Elvira's Notes!
Lydia's Notes!
https://dezwijger.nl/programma/when-fake-becomes-the-new-real
We both attended Future Materials lecture, on alternative material production. I thought it could bring some insight or inspiration to Elvira's work and exploring materials. Also exploring food as a material and its issue of sustainability.
I found it interesting to see this play with material and its transitional interpretation; what quality and value means culturally. It also makes me think of Elvira's workshop on trash sculptures. I could do a similar workshop with the children at my school, understanding symbolism and what values of materials mean. I could do this in an outdoor environment which would change the setup and use of material
Caption - information on the lecture
Elvira & Lydia's Field Notes
https://www.foam.org/museum/programme/feast-for-the-eyes
Elvira and I spoke about the current exhibition at FOAM on food photography. She shared an artist who photographs families food for the week, from all over the world, and illustrates it stark contrasts.
Food is a universal language which we interact with daily yet it is so varied in different cultures and it's value system. Seeing as the school I work in is an international school I thought it would be interesting to take photographs of the children's lunch boxes. The photographs below is just a starting point. Its interesting to reflect on what we value as an 'acceptable' lunch. We often have meetings with the teachers to discuss 'healthy' or 'balanced' lunches, yet find ourselves in a culturally sensitive situation. Being brought up in a Western culture my 'norm' of what a balanced diet would be very different to an Eastern culture, where supply and demand for food will be in contrast to our.
http://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/currentexhibitions/bodiesofcolour/
I went to the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester which had a few exhibitions that stood out to me. The bodies of colour
FOAM Peter Menzel
Peter Menzel's book 'Hungry Planet, what the world eats was inspired by a very simple idea, it presents an overview of what families around the world eat every week, complete with grocery lists and costs of what they spend on food. The project depicts twenty-four countries, and its succes relies on the viewer's curiosity, prejudices, and their own relationship to food. In this respect, photographs of food become a highly coded carrier for personal complexities and ingrained attitudes around eating, health, the body, and consumption.
Migrants, Mayra, Picnic Across the Border, Tecate, Mexico, USA, 2017
French artist JR hosted an epic picnic across the tense Mexican and American border in 2017. The surface of the table featured the eyes af a "dreamer', one of the immigrant children under a hotly debated US arrivals policy. The meal was an act of defiance, repurposing the division between two nations into a global table of shared humanity. "The table goes through the wall, and the people eat the same food and drink the same water and listen to the same music,"JR said. "For a minute we were forgetting about it, passing salt and drinks as if there were no wall.