The prestigious Delfina Foundation artist residency is examining the Politics of Food through a four-year program of artistic research and production. To wrap up it’s third season, the Foundation’s resident and associate artists will be presenting projects around the theme of Markets and Movements with a program of talks, film screenings, walking tours, performance and conceptual culinary events beginning today, September 7 through Sunday, September 11.
For the past twelve weeks at Delfina Foundation, a group of artists that include Amy Franceschini (USA), Thomas Pausz (Iceland/France), Deepa Bhasti of Forager Collective (India), Fernando Garcia-Dory (Spain), Serkan Taycan (Turkey); Kathrin Böhm (UK), Chris Fite-Wassilak (UK/USA), Jane Levi (UK) and Laura Wilson (UK) have been exploring the nuances of food production and distribution in a post-Brexit food system. Over the course of the next five days, the artists will share their individual work and research with the public as well as host community-driven engagements like a daily conceptual community meal led by an artist and guided field trips.
Kathrin Böhm, Foreign Pickers, Hop-picking in Kent. Photo courtesy of Maureen Hostler, Dagenham
Of particular interest is Kathrin Böhm’s Foreign Pickers film, the latest piece in her larger project, Company: Movements, Deals and Drinks. Between the early 1800’s and the 1950’s, up to 250,000 working-class east Londoners would leave the city each summer to harvest fruit and hops in Kent. Company is an artistic endeavor to revive this urban-rural relationship by way of creating a community-driven drinks enterprise. To date, Company Drinks has produced a range of 18 drink varieties and involved hundreds of local residents in the tradition of “going picking.”
Tomáš Uhnák’s walking tour based on the philosophies of the avant-garde art movement The Situationists explores The Politics of Societal Digestion. By meandering through London, the tour will tell the story of, “London’s relationship to the vital source of nutrition and taste, suggesting their social and political implications,” through informal meetings with journalists, farmers and activists peppered with tastings in unexpected locations.
Cooking Sections, Cases of Confusion, Stirring the Pot of Story, Delfina Foundation, 2015
The Delfina Foundation is the latest iteration of its founder Delfina Entrecanales’ decades-long commitment to fostering ideas and dialogue through artist residencies. For over 40 years, Entrecanales has created spaces for artists and other visionaries to research, practice and engage. From 1988-2006, Delfina Studio Trust developed into the UK’s largest international artists residency space, nurturing a generation of highly acclaimed artists, including more than a dozen Turner Prize nominees. Now operating as Delfina Foundation, the mission of the organization continues to focus on, “artistic exchange and experimentation.”
More information is available on the events at the Delfina Foundation site and the full lineup of events is below:
WEDNESDAY
• Film premiere of Foreign Pickers and talk with Kathrin Böhm and Dr. Toby Butler, 19:00 – 21:00
• Project Displays
• Pop-Up bar
THURSDAY
• Walking tour with Tomáš Uhnák, The Politics of Societal Digestion, 09:00 – 17:00
• £3 Community Meal with Tomáš Uhnák, 18:00 – 20:00
• Project Displays
• Pop-Up bar
FRIDAY
• Hop-Picking Field Trip with Kathrin Böhm, 09:00 – 19:00
• £3 Community Meal with Thomas Pausz, 13:00 – 15:00
• Project Displays
• Pop-Up bar
SATURDAY
• Brexit and Food Talk with Professor Tim Lang, 15:30 – 16:45
• £3 Community Meal with Forager Collective, 13:00 – 15:00
• Project Displays
• Pop-Up bar
SUNDAY
• Performance Lecture with Melanie Jackson and Dr. Esther Leslie, Unreliable Matriarchs, 16:00 – 18:00
• £3 Community Meal with Jane Levi, 14:00-16:00
• Project Displays
• Pop-Up bar
