Food, food culture, food as culture and the cultures that grow our food

Urban gardening lessons for Dutch children

April 21, 2006

On an island in Amsterdam’s Westerpark, a horizontal grid of 1m2 garden plots are being prepared for the children. The sign says that around 500 children will receive weekly education about nature and the environment on these plots. Although this garden grid offers an extreme image of mini-allotments filled with one carrot, one lettuce, one rhubarb, one sunflower, one fennel, one this and one that, I cannot say that I think this is a negative idea in terms of education. In fact, gardening in this way has the potential to teach children about density and clustering. It’s like an MVRDV-isation of grammar school education. By this I am referring to educarion informed by architects MVRDV’s notions of density and as explored in their publications FARMAX (floor area ratio) and KM3, (cubic kilometer) Excursions on Capacities from Actar Publishers. Next step, vertical gardening for urban children!

(The image has been enhanced to increase readability of the sign.)

debra at 7:13 | Comments (6) | post to del.icio.us

Locative eating in Overijssel at the end of the Hungry Gap

April 19, 2006


Image of a shopping centre under contruction in Enschede, NL. Soon to be a banquet location

Speaking of starving oneself, although it seems like it’s spring, crop-wise we’re right in the middle of the Hungry Gap, the period before the spring crops have come in, and when foodstocks stored from fall and winter are beginning to wain and look rather cruddy. Way back in January I wrote about how surprised I was that even though I had let my garden go to pot, there was still more than I could eat growing in the frozen ground. Now that it’s no longer necessary to wear two pairs of woolen pants, there’s not a lot of calories in my Occitanian kitchen garden.

Back up here in the Polar Circle, the cold weather lingers on and on and I’m in the throes of organising a banquet for ca. 70 people in May, right in the middle of the Hungry Gap (plus 2 cocktail parties, a breakfast and 2 lunches). The occasion is that the Dutch Art Institute where I teach, is hosting a 2 day international symposium titled, Here as the centre of the world (May 23-24, 2006 in Enschede, NL). The subject of the symposium is the position of artists, art initiatives and all their entourage operating at what is considered to be the ‘periphery’. The reason that I have been saddled with what I prefer to call the ‘art direction’ of these feedings, is that I have a big mouth. And a heightened sensitivity for good aesthetics and sustainable practices. And I think that an art institute should set a good example for its students. And I happened to express these sentiments at an organisational meeting.

Often at cultural events in the NL, folks just throw a bunch of fluffy sandwiches smeared with margarine and factory made young cheese on an aluminium platter and call it a day. Although there are clear exceptions to the rule, I just couldn’t bear the thought of the bad food jokes from our illustrious guests travelling all the way from Damascus, Beirut, Khartoum and Taipei. Also, as a member of the teaching staff and moderator of at least one of the talks, the thought of 2 days of bad food catapulted me into a state of action. In fact this is the perfect opportunity to investigate the wealth of organic (and organic-enough) produce in and around the easternmost bulge of the Netherlands. I’ll be posting about it here.


Image of the Los Hoes historical farm building in Enschede, NL. Soon to be breakfast location

This is what I’ve gleaned so far in terms of promising producers of delicious regional food, beer and wine:

I’m still looking for producers of honey, cheese and a bread if you know of anything.


Image of the hearth in the Los Hoes a historical farm building in Enschede, NL. Soon to be a breakfast location.

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debra at 20:57 | Comments (6) | post to del.icio.us

Anorexia, art, war, rant

April 17, 2006


The pumpkin dumpling that I just couldn’t finish.

A little less than a year ago I wrote an entry about SehnSucht, a restaurant for anorexics in Berlin that had opened up sometime in January 2005. Because I didn’t have a picture of the restaurant, and because I hadn’t visited it (and to this day can only get a robot on the phone), I did the logical thing and accompanied my entry with a blurry image of a greasy half-eaten pumpkin dumpling.

The dumpling image was a huge hit if i can believe my site meter referrals. And until last month, dumplin’ was smack in the middle of a Google Images page for the search-string anorexics. Folks were clicking on the dumpling, and so doing finding culiblog, proving that it’s not only horny old fat men that scour the anorexia sites for skeletal supermodels and thinspiration. Actual ‘Anas’ and ‘Mias’ were haulin’ their boney tuchas over to culiblog to get a gander at the food porn.

Well this one’s for you, Ladies!



LA Raeven at the Mediamatic War Salon, photo by Bea Correa, courtesy of Mediamatic

LA Raeven is the artist name for twins Liesbeth and Angelique Raeven, whose very subject matter is themselves. Their video installation work and performances are about the female body image and the behaviour dynamics of twins, especially when this dynamic expresses itself in psychologically nuanced eating habits.

