Communauté Choucroute, Community Pickle,
a proposal
October 30, 2008
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Jangdok are onggi or earthen jars storing jang (condiments) such as gochujang (chili pepper condiment), doenjang (soybean paste), ganjang (Korean soy sauce) or kimchi. Image from Save the Dinosaur’s photostream and used entirely without permission.
The following is a statement about food storage that I will be presenting this year as part of John Thackara’s City Eco Lab at the Cité du Design Biënale in Saint-Étienne (Nov 15-30, 2008). Chef Paul Freestone and I will be pickling, sauerchocrouting and making delicious kimchi as one part of the installation. Please come visit the exhibition and taste what I’m proposing for the resilience of our communities.
Food sovereignty refers to the right of people to define and to have access to their own food and agriculture systems in contrast to having food largely subject to international market forces or defined by the dynamics of industrial food production. Designing community food storage into our cities and towns has enormous potential to reduce waste, shorten supply chains and on a socio-cultural level improve our communities.
Start imagining public food storage as part of urban masterplans, how it could look (and smell) and what it would mean in terms of activity and focus for the community. Before you discount this notion as completely comical, are you aware of how your community stores its food presently, how resilient it is in case of damage to the transport network, market forces, or how dependent your food is on foreign resource supplies?
In Europe, our backup food supply is most often stored en route, in trucks on the road. The fermented vegetable installation and demonstration, Communauté Choucroute is a proposal inspired by places in Asia where pickled vegetables are stored in beautiful ceramic vats in the open air, in the public space, ready for when you need it.
For greater food sovereignty, let’s store food around us, in our communities.
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Kimchi pots stored along the side of a busy road, image from Jwh8a’s photostream on FlickR and used entirely without permission.
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Kimchi pots stored along the side of a busy road, image from AtDawnWeRide’s photostream on Flickr and used entirely without permission.
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Kimchi pots buried in straw, image from Makigama’s photostream on Flickr and used entirely without permission.
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Kimchi pots aka onggi displayed as a choir, image from mmgutz16’s photostream on Flickr and used entirely without permission.
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Kimchi pots lining the periphery of a folk village, image from Carpe Feline’s photostream on FlickR and used entirely without permission.
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Pen and ink drawing of kimchi pots stored in the public space and pumpkins growing on a thatched roof. Photo snapped by Carpe Feline and used entirely without permission.
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Save the Dinosaurs photostream on Flickr - images of a.o.t. a visit to a folk village and of course some kimchi pots being stored in the village square.
Jwh8a’s image of kimchi pots on Flickr.
AtDawnWeRide’s photostream on Flickr - kimchi pots stored and stacked alongside the road.
Makigama’s photostream on Flickr - a ceramophile and kimchi-o-phile
debra at 16:48 | | post to del.icio.us
god. this is fantastic!
Comment by David Barrie — November 1, 2008 @ 1:28