WORKSHOP
Peksimet: Life Jacket Kind of a Rusk
Defne Koryürek, Writer and Activist, Turkey

PART 1: December 12, 9:00 am - 10:30 am
PART 2: December 12, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm


Peksimet, paximadia, panis biscotus, beypazarı kurusu, galeta, friselle, biscotti, or zwieback… the name truly does not matter. They are all double-baked goods, and we love one or the other, if not all; but the history behind one may inspire a delicious possibility. Please join me in a two-part workshop where we’ll talk, bake, and discuss our shared future over a keeper, sustainer, life jacket kind of a rusk: peksimet!

A woman, a mother, and an activist, Defne Koryürek lives, cooks, writes, and lectures to inspire the public in search of a dignified exit for humanity.
WORKSHOP
Decolonizing Cacao: An Introduction to Indigenous, Colonial and Decolonial Uses of Cacao
Gillian Goddard, Environmental Activist and Farmer, Trinidad-Tobago

PART 1: December 12, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm


This two-day workshop focuses on drastic changes that took place in the use of cacao from the pre-colonial to the colonial and neocolonial period. We will examine other dynamic changes - economic and structural - that took place in the cacao sector as the colonial project unfolded and now, as the current decolonial movement evolves. You will learn about (and taste) ingredients that did not enter the global mainstream the way that cacao did and yet, grew commonly in the regions where cacao was grown. Upon registering, you can purchase your Decolonizing Chocolate Kit that includes a collection of ingredients to prepare and consume during the workshop. Alternatively, you can purchase the ingredients yourself.

Gillian Goddard is a Trinidadian organic farmer and activist chocolate maker whose work focuses on the decolonization of ideas, the economy and our daily lives.
ARTIST TALK
Pensamiento Campesino (Peasant Thinking)
Asunción Molinos Gordo, Artist, Spain

December 12, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm


Peasants’ communities have been dispossessed of many things, including the recognition of their intellectual production. In fact, many still react with surprise when they read these two words (peasant and intellectual) together in the same sentence, as if they were to belong to opposing worlds. During this talk we’ll not only look at close samples of cultural and intellectual production carried by peasant communities, but also the restrictions they phase to get public recognition and legal assimilation. By discussing “Purpose, Scope and Penalties” and “Non-vulgar Knowledge,” we’ll examine the current status quo generated by the imposition of intellectual property rights on seeds. 

In her artistic practice, Asunción Molinos Gordo has questioned the categories that define “innovation” in mainstream discourses today, working to generate a less urban-centric way of understanding progress.

Asunción Molinos Gordo is a research-based artist with a main focus on contemporary peasantry.
SPECULATION
Climate Change Imaginarium – Which Day of Creation, Is It now? 
Jenifer Wightman, RU Alum, Dirt & Debt Thematic Residency 2019, USA
December 12, 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm


With an eye to the current goals set forth by the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) passed in 2019 by the NYS House and Senate, I will present some past depiction of landscape as we quest for the future of landscapes. This talk will discuss some hypothetical decisions our generation may make in response to ‘climate change’ that sets the scene for future farmers. Fundamentally, the question I ask: if all there ever was, is all there ever will be, what, if anything, do we do for those that come after?

Jenifer Wightman explores the co-evolution of life and landscape.

DIALOGUE
Black & Blue: Compassion, Dignity, Equity
Scott Alvez Barton, Chef and Food Scholar, USA in Conversation with
Cynthia R. Greenlee, Journalist and Writer-Historian, USA

December 12, 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm 

[Having] “A seat at the table”— being a member of a group that has decision-making power. What does that mean when as a people, Blacks and BIPOC are not seen? Compassion and dignity are absent. Particularly this year we have seen Black bodies discarded and destroyed…Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Elijah McClain, the shooting of Jacob Blake, and the personal intimate loss that individually we both have had as Black Americans. 

