Let the debate begin!
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Monday, 30 November 2009
The story of stuff...
From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. This is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns, it exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.
Lecture: Richard Sennett at the LSE
Richard Sennet: Urban age understanding cities series
Cities, design and climate change
I attended this lecture two weeks ago, it covered multiscalar ecologies of cities, their incessant demands for resources and how these factors modify and dictate a cities geography, whether through food, furniture or jewelry and the impact these systems also have on urban relations, it covered the following:
- The sociology of consumption
- Dematerialisation of consumption
- Conspicuous consumption
- Production and consumption
- Delegating back to society
- Citizens connecting with civil societies
"People have little idea of how most things are made, they are detached from material and production value alongside the many chain links that are part of the production system. Serious change needs to occur in terms of the things people within society want and how they behave. It is when consumers begin demand to know how things are made will change occur, consumers need to begin to think for themselves"
Material Economies
Material economies from Michael Richardson on Vimeo.
We spent last week creating short videos, visual windows into the world of our projects. Mine, stemming around the vast canyons of knowledge that are evidently absent from the minds of the consumer, concerned the provenance of consumer goods and food products. This was a small documentary/investigation into the minds of the masses, interrogating how clued up they are about what they buy, all through the medium of film.
As you can hazard to imagine, the origins, production methods, ingredients, transportation modes were all factors vacant in the minds of most with but a few boasting knowledge of various products 'organic' and 'fair trade' credentials. One of the recurrent responses though it is worth noting, is that a fair percentage of those queried within the process seemed to think that Sainsburys, or the 'brand' itself were the organisations that manufactured the items/products, Since when did Sainsbury's ever produce any of its consumables from scratch instore?
Embarrassment
I'd say safely say a large percentage of those asked throughout the process were marginally-deeply embarrassed about their lack of basic knowledge concerning the everyday items they consume, it can be construed that which forms the everyday has marginal value, food: it's ok, it's cheap enough, we can just bin it and buy more tomorrow.
One last point, food, as well as other consumables origins are rarely scrutinised, but as interest has slowly taken a hold tv has begun to shower us with a plethora of documentaries and series regarding these very issues, provenance. Regardless to say, this detachment from production and material origins within society is nothing short of amazing.Space makers network... lets create
Following on with the theme of self-sufficiency within communities, I visited the Brixton Arcade for a nosy round the 22 individual vacant shops that are being made available for potential businesses and art projects. All units come complete with the enticing offer of 3 months free rent and the project is being organised in conjunction with local councils and the Spacemakers network. The idea is to transform the presently malnourished shopping arcade with new/innovative business/creative enterprises in an attempt to attract and re-invigorate this rather wonderful space into something Brixton can whole heartedly boast about. I put together a proposal for a unit, comprising intentions to lure in members of the community and engage them with an array of making practices, bridging the knowledge gap between consumption and material economies- that is everything that comes before. A lecture by Richard Sennett at the LSE inspired this course of action, one of the subjects dominating his talk was the knowledge void concerning material investment and the demise of craftsmanship and the qualities within society it imparts, anyway... I proposed so I could test out a few ideas and use it as a platform for extracting valuable opinions community wide.
Borough Market
One of the main purposes of this visit was for me to absorb the atmosphere and try to understand how possible it would be to transfer the positive traits of this urban environment into spaces of a less desirable nature. Just going back to Steels 'Hungry City', I found one of the points she mentions about the breakdown of youth morals interesting, especially as she relates it directly to food, the process of eating around the table in terms of it being a primer for conversation turn taking, respect, restraint and sharing.
Vulgar cesspit of excess
The subheading is rather dramtic but there is a paragraph in Carolyn Steels book after a visit she makes and for me it has struck a high note.
Hungry City
I have just ploughed through Carolyn Steels 'Hungry City' inspired from my Transition Town participance. The book, in a very tiny nutshell, explores through history until the present day the following:
- The land
- Supplying the city
- Sitopia
- Market and supermarket
- Waste
- At the table
- Kitchen
It paints a relatively dismal picture of western, but particularly UK food culture and the detrimental effects our cheap food culture has imbued within out society, issues such as food education, social/cultural decomposition, the demise of many once charming aspects of the city...
"Those who control food, control us, and when you consider that that 80 percent of the grocery trade in Britain is controlled by just four supermarkets, that gives them incredible power, not just over our wallets, but over our bodies too. The latest trend is for large supermarkets like Tesco to become urban developers, offering local councils incentives to allow them to build large chunks of city with mega-stores at their core – effectively creating captive markets for their business."
As a consequence of reading this book, I decided to jaunt off down to London's Borough Market and embrace the atmosphere that cities now seemingly bare little witness to. I intended to understand and experience first hand the types of market that would have at some point in the not too distant past imbued social integrity and identity within the people. The animated conversations, the energetic debate, the bartering, the laughter, the nagging of children, the eating, the mess, the life and the vibrancy. Carolyn highlights in her book that market places were once the social beacons of the city, going not just back to ancient Greece or Rome but to periods as recent as that of Victorian Britain.
Transition Town Brixton
I thought that this workshop held in Brixton may house the potential to assist with the development of my project since its current focus orients around de-centralising production, de-monopolising and community base manufacture.
Transition Town is a movement which provides a framework for reducing interested towns/communities carbon footprints through a series templates, it was initiated within the UK and has since been adopted globally to much critical acclaim.
This particular workshop, as the title suggests revolved broadly around issues to do with local food security, food recycling and growing initiatives. The debate took place over the course of the day and provided a rich insight into members of the community who are actively seeking alternative methods of cultivation, recycling, rainwater harvesting etc... We brainstormed, ideated and partook in a series of activities relating to the community/city and possible within future scenarios and to top it off a liberal dousing of hand-holding and meditative breathing was thrown in for good measure. I'm slightly kidding.
Monday, 2 November 2009
Sunday, 1 November 2009
Perforate
Here is the 'Perforate' communal pasta packaging and final product. Given the face that product uses the hands as the main instrument I opted for a hand illustrated box and instruction guide
Cutlery-less meal
Exploring the factors that come into play further, I staged a meal with a friend, one in which cutlery would usually prove to be paramount. We ate pasta and soup which proved to be quite interesting. This experiment illuminated the importance of turn taking, very similar to that employed within conversation, as a social process it was curious to observe the additional interactions that are necessary within the structure of the meal. Livia, my eating partner also noted an unexpected questioning of what was on her plate alongside an increased level of sensory intensity.
Lets take away cutlery
For the brief I had decided to take away the most western of implements, the cutlery and document it's possible consequences. My reason for the choice of implement was simple, eastern cultures seemingly adopt a closer connection with their food, family and generally speaking, with their senses, taste, touch and olfactory. I had intended to see if I could rouse similar effects within our western culture and where better to start than in the school canteen. Cutlery serves as an obstacle between the user and the food in which they eat, this is not to say that western cuisine demands such implements because it does, either way, I wanted to document users interactions with their food and this was the most appropriate method.
Some of the responses that I received are as follows:
- You consider the texture before it reaches your mouth
- You develop an association between texture and flavor
- Germs were at the forefront of most participants minds
- The plate was perceived as a unique territory
- Tearing the food with fingers feels new
- Licking fingers feels wrong
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