at the forefront today, as changing temperatures and eroding ecosystems are reshaping borders anew, modifying ecological associations, flavours, seasons and vocabulary used to describe products coming from shifting landscapes. Throughout different exercises, readings, talks and lectures the studio will investigate how to work on site-responsive projects while advancing skills in alternative methodologies for mapping, sensing and supporting human and more-than-human interactions.
It is intended that the project class contributes to this year's edition of the Münchner Klimaherbst on the subject of system change (working title) (06.10.–06.11.2020) in the first week of November, provided that the event may take place in its currently planned form.
Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual & Alon Schwabe) is a duo of spatial practitioners based out of London. It was born to explore the systems that organise the world through food. Using installation, performance, mapping and video, their research-based practice explores the overlapping boundaries between visual arts, architecture and geopolitics. Since 2015 they are working on multiple iterations of the long-term site-specific Climavore project exploring how to eat as humans change climates. In 2016 they opened The Empire Remains Shop, a platform to critically speculate on implications of selling the remains of Empire today. Their first book was published by Columbia Books on Architecture and the City about this project (2018). Their work has been exhibited at Manifesta12, Palermo; Lafayette Anticipations, Paris; 13th Sharjah Biennial; Serpentine Galleries, London; Atlas Arts, Skye; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Storefront for Art & Architecture, New York; HKW Berlin; Akademie der Künste, Berlin; 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale; US Pavilion, 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale; and they have been residents in The Politics of Food programme at Delfina Foundation, London. They currently lead a studio unit at the Royal College of Art, London. They have recently been awarded the Special Prize at the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize and are nominated for the Visible Award.