If speaking literally about eating or sharing a meal, what is the repast, as an actual meal, as ritual and cultural practice? What is it when you cannot share culture and family together? How do we share our cultural knowledge intergenerationally and communally? Before we think of and on futurity, we need to square our position in the past and the present, that given the ongoing martyrdom of Blacks in the U.S. and throughout the Diaspora is nowhere near equitable. This dialog and action addresses multiple types of, and preserving cultural traditions within, Black death, including and moving beyond the specter of bereavement, with a focus on compassion, dignity, and equity. 

Scott Alves Barton
worked for thirty years as a chef before becoming a food scholar, where his work focuses on the intersection of food and faith, women’s work, and African Diaspora identity politics

Cynthia R. Greenlee is a journalist and writer-historian who specializes in the intersections of the late 19th century, African-Americans, gender and the law.

ARTIST TALK / LECTURE PERFORMANCE
Edible Urban Landscapes: The C.U.R.B and Stuyvesant Cove Park
Candace Thompson, RU Alum, Dirt & Debt Thematic Residency 2019, USA

December 12, 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

A lecture performance that blends basic chemistry, ethnobotanical storytelling, home cooking, DIY remediation ideas, and a birds eye view of our (totally jacked) food system, artist and land steward Candace Thompson will share highlights from her ongoing research on the edible urban landscape. Using a mix of live and pre-recorded media via several common digital platforms, Thompson will also discuss her new role as Park Manager of Stuyvesant Cove Park, a two-acre public food forest in lower Manhattan, sharing the joys and challenges of fostering a public food commons in one of the country's most densely populated and diverse cities.

Candace Thompson
is an artist, citizen scientist, activist, and land steward who collaborates with soil, plants, microbes, fungi, animals, food, land, digital media and other human beings in the search for healing, resilience, and mutualism as we face climate crisis.
LIVE READING & ARTIST TALK
ZÀO: A History of Chinese Dishcourse through Famine and Revolution
Siri Lee, Food Futures Resident Artist, USA

December 12, 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm

For this event, Siri will perform a live reading of her new digital prologue to her artist's book, ZÀO: A History of Chinese Dishcourse through Famine and Revolution, which retells modern Chinese history through faction (fact and fiction). A speculative history, ZÀO satirically reconstructs China’s Mao Era, which saw the worst famine in recorded human history and decades of successful and pervasive ideological indoctrination. Notwithstanding the cumulative death toll through famine and civil violence of 20-63 million people, the ravages of this tumultuous political era continue to be censored in mainland China and have eluded western public discourse. In its exhumation of massive historical trauma concealed beneath exuberant propaganda, ZÀO deploys myriad strategies: archival images, original historical research, personal memoir, fictional storyline, bilingual (mis)translation, critical analysis, and hand-drawn illustrations. 

Siri Lee
is an interdisciplinary visual storyteller who blends the personal, historical, and fictional using writing, illustration, and archival materials.
WORKSHOP
Rooted in the Future: A cook-along and talk on the work of Palestine Hosting Society
Mirna Bamieh, Founder, Palestine Hosting Society, Palestine
‍December 13, 9:00 am - 10:30 am

Mirna Bamieh, an artist and chef from Palestine, will teach us how to prepare an ancient Palestinian recipe, Carob Bsiseh, also known as “energy balls.” She will also share how her project, Palestine Hosting Society, examines four practices in Palestine and beyond that are on the verge of disappearing. Bamieh will reveal how this food fascination started and became integral to her art practice.