LA Raeven were launched into fame in February 2002 when they created a huge kafuffle with Wild Zone 1 & 2, a video installation exhibited at the ICA London. It was the first time that the twins showed themselves in their work, lolling about and being overly skinny amidst half-drunk glasses of white wine and a floor littered with the occasional mini-nibble. The gallery was infused with the artists’ own feral scent, reportedly concocted from their very own pee. Of course the bourgeois art press found it so scandalous that female artists with anorexia should be able to express themselves about body image, that they censured the artists’ call for participation before the exhibition, and a goodly deal of the exhibition’s press. Just like in China!


LA Raeven, video still from Wild Zone 1 (2001), courtesy of the artists

In a painful to watch BBC NewsNight interview, the Raeven sisters weren’t contextualised primarily as artists, not even as kooky artists, but as eating-disorder victims. The ‘feminist’ psychotherapist Susie Orbach, author of Hunger Strike and ironically, Fat is a Feminist Issue (no potshots, please) was called in to moderate the discussion. Watching the interview, I was apalled at the insufferably intolerant BBC commentator. I believe that self-empowerment has many forms of expression, and that it is in fact medicalisation and consistently pathologising what is primarily women’s behaviour, that is inherently anti-feminist. But that’s just me, I’m a 3rd-wave feminist orthochondriac, not into rehearsing unhealthy scenarios, or encouraging others to practice theirs from haughty podia. And I’m talking about NewsNight, here.

The sisters told me recently, ‘It was unbelieveable how we were treated at that time. Censured! When a Chinese artist eats a fetus, you don’t see journalists calling psychoanalysts in to help. Instead, Western art journalists stumble over themselves trying to explain away (AiWeiWei!) this behaviour as an expression against an unhealthy regime.”



LA Raeven at the Mediamatic War Salon, discuss their new work, ‘Thin Line’ (2005), photo by Bea Correa, courtesy of Mediamatic

As part of Mediamatic’s anti-war protest exhibition titled, le Mépris, (non-food-related, but go see it anyway), Mediamatic held a War Salon, (April 5th) at which the Sisters Raeven were invited to show some of their new work. The idea to put LA Raeven in a war and violence themed programme was an inspired one. Aside from new work by the ladies, highlights from the lineup included an analysis of the US Army recruitment game America’s Army, and ended with a macabre audience participation karaoke with the songs of that very political body, Brigitte Bardot.

A goodly portion of the audience was represented by young male gamers from the nearby universities, there to listen to their friends, scientists David B. Nieborg and Jonas Hielscher speak about and demonstrate America’s Army and Battlefield2, respectively. Gamers. That’s a nice, socially acceptable term that we all use in contemporary cultural discourse. Gamers play games, in this case, war games on computers with lots of other gamers. Gamers at university study games and other gamers, and even write theses about these things. Well LA Raeven also play games.


LA Raeven, video still from “Love knows many faces” (2005), courtesy of the artists

I disagree with those that would suggest that LA Raeven’s presence and presentation at the Mediamatic War Salon represents a war on the body, or war against the body. Their oeuvre, and especially the new works, Prison in Me (2005) and Thin Line (2006) show an assault on individuality and a strategy to escape this assault. The image above is a still from the video, Love knows many faces (2005), in which the twins go for a swim and play a sisterly game of trying to drown eachother. Recovering from a symmetrical but futile attempt at individuation, they exhaust themselves into one big clump of Liebestod. Game on, Girls!

Thin Line (2006) shows one of LA Raeven’s own food games, now in the hands of pre-pubescent twins. In a Bruxelles basement conjuring up horrific notions of Dutroux, the identically dressed twins flip a coin. The ‘winner’ is required to eat both sisters’ dinner portions, and the loser gets nothing at all. The game is repeated through all the courses of a (continental European) meal, such that inevitably, one of the sisters ends up stuffing herself whilst the other is left to go hungry. Before you brush it off as childish, may I suggest that you play this game with your partner for an entire day, exploring the complex feelings that it generates. In fact it is not at all about waging war on one’s own body. Pity that the body just gets in the way.

The hunger strike is male behaviour, a purposeful and politically engaged expression. The hunger artist is male, and is an artist above all. I left the war salon with even greater respect for LA Raeven’s authenticity and artistic engagement. But I coudln’t help wonder about the reasons why (female) anorexia should be considered to be more pathological and unspeakable than the (male) fear of terrorism whose effects are unleashed upon us every day. Why should an expression of the fear of fat, and/or the extreme expression of self-control that is anorexia be considered to be more offensive than the extreme societal control that is expressed by waging and playing at waging war?


LA Raeven, video still from “Prison in Me” (2005), courtesy of the artists

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debra at 19:10 | Comments (13) | post to del.icio.us

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