Emerging Perspectives: Room A405
28 October - 14:00PM-15:40PM CEST Copenhagen (Aarhus University)
Art as a Means to Address Food Politics and Production Concerns: Worm Art, DrLegumes, and Root Art Projects View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Pierre Leichner
I love food and enjoy taste. I am deeply concerned about the damage humans perpetrate on our environment. This study reviews nine projects from over past 12 years since completing my MFA with images and video clips. My first solo show was entitled Food Wars. A multi media exhibition included photographs of toy soldiers battling in food dishes and large sculptures of shrimp tails invaded by soldiers and pollution. While completing my MFA I showed Pairings referencing high-end restaurants pairing foods and wines. However in this case exotic foods and spices were offered on coffee tables each covered with images of human skin of different colours drawing attention to exploitation and colonization. This led to two Jardin Biologique-Potager de resistance. Vegetables were grown entrapped in plastic containers found in garbage bins. They grew despite constraints and to free them from these entrapments DrLegumes a plastic surgeon for fruits and vegetables was recruited. His daring operations can be found on YouTube. Dr Legumes has also created recipes for the taste of emotions such as absence. Growing plants in plastic refuse led me to develop a method of creating sculptures with wheat grass root and cypress trees. These were shown in a series of exhibitions called Collaborative Alchemy. I am presently addressing the issue of diminished soil fertility due to chemicals used by farmers and gardeners that harm the earthworms population. These Worm Art Work paintings and their accompanying videos are made with red wriggler compost worms in non-toxic dyes.
Reconstituting Cuisine: A Culinary Perspective on Social Collapse and Resilience in Precolumbian Peru View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Robyn Cutright
This paper uses food as a window onto local impacts of sociopolitical collapse in the ancient Andes. Moche collapse, around 800 AD, coincided with a series of changes in the archaeological record of the Jequetepeque Valley including a clear break in household culinary practice. Households in the post-Moche Late Intermediate Period employed a new culinary toolkit that would prove remarkably resistant to change over the next six centuries. However, we have no evidence for widespread population replacement, significant environmental change, or new agricultural products at this time. How, then, should we understand this shift in food culture that accompanied collapse? This paper uses archaeological data from two communities in the Jequetepeque Valley to reconstruct post-Moche culinary practice, and to investigate continuity and change from earlier Moche kitchens. First, I use a chaîne opératoire framework to sketch out culinary practice in Moche and Late Intermediate Period households using archaeological evidence for ingredients, equipment, and activities. Then, I highlight points of change and continuity, and their potential relationship to household economies and social life. Ultimately, this culinary perspective sheds light on ancient cultural identity, social relations, and daily practice as they were reconstituted in a post-Moche world, and provides evidence for strong links between culture, identity, and cuisine in the past that might prove useful in understanding resilience in the face of political instability and climate change in the present.
Small-scale Mining and Local Food Security: Insights from Rural Ghana View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jacob Obodai
Small-scale mining has far-reaching ecological and socio-economic footprints beyond their immediate operational areas. Their operations come into direct conflict with smallholder crop farming as far as access to key resources (land, labour, and water) are concerned. This conflict is magnified by the unequal power relations among the key actors within the two subsectors resulting in myriad trade-offs and tensions. The implications of this conflict on the four dimensions (dimensions (availability, access, utilisation, and stability) of food security are not fully known. In this paper, we seek to bridge this knowledge gap. Our research was guided by a novel blend of the political ecology and the capability approach as a conceptual framework. We adopted a multiplicity of methods including geospatial, quantitative, and qualitative approaches using Ghana as a case study. Our study draws on survey data obtained from 460 individuals selected from households through a multi-stage sampling approach. This dataset was supplemented with data obtained through key informant interviews, focus group discussions and secondary statistics, The study shows that mining restrains local food availability and contributes to increasing moderate or severe (50.1%) and severe (13.3%) food insecurity prevalence rates. Also, 79% of women of reproductive age who participated in the study were unable to meet the minimum dietary diversity requirements, an indicator that reflects their micronutrient adequacy and consequently their quality of food. Based on these findings, we argue that mining is a major driver to food insecurity and consequently the poor well-being of a considerable number of individuals, especially women.
Mastering Sustainable, Palatable and Nutritious Food Pairing: The MealMaster Game View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Charlotte Vinther Schmidt
How can we change eating habits so they are both healthy and use our natural resources to best effect while still being palatable and thereby having a greater chance to sustain in the long run? Mastering sustainable, palatable, and nutritious food is considered through an introduction and illustration of a new educational tool, “the MealMaster game”, an invention based on research and innovation. New research on taste pairing by umami taste synergy applied in a new education game which is designed to facilitate new practices in food consumption to become more palatable, healthy, and sustainable. The game itself is grounded in research into food palatability and umami taste and is aimed at creating curiosity and inspiring new food pairings among children as well as adults and food professionals. The MealMaster game is not going to be sold at the conference venue but can be downloaded free from the internet in a print-it-yourself version. Digital content will be added in the form of video material displaying the course of action in a game round. The presentation itself will discuss how the game is played and what scientific assumptions it is based upon. Participants are invited to provide feedback on how to improve the game, discuss the scientific assumptions behind and how an advanced version of the game that accounts for changes caused by various culinary cooking techniques may look like.