Carob Bsiseh, the sweet four-ingredient dish we will be creating together was prepared mostly in the Galilee area because of its abundance of carob, olive oil, sesame, and heirloom wheat. In the past, farmers prepared this sweet for travel and pilgrimage, as it keeps well over time and provides the body with a boost of nutrients and energy. In some villages such as in Ebillin, they add tahini to the recipe, which is a version we will also prepare together. Let’s make both and you pick your favorite!
POETRY READING
Eating is Poetic: An Hour of Visual Poetry
Moderated by Betsy Andrews, Poet and Food Writer, USA
Guest poets and artists: Omotara James, William Mazza, Carolyn Monastra, Sabiyha Prince, VK Sreelesh, Michelle Villegas Threadgould, Viswan Zorba

December 13, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm


While food is political, it is also deeply personal. It is about survival and hunger, pleasure and fulfillment, work and family and community and self. It implicates mind, body, and soul in the broader hierarchies of economy, society, and resource extraction. At the base of it all is personhood. There is no better way to center the person in the discussion than poetry. Through a series of poet/videographer collaborations from around the world, Residency Unlimited brings you a meeting of the personal, political, and artistic around food. The poetry video works will be introduced by the artists and followed by a moderated panel discussion between the artists and the audience.


Betsy Andrews
is an award-winning poet and food writer who lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Omotara James
is a writer, editor and visual artist.
William Mazza
uses chance, duration, and accumulation to reinterpret landscape as the relationship of people to their mediated environments through practices of live painting performance, studio painting, animation, and collaboration.
Carolyn Monastra
is a Brooklyn-based artist and eco-activist whose current work focuses on the global impacts of climate change and species extinction.
Sabiyha Prince
is an artist/urban anthropologist based in Washington, DC.
VK Sreelesh
is a poet and writer based in Thalassery, Kerala.
Michelle Villegas Threadgould
is a biracial, Chicana writer and poet who covers Latinx issues and resistant movements.
Viswan Zorba
is a photographer and videographer based in Thalassery, Kerala.

PANEL
Land, Water and Resource Distribution
Andrew Bell, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, New York University, USA
Ramón Cruz, President, Sierra Club, Puerto-Rico/USA
Defne Koryürek, Writer and Activist, Turkey
Moderated by Livia Alexander, Curator and Writer, USA and Isin Önol, Curator and Writer, Turkey/Austria/USA

December 13, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm


“Climate change is planetary engineering without design,” argues Jedidiah Purdy, it’s future shape and meaning a question for politics. How we produce food and manage water are key areas for environmental stewards to make changes. It is challenging to know what decisions are necessary, and who bears most of the risk and damage for the changes we need to make, or that we demand to be made. Considering questions of choice, ethics, advocacy, policy and personal responsibility, this panel seeks to address how universal, particular or restricted our options are.

Andrew Bell
is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at New York University, focusing on rural livelihoods decisions and natural resource management (including water).
Ramón Cruz, President of the Sierra Club, has over 20 years of experience intersecting the fields of sustainability, environmental policy, urban planning, energy and climate change. A woman, a mother, and an activist
Defne Koryürek
lives, cooks, writes, and lectures to inspire the public in search of a dignified exit for humanity.
Livia Alexander
is Assistant Professor of Global Visual Cultures at Montclair State University, who curated Dirt and Debt and Food Futures thematic residency programs at Residency Unlimited.
Isin Önol,
a member of the Center for the Study of Social Difference research group at Columbia University, is a curator, writer and educator focusing on archives, oral histories and social justice. 

LECTURE
Manifesting Food Between Home and Homeland: Exploring Armenian Culinary Heritage in Flux
Liana Aghajanian, Journalist, USA

December 13, 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm


Liana Aghajanian will provide an overview of Armenian culinary pathways and manifestations from the U.S. to the Middle East from the last century to the present through stories, while touching on lingering effects of ethnic cleansing, war, food insecurity, and displacement. Though the Armenian story spans over 3,500 years, the last century has radically altered it. From the Ottoman-era Armenian Genocide of 1915 to the recent war in the de-facto Republic of Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh as well as upheaval across the Middle East in between, the modern Armenian narrative has been deeply marked by cycles of forced dispersion and dispossession. With loss of population as well as homeland, food and culinary heritage remains one of the only indestructible spaces for Armenians to explore their past, a place where they can recreate a tangible heritage they cannot physically access, but also express adaptability in the face of both global upheaval and the continued state-sponsored denial of their history.

