Residency Unlimited: Thinking Food Futures
Curatorial Assistant, Social Media Designer/Manager 2020-2021
An Interdisciplinary Symposium and Exhibition on Food Justice, Resilience, and Adaptation
Virtual Symposium: December 12th- 13th 2020
Virtual Exhibition Opening: December 18th 2020
Curated by Livia Alexander and Isin Önol
Curatorial Assistant: Chayna Yoshida
Inviting environmentalists, scientists, farmers and artists to collectively reimagine answers, possibilities and potentials for radical change
Thinking Food Futures is a two-day virtual symposium and exhibition, tackling one of the most urgent questions of our time: How will we feed ourselves when the table we eat on—Planet Earth—is collapsing beneath us? The program includes live workshops, panel discussions, lecture performances, poetry readings, video works, a radio talk show and an exhibition of new artworks made specifically for this platform, alongside existing works.
This project builds upon the thematic residency Food Futures which took place from April through July 2020 with seven local artists selected through open call and a panel process to reimagine issues around food resilience in urban environments and food justice.
Climate change is something we can literally taste, its effects sowing chaos and confusion as plants bloom early and a fortnight of torrential storms destroy an annual yield of crops in rapid succession. In the face of such monumental threats on a planetary scale, and with food access so unevenly distributed, food insecurity is not a question of climate change alone. It is deeply entangled with political conflicts, systemic racism, and intensifying economic inequalities and biases.
The challenges on the table are complex and require different forms of learning –as well as unlearning, speaking and engaging, so we are not isolated in small clusters of specific expertise, or repeating the mistakes established long before us Thinking Food Futures aims to create a platform, or perhaps in our context lays out a table, for discussion, to gain an understanding,” said Nathalie Angles, Residency Unlimited Executive Director.
“By employing artistic research and harnessing the creative potential to respond to these challenges” state curators Livia Alexander and Isin Onol, “we seek to deploy the artistic tools of engagement that create opportunities and establish new connections among disciplines, social groups, and local solutions.”
Thinking Food Futures proposes that we reimagine how we farm, ship, share, and eat; for the sake of ourselves and the planet, to rethink the future of food by radically reimaging the present. The symposium brings together artists, poets, writers, scientists, farmers, chefs, and policy advocates to ask questions together while searching for collective answers, possibilities and potentials in the blurry spaces in-between fields of cultivation, areas of expertise, and wide pools of passion and commitment.
Symposium Participants:
Liana Aghajanian | Betsy Andrews | Mirna Bamieh | Scott Alvez Barton | Andrew Reid Bell | Ramón Cruz | Keg de Souza | Gillian Goddard | Cynthia R. Greenlee | Omotara James | Defne Koryürek | Siri Lee | William Mazza | Melissa Metrick | Asunción Molinos | Carolyn Monastra | Sabiyha Prince | Jessica Segall | VK Sreelesh | Candace Thompson | Michelle Threadgould | Jenifer Wightman | Allie Wist | Viswan Zorba
Exhibition Participants:
Esra Durukan | Yoko Inoue | Siri Lee | Asunción Molinos | Rosa Nussbaum | Jessica Segall | Keg de Souza | Lily Consuelo Saporta Tagiuri | Candace Thompson | Andrew Vigil-Emerson | Allie Wist
After its online premiere, a recording of all sessions will be available on the Residency Unlimited website, alongside the ongoing virtual exhibition –an interactive website designed and developed by Julian Mathews.
Organized by Residency Unlimited and made possible by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.
RESIDENCY UNLIMITED(RU) is a non-profit art organization that supports the creation, presentation and dissemination of contemporary art through its unique residency program and year-round public programs. It provides customized residencies for international and local artists and curators in New York City focused on network support, project/production assistance, and public exposure. www.residencyunlimited.org