FoAM - nourish

Research Gathering with Alex, Ali and Luka

maja — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:38:40 +0000

Start: 2010-02-12 16:00 Europe/Brussels

End: 2010-02-12 20:00 Europe/Brussels

Please join FoAM's first family in residence, Alex, Ali and Luka, for a farewell afternoon tea.

They will be presenting the prototype of their robotic au pair (Robaupair) and sharing some ideas on the creative possibilities of parenthood.

Summary of the residency findings: http://lib.fo.am/research_report_ali_alex

Feral Trade Tea Party & Raffle

maja — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:43:26 +0000

Start: 2008-11-16 17:00 Europe/Brussels

End: 2008-11-16 19:00 Europe/Brussels

Kate Rich will introduce Feral Trade (http://feraltrade.org), serve ferally traded tea & coffee & conduct a raffle of the Feral Trade Hamper, a seasonal selection of goods sourced and transported over social networks.

Feral Trade is an artist-run grocery business, trading since 2003. Goods are run outside the global market, using the surplus freight potential of commuter, vacation and culturally funded travel to transport groceries intercity. Preliminary attempts to map this terrain show a constellation of complex connections - an intricate time-space system covering thousands of miles. Products assembled in the Feral Trade Hamper (Xmas 08) have been hand-freighted in from all corners of the social/cultural networks and include tea from Bangladesh, grappa from Croatia, cacao from Brazil and sweets from the world's newest nation Montenegro.

A hamper is a place where diverse grocery items can congregate. Traditionally in times of trouble, persons or community groups donate to needy people a hamper of food or other household necessities. Here, stockists from 3rd world and subsistence economies have been grouped together to provide relief for the West European food shopper, currently suffering from degraded supermarket shopping on offer.

Each product is accompanied by biographical information, recording relations with producers and couriers, transit conditions, route information and the bounteous detail of delay, seizure, communications and other failures which present a persistent challenge to the assumed smooth transit of goods.

If you would like to join us for this event, please RSVP by the 10th of November 2008 to bxl[at]fo[dot]am

Blanc-Mange Cinema

maja — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 16:54:56 +0000

Start: 2003-09-27 20:00 Europe/Brussels

End: 2003-09-27 23:00 Europe/Brussels

This event is a part of FoAM’s yearly theme ‘nourish’. The process of preparation, presentation and consumption of food, its related cultural rituals, and their informal breaking are used to achieve the synaesthesia of sensual perception in responsive environments.

‘Blanc-mange’ [white eat], the well-known French dessert, has its roots in medieval times. Figuratively it means “nonsense” or “trivial matters”. Although accused of being bland and unimaginative, white foods lend themselves to be painted like a blank canvas. Structured as a slow-food event, ‘Blanc-Mange Cinema’ comprises a gastronomic, as well as cinematic experience. Food films are screened on an edible projection surface of white foods. Course after course, the films unfold on a changing table-top-landscape, dependent on the viewer/diner’s appetite. Blanc-Mange Cinema offers a tasty critique on the idea of the sterile ‘white cube’ gallery spaces where the ‘do not touch’ art dogma still reigns. In our case, art is something to be consumed and internalised with gusto.

Digestible Designers: Zanzi/FoAM/ Rasa Alksnyte, Pieter De Wel, Maja Kuzmanovic, Nat Muller
Spatial Design: FoAM / Lina Kusaite in collaboration with L’Anverre
Media Designers: FoAM/ Nik Gaffney, Maja Kuzmanovic
Narrative Design & Text Research: Maja Kuzmanovic, Nat Muller

http://libarynth.org/bizar_story
http://libarynth.org/sensual_story

Vlaamse Overheid

maja — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 12:24:36 +0000

Maki Ueda: Scentology

maja — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:49:50 +0000

I research scents and the sense of smell. My challenge is to use them as a medium in art. In the exhibition context I create a spatial expressions with the scents, I give workshops pm extracting the scents (I extract the scents literary from anything: from food to the cloth, flowers to the ink), and I develop unique 'perfumes' with my extracts, not for to be worn, but to be smelled. I use basic chemistry and cooking techniques in my mini-laboratory for extracting the scents.

More information: http://scent-lab.blogspot.com/

Kate Rich: Fair Trade

maja — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:43:39 +0000

The research takes place at the intersection of several networks: art, information and food. Its express intention is to use tools of art (production/curation) to investigate how our daily grocery products are articulated, packaged, distributed and delivered.

The first aim is to take a sample grocery item or items into deeper investigation, to better understand its provenance. To explore the opposition of Commons to Commodity proposed by transatlantic historian Peter Linebaugh: that the commodity is the opposite of the commons as it conceals human relations except for the money relation, while the product of the commons is filled with human relations including possibly unpleasant ones. The second interest is with the public diet of cultural entities: to assess how food and drink is considered and served in art and cultural organisations, including their relationships with local and international food suppliers and how these relate to the other activities and core concerns of the organisation. Thirdly, the nomad/resident diet: design prescriptions for survival in the art world via nutritional suggestions for the travelling artist - to promote a continuity between knowledge work and the immediate environment it takes place in. In presenting the research in the context of art, the aim is to redraw the coordinates of the common global grocery product - normally rendered invisible in its background role on supermarket or refrigerator shelves - to restore its essential foreignness and its potential as a conduit for other experience.

Related: http://www.feraltrade.org/

Sanjeev Shankar: RUrban Permaculture

maja — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:27:42 +0000

This project explores aspects of human environment, its relation with ecology and our attempt to encourage more sustainable growth. The relevant fields of inquiry are urban ecology, sustainability, human plant interaction and biomorphism. The research explores ways in which we can transform our cities into productive, healthy, edible and playful green visions. In recent years there has been a growing public movement to bring ecology into urban environments where many people spend most of their time. However, people are still grappling with the problem of a balance between 'growth' and conservation. This problem is not limited to emerging cities in the developing world. The thrust of this research is to explore methods to initiate collective public action in this direction.

In progress: http://libarynth.org/research_report_sanjeev-shankar

nourish

nik — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:34:09 +0000

foamfood: 2004-2010

Born out of our love for good food and the strong conviction that the dinner table is probably the best example of a well designed social interface, we are conducting a series of culinary experiments. In these experiments, we seek to merge matter with media, aesthetic concept with gastronomic pleasure, environmental sustainability with social play. Food is more than just the fuel that makes us run, it is, as food anthropologist Margaret Visser contends 'a medium for social relationships: satisfaction of the most individual of needs becomes a means of creating community'.