Thinking Food Futures is a two-day virtual symposium and exhibition, tackling one of the most urgent questions of our time: How will we feed ourselves when the table we eat on—Planet Earth—is collapsing beneath us? The program includes live workshops, panel discussions, lecture performances, poetry readings, video works, a radio talk show and an exhibition of new artworks made specifically for this platform, alongside existing works.
This project builds upon the thematic residency
Food Futures which took place from April through July 2020 with seven local artists selected through open call and a panel process to reimagine issues around food resilience in urban environments and food justice (a
recording of the residents' artist talks is available).
Climate change is something we can literally taste, its effects sowing chaos and confusion as plants bloom early and a fortnight of torrential storms destroy an annual yield of crops in rapid succession. In the face of such monumental threats on a planetary scale, and with food access so unevenly distributed, food insecurity is not a question of climate change alone. It is deeply entangled with political conflicts, systemic racism, and intensifying economic inequalities and biases.
The challenges on the table are complex and require different forms of learning –as well as unlearning, speaking and engaging, so we are not isolated in small clusters of specific expertise, or repeating the mistakes established long before us
Thinking Food Futures aims to create a platform, or perhaps in our context lays out a table, for discussion, to gain an understanding,” said
Nathalie Angles, Residency Unlimited Executive Director.
“By employing artistic research and harnessing the creative potential to respond to these challenges” state curators
Livia Alexander and
Isin Onol, “we seek to deploy the artistic tools of engagement that create opportunities and establish new connections among disciplines, social groups, and local solutions.”
Thinking Food Futures proposes that we reimagine how we farm, ship, share, and eat; for the sake of ourselves and the planet, to rethink the future of food by radically reimaging the present. The symposium brings together artists
Asunción Molinos, Siri Lee, Jessica Segall, Keg de Souza, Candace Thompson, and
Allie Wist, scientist
Andrew Reid Bell, scientist and artist
Jenifer Wightman, urban farmer
Melissa Metrick, chefs and policy advocates
Mirna Bamieh, Scott Alvez Barton, Defne Koryürek and
Ramón Cruz, environmental activist and farmer
Gillian Goddard, poets and visual artists at a poetry reading
Betsy Andrews, Omotara James, William Mazza, Carolyn Monastra, Sabiyha Prince, VK Sreelesh, Michelle Threadgould, Viswan Zorba and journalists
Liana Aghajanian and
Cynthia R. Greenlee to ask questions together while searching for collective answers, possibilities and potentials in the blurry spaces in-between fields of cultivation, areas of expertise, and wide pools of passion and commitment.
On December 18, the symposium will be followed by an exhibition featuring new works by Food Futures residency artists
Esra Durukan, Yoko Inoue, Siri Lee, Rosa Nussbaum, Lily Consuelo Saporta Tagiuri, Andrew Vigil-Emerson and
Allie Wist, as well as current works by artists
Keg de Souza, Asuncion Molinos, Jessica Segall and
Candace Thompson.
After its online premiere, a recording of all sessions will be available on the Residency Unlimited website, alongside the ongoing virtual exhibition –an interactive website designed and developed by
Julian Mathews.
Organized by Residency Unlimited and made possible by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.
RESIDENCY UNLIMITED(RU) is a non-profit art organization that supports the creation, presentation and dissemination of contemporary art through its unique residency program and year-round public programs. It provides customized residencies for international and local artists and curators in New York City focused on network support, project/production assistance, and public exposure.
www.residencyunlimited.org 
