Linda Goode Bryant on Food Sovereignty as Artwork

In 2009, the artist, activist and provocateur Linda Goode Bryant began farming on vacant lots in New York City. Organized under the project title, Project Eats, she posited the work as an art action in response to the ongoing food crisis. One in three people living in neighborhoods like Brownsville, Brooklyn, where the first farm was developed, are food insecure and lack access to fresh, nutritiously dense, affordable food. This provocation—that feeding people and creating infrastructures for food sovereignty could be a work of art—was an extension of Goode Bryant’s long history of framing art practice as “transforming what we imagine into something tangible, that others can experience.”

In 1974 she led Just Above Midtown (JAM), an art gallery and self-described laboratory that foregrounded African American artists and “in direct response to what Black artists wanted and needed at the time.”¹ The gallery was a fertile home for young emerging artists of the time like David Hammons, Senga Nengudi, Lorraine O’Grady, and Howardena Pindell—all now recognized as pivotal figure in late-20th century art.² Even then, Goode Bryant used food as a catalyst. The Brunch with JAM series was her answer to building new relationships between artists, collectors, and curators and others who were haunting the art corridors of Midtown. For a few dollars, people could come and eat lunch and hear a lecture from a curator, historian and critic. JAM and Goode Bryant’s legacy was the subject of a 2022 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art and through a series of art commissions presented at various Project Eats farm locations around the city, the exhibition drew a through-line to Goode Bryant’s dedication to bringing art from inside the museum out into neighborhoods around the city.

Celestine Maddy: 

I love getting to know you. Today we’re going to talk about time, which is applicable to so much of what we’ve talked about in previous conversations. Let’s start with the question the MOLD editors posed: Could the work of Project Eats and the promotion of food sovereignty be considered a durational performance?

Linda Goode Bryant: 

Yes. I’m an artist, and I conceived of Project Eats as an artist. The first thing I called it was “art actions”—actions that happened in the community, the same communities that Project Eats is in now. These art actions were going to be these living, ongoing activations in the community inspired by imagination and creativity, focused on food.

But then a potential donor said, “Oh Linda, what is an art action?” So it became “projects,” but it IS durational. It’s meant to be durational, and in my crazy mind it’s meant to be durational for the next 100 years.

Community-based food systems should be the norm in urban environments. By 2050 most of the global population will be living in urban environments, in cities. That transition is supposed to happen in the next 25 years.

CM: 

It’s funny because we were just talking about the legacy of Project Eats and innovation. If it’s a durational performance, how has it changed over time?

LGB: 

It’s changed by a number of factors. It’s going to be changed by the natural environment. Have you heard about biomimicry? Biomimicry is considering nature as our mentor. Nature knows this shit. And yet we, with our Homo sapien brains, think that we’re the only ones that are smart. There’s evidence of our ability to imagine and transform what we imagine into something tangible that others can experience and perceive. Homo sapiens are the only species we know that can do that right now.

In terms of our consciousness and what we perceive as power, we’ve created this ugly, ugly period we’re in right now where we’re not human to one another. We created this world around us and all these fucking rectangles that drive me crazy. We created those rectangles, globally, to create dominance in a world where we could be living in spaces that are in a number of shapes and sizes.

I work with visual artists, and it astounds me that they’re not aware—as visual people—of things like the rectangles. Nobody seems to be, even architects. I dealt with architectural firms during Flag Wars, a film I did with Laura Poitras. I would always ask one question at the end of our conversations: “What is the dominant shape in this room that you’re in?” We were on Zoom during COVID, so we’re looking at rectangles, sitting in rectangles—the walls, the windows are rectangles. And they’re architects! They would pause, and then someone would very timidly say, “Rectangles or squares.” And all I could do was not scream, “What the fuck do you draw every day, all day? What the fuck do you draw?”

When things become dominant, they become absolute. And when things become absolute, all of our abilities are shrunk into complying. I don’t believe in that. I think it’s possible to disrupt that. We have the power to create different shapes.