Liana Aghajanian
is an internationally-published journalist and writer who is currently tracing culinary heritage and foodways in the Armenian diaspora.



ARTIST TALK
polliNATION broadcast
Jessica Segall, RU Alum, Dirt & Debt Thematic Residency 2019, USA 

December 13, 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm


Beekeeping is a profession almost as old as agriculture. Today, 85% of the country's honeybees are trucked around the country in an annual migration of on-demand pollination. In the form of a live tele-play and news broadcast, Jessica offers an update of the current status and locations of the country's managed honeybee hives, informing viewers on honeybee health, behavior and psychology in the winter months. Special correspondents include a queen bee, a drone, a worker bee and a solitary bee.

Jessica Segall
is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY whose work is designed to unpack ideas of environmental conservation and bring a little wildness into institutional spaces.




ARTIST TALK
Not a Drop to Drink
Keg de Souza, Artist, Australia

December 13, 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm 


Keg de Souza will present her current project research, Not a Drop to Drink, which explores issues of water scarcity in relation to food security and sovereignty in Australia by using radical pedagogy, meal events and temporary architecture to highlight the importance of building relationality to learn about Place.

Keg de Souza
lives and works in Sydney on unceded Gadigal land and explores the poetics and politics of space in her practice through radical pedagogy, temporary architecture and food.




ARTIST TALK
Not a Drop to Drink
Keg de Souza, Artist, Australia

December 13, 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm 
Register Here

Keg de Souza will present her current project research, Not a Drop to Drink, which explores issues of water scarcity in relation to food security and sovereignty in Australia by using radical pedagogy, meal events and temporary architecture to highlight the importance of building relationality to learn about Place.

Keg de Souza
lives and works in Sydney on unceded Gadigal land and explores the poetics and politics of space in her practice through radical pedagogy, temporary architecture and food.



LIVE RADIO PROGRAM
Sensory Space-Time Continuum: Notes on Change Blindness, Smell, and Food Systems
Allie Wist, Food Futures Resident Artist, USA
Guests speaker: Melissa Metrick, Professor, USA
Hosted by Montez Press Radio

December 13, 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm


A radio broadcast exploring olfactory time capsules, smell-scapes, and foods that allow us to span both temporal and physical distances. It is commissioned by the Institute for Noticing on the effectiveness of time-travel through food, and the validity of the Institute's recent research into olfactory time capsules, which will encase a variety of contemporary smell-scapes as sensory artifacts. 

Allie E.S. Wist’s work encompasses photography, radio broadcasts, writing artifacts, dinners, and experiential installations that examine the role of food, taste, and smell in our perception of change over time, and in our ability to adapt to apocalypse. Melissa Metrick is a professor of Urban Agriculture at New York University, where she is also the manager of Urban Food Lab, and is a co-producer of FIELDS, a podcast on the future of farming. 



symposium

concept

An Interdisciplinary Symposium and Exhibition on Food Justice, Resilience, and Adaptation

Virtual Symposium: December 12th—13th 2020
Virtual Exhibition Opening: December 18th 2020

Curated by Livia Alexander and Isin Önol
Curatorial Assistant: Chayna Yoshida

Inviting environmentalists, scientists, farmers and artists to collectively reimagine answers, possibilities and potentials for radical change

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

schedule & registration

Saturday December 12th

Sunday December 13th

9:00 am - 10:30 am
WORKSHOP
(PART I)
Peksimet: Life Jacket Kind of a Rusk
‍By Defne Koryürek
Watch Recording
WORKSHOP
Rooted in the Future: A Cook-along and Talk on the Work of Palestine Hosting Society
By Mirna Bamieh
Watch Recording
11:00 am - 12:30 am
WORKSHOP
(PART I)
Decolonizing Cacao:An Introduction to Indigenous, Colonial and Decolonial Uses of Cacao
By Gillian Goddard
Watch Recording
WORKSHOP
(PART II)
Decolonizing Cacao: An Introduction to Indigenous, Colonial and Decolonial Uses of