Soft landing in Ayn Hawd
August 23, 2008
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The tickly prickly pears of Ayn Hawd
Two days ago I arrived in Ayn Hawd, to start producing my farmer’s market installation for the One Land project and Platform Paradise exhibition. In 2004 the Palestinian village of Ayn Hawd received widespread recognition when architect Malkit Shoshan (NL/IL) initiated an international architecture competition to develop a forward-thinking masterplan for the village. An underlying notion behind the competition is the issue of Israeli zoning laws and planning practice used to express non-kosher political ideologies. From 1948 when the villagers were expelled from their ancestral location only a few kilometres away, to 2004 when Shoshan initiated the One Land (Two Systems) project, Ayn Hawd had been an illegal, non-existant village, situated in Israel, but subject to an entirely separate set of laws and lack of access to state infrastructure.
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The exploding pomegranates of Ayn Hawd
Now Ayn Hawd is in a state of transformation, all the more so due to the effects of the exhibition and One Land project.
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Yellow dates harvested in of Ayn Hawd
Collaborating with the villagers, my small part in this massive project is to develop a farmer’s market for Ayn Hawd, and I’ve been devoting the days to researching the village’s produce and taking stock of her food products. Olives, pomegranates, figs, kumquat, dates, grapes, prickly pears, passion fruit, peaches, lemons, limes, carob, plums, and pecans, but also herbs: thyme, hyssop, sages, rosemary, lavender, basil, chamomille, eucalyptus, lemongrass, and then there’s the honey, and the flowers, all the things one can make with all of the above ingredients. I’m certain I’ve ommitted more than half of the species, because I don’t recognise them, because I don’t know them, I can’t even see that they’re there.
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Herb garden at restaurant Al Beet in Ayn Hawd
It’s extraordinarily beautiful, with outstanding food and folk. The best restaurant in Israel is run by the mayor’s wife, Safiya and the family, right under the place where we are staying. Al Beet (the house/at home) has an herb garden and fruited terraces with figs and walls of passion fruit. Whoever is doing the landscaping clearly has a basil addiction, but the chammomile is also well represented and of course the ubiquitous thyme and hyssop… it all gets turned into za’atar.
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Pomegranate, grape, rose hips and kumquat in Ayn Hawd
One day in and they’re already overfeeding us, but that was to be expected.
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PLATFORM PARADISE is an art show commissioned by FAST (Foundation for Achieving a Seamless Territory) and curated by Maurizio Bortolotti assisted by Noga Inbar, will open from September 1st to 7th, and continue until November 1st. Invited artists and architects will address the village’s lack of public space (as an ‘unofficial’ place) by interacting with the villagers to improve their living conditions and generate new kinds of common ground. “Platform Paradise is a democratic tool aimed at bringing art (projects) into a specific living space of a community. The lack of cultural institutions in Ayn Hawd creates a new condition in which art is represented and used. In this experimental space a new kind of art projects will emerge†(Maurizio Bortolotti).
The artists will work in the village from 1st Septemebr- 6th September 2008
The opening of the art show: 6th September 2008
The show will be exhibited in Ayn Hawd until the 1st November 2008, some of the projects will remain in the village.
– MUSEO AEROSOLAR, a project initiated by Tomas Saraceno and Alberto Pesavento with communities in Abu Dhabi, Frankfurt am Main, Milan, Medellin (Colombia), Tirana, and now Ayn Hawd.
– TODAY, a video installation by Ali Kazma
– MERSTRUKTUREN by Yona Friedman
– THIRD LAND by Map Office
– A VIDEO INSTALLATION by Dan Graham
– UNTITLED by Nico Dockx and Helena Sidiropoulos
– THE ROAD MAP video installation by Stefano Boeri/Multiplicity
– MARKET DEVELOPMENT by Debra Solomon
– APPEARANCES by Berend Strik and Nisreen Abu Al Hayja with the Community of Ayn Hawd
Platform Paradise press release: low resolution (1.7 mb pdf)
Platform Paradise press release: high resolution (9 mb) pdf)
Restaurant Al Beet in Ayn Hawd, the best Palestinian food in Israel
Website devoted to providing the histories of the unrecognised Palestinian villages
Interesting website article about Israel’s unrecognised villages on Cult Case
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Map Office’s One Land garden installation in Ayn Hawd
debra at 14:36 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
SALSA SALSA!
August 13, 2008
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If you’re in or near Los Angeles this Sunday, may I suggest that you spend your entire allotted carbon footprint for the weekend on visiting the Fallen Fruit art collective’s summer harvest event SALSA SALSA. There you can make and taste tomato salsas while listening and dancing to salsa music. SALSA SALSA is a celebration of public space and the culmination of the LOVE APPLES project in which 72 tomato plants were installed on 12 traffic islands in LA and carefully tracked to see which thrive and which perish, Ã la Survivor.
LOVE APPLES is an experiment in public space in the city of Los Angeles, imagining new ways in which such spaces could be utilized to make our communities more livable and engaged. It promotes community awareness, sharing, food safety, public resources, and organic gardening. LOVE APPLES is a collaboration between the art collective Fallen Fruit and Islands of LA. The artists of Fallen Fruit investigate urban space, ideas of neighborhood and new forms of located citizenship and community all through the lens of fruit. Islands of LA is an art project that is turning traffic islands into territories of art to create community, foster discussion and explore the use and availability of public space.
PLEASE JOIN Fallen Fruit from 3 to 7 p.m. on Sunday August 17th at Farmlab (1745 N. Spring Street) to make salsa and dance together. There will be music from Mestizo L.A., a local salsa band, and a free Salsa dance class taught by Miguel Candela, a local Salsa teacher. Meet new people and talk about the future shape and texture of life in this city, including the artists and organizers listed above. Bring your homegrown or street-picked tomatoes (or chiles!) and collaborate with your neighbors on new and remarkable salsas. Bring a good food eating and dancing friend – this event is free to the public.
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the Fallen Fruit artist collective is based in L.A.
Informative culiblog entry about the Fallen Fruit Collective
Fallen Fruit’s schedule of events
Another sort of Fallen Fruit, this time it’s by the ‘wayside’
And let us not forget the delicious joys of Stolen Fruit
In Istanbul, planting tomatoes and even entire gardens in the public domain is de rigeur
debra at 11:07 | Comments (1) | post to del.icio.us
The French Paradox,
Occitanian kids and food
August 11, 2008
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Small child napping on the dinner garden path
A few weeks ago at a dinner where a meat-rich hors d’oeuvre was enjoyed during the conversation course, two little girls, probably 9 or 10 yrs old, were standing before an elaborate platter laden with rillettes on toast, discussing this informal snack.
“Oh, I just LOVE Laure’s goose rillettes, the bay, the thyme, it’s SOOO aromatic. It just opens up in your mouth!”
“Yes, and such a delicate texture, not too fine, none too curdy.”
“Oh yes! And the melting point of the goose fat on your tongue, that cooling effect, it’s like the way chocolate melts!”
“I could just eat them every day.” “Mmm mmmm, me too!”
Little Occitanian girls discussing a heady mixture of everything-but-the-squeal goose parts, butt and brain, and skin and vein, meat and fat, nose hole to tail hole eating.
And although not meat related, child-behaviour-related: What a delightful little boy last night at the restaurant, 3 yrs old, playing with another guest’s dog. The boy had too much energy to sit down, but his parents just let him do his thing, focussing on their exquisite dinners, and anyway unable to reign him in as he trotted out a dance with the dog between the tables. He weaved through the clumps of hedge-couched guests, all around the garden with the dog in tow. As the evening got on, he wore himself out, twice collapsing in a puddle of his own fatigue and falling into slumbers right on the ground. Very cute. Then one parent or another would scoop him up, and he was suddenly really small again. He refuelled on a snuggle, a micro nap and morsels of meat from their plates, and then took off again for more adventure, the source of all our smiles.
Maybe this is the real French Paradox, children enjoying eating. Appreciation of the entire animal starts early here and I witness time and time again children who are actively interested in food during preparation, but especially during dining. Could it be that the secret of getting children to eat is about making it delicious?
debra at 7:56 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