When I think of change, I think of how we shift that really unequal balance of power within the societies and communities we live in. We shift it by doing what we are innately able to do—to use whatever resources we have to create what we imagine so that others can perceive it and experience it directly. To me, it is the most powerful resource we have. We sleep on our imaginations. We sleep on our creativity. We don’t question the dominant.

How we get our food and the quality of the food we’re going to have access to as the 99 percent is going to change. Early on in Project Eats, all the very rich were going to other countries and buying land that was suitable for farming. In some countries, they were just selling it. In others, world trade agreements and bank loans would make countries give up their agricultural industry, which would make these countries reliant on food that the United States and our allies are supplying them.

Project Eats is using food as a way to rebalance things between the 99 and the 1 percent. Even if it’s just a ripple in the pond, there is at least a break in what seems to be an unbreakable, seamless world we live in. 

CM: 

It’s seamlessly squares all the way, and so you can’t see beyond them. The seams are there, but we can’t see them. I love this idea that Project Eats is a break in the seam, a break in the reality that we’ve created. How has your relationship with time shifted since you’ve begun growing food as part of your artistic practice? 

LGB: 

Just in terms of growing—I would love to meet anyone who can put their hand in soil and not be transformed. Actually, I don’t want to meet that person. I don’t care how numb you are, you can’t not be affected by soil. For me, there are things like the smell of dampness, the dew rising. I miss that in New York City. I miss just watching the magic of that. And it’s not magic, it’s just physics, but how it transforms light, how it transforms clarity of vision—shapes get created with that dew. That, to me, is just like, “Damn, that’s a good idea, that’s something.” And it just opens up the imagination.

CM: 

You’ve been growing for how long?

LGB: 

Fifteen years. We’re into our 16th year.

CM: 

What made you start?

LGB: 

It really was the global food crisis of 2007-2008 that increased prices of food on the farm and also in grocery stores. That was unexpected. There was a rise in the price of cereal crops, and as a result, there became a global food crisis because that increased the cost of food. We rely, certainly in this country and many others, on food that we have to buy from the store. You can imagine the adverse effect it had on people who had very limited financial resources, here in the US and around the world.

The system had already created a dependency on food from other countries. I had been working on another project—a documentary film to understand why people don’t vote. I was a chronic non-voter, so it was something I needed to look into. One of the things we did was activate people who didn’t vote or were likely non-voters—disenfranchised people. Everything from high schoolers to folks in prison, both juvenile and adult prisons. We partnered in these six cities with organizations that served the homeless, immigrant advocacy groups, and support systems. We engaged them in creating their own political platform, and then they campaigned for it. They campaigned for their local and national priorities that they wanted leadership to deal with, and they also created their solutions—how they would solve them. That was very key.

Once again, how do we reconnect or reactivate people by realizing their agency and using whatever they have to create the conditions they want, in the communities they live in?

CM: 

So from those learnings, you got the idea that the solution was their own food?

LGB: 

The trigger wasn’t that—it was much broader. The trigger was footage from around the world that I started collecting. I was going to make a web series, so I was pulling footage from the communities we were in, but I also said this should be global because it’s a global issue.

I had pulled down footage from Haiti where people were forced to eat mud pies sparked with pebbles and honey, while all this food from the US and our allies was on market stands on the roads and streets in Haiti that no one could afford. Some of the footage was so beautiful—all these beautiful women sitting behind farm stands making mud pies. It was just these hands going back and forth. It was like, “Damn.” And I’m sobbing, pulling the footage down, looking at it, planning to edit it, sobbing. At some point I said, “We should all be able to grow our own food, even if we live on concrete.”

CM: 

Speaking of time, we are basically back where you started, because now people can’t afford the food in the grocery store under this inflation. Time is repeating. Now you are in your 70s—do you feel the repetition?

LGB: 

It repeats. I didn’t expect it. With Trump—there’s an arrogance, hate and an evilness. It shapes the evilness for people who don’t look like him, don’t have wealth in the way he wants it. It’s like, how are we back here?

As a teenager I was protesting in the civil rights movement. I became very political. I was a 12-year-old campaigning for John F. Kennedy. It was so bizarre. My parents were practicing socialists. From the time I was seven, there was a period where every year the FBI would come to the house. There would be these white men with these little tiny suits and narrow ties—kind of like Mad Men. They would come up and ask my father questions about this and that, to make sure we hadn’t slipped over into communism. 

My parents’ friends were artists—everything from visual artists to musicians. There was one house where they would throw parties, and all us kids would go off and play. I was never into dolls, but I’m fascinated by people. I would just look around and see what the adults were doing. One of my biggest creative inspirations was Mr. Dillard, because the parties would always be at his house. Mr. Dillard was what everyone perceived to be a junk man. He went around neighborhoods and picked up junk and put it in the garage. I was friends with his daughters, so anytime I went over to their house, I would say, “Mr. Dillard, I want to go into the garage,” and it was locked. I’d say, “Mr. Dillard, one day will you let me see inside the garage?” and he’d say, “No.”

Finally, one day I became so insistent, he unlocked the door to the garage, and we walked in, and it was fucking magic. All this stuff he collected, he brought alive again. They were all alive—whether they were lamps or doll babies or broken chairs or whatever. There was still stuff that was broken, so you could see the before and after of his collection. They were all there, displayed like an exhibit. When you see something in the street, it’s discarded. It has no value. When I learned to call it an exhibit, I realized how magical his garage exhibition was. 

CM:

He’s doing his own durational art piece right there, creating his own environment, which is what you’re doing with Project Eats. How are you spending your time differently these days, and why?

LGB: 

This is so apropos. I could bend your ear on the things I’ve been through in life. My God, I’ve been through a lot. And I’m thinking about that now.  Asking myself what I want to be doing now: “You’re 75—how do you want to spend the rest of your life?”

Project Eats has changed from us all working on the ground together, farming, doing the sales stands together, doing all that. In the beginning years, we were creating the culture together. That was JAM. We created that together. That was a family affair. It’s the kind of family where there are family members that hate each other but love and respect one another too. I love that.

CM: 

You told me you were working on your house, getting your affairs in order. 

LGB: 

Yeah, I’m having a ball working with an architect to do renovations in my house. One of the things I’m most excited about is a room that has walls that can open and close in ways that change its shape and functionally. As designed, the lighting appears to change what you see and don’t see when its shape and size change.

CM: 

Is it an installation that you’re making?

LGB: 

In some ways, yeah.  I’ve lived in this apartment for over 50 years. I renovated it the first time about 18 years ago—gut rehab. It’s pre-war with windows that face the street and windows that face its courtyard. In that renovation I told the designer/architect that I wanted the apartment to retain its pre-war features and make it feel open like a loft. They did that by transforming a hallway into a clear and opaque glass room. Now I want that room to move and change its shape.

CM: 

So you’re spending your time rethinking your apartment that you’ve been in for 50 years. Are you rethinking how you approach the world at all? What do you think about time, just broadly?

LGB:

I need to trust time more.  Trust that change happens.

We humans have so much power with our thumbs and ability to imagine and transform what we imagine into something tangible that others can experience and/or perceive. We have shaped the world we live in. We have the ability to shape a world that’s fair, equitable, just and healthy for us and the planet.  If there’s enough of us committed to that, we can do that. 

People won’t believe it until they see and experience it. It’s like when we started Project EATS the first thing some residents would say is, “You can’t grow food on this lot and if you do I’m not gonna eat it.” But in 45 to 60 days, when vegetables are coming out of the ground they understand that we can do this and the food is tasty, healthy, and grown with utmost care. 

Too often people believe being sedentary is freedom after retirement. I don’t know why anybody stops. If you stop, you stop. One of the things that’s great about being creative is that when you’re creative, there is no retirement. It’s really not possible. When we want to pursue making something creative, we pursue it. It’s our last breath that stops us.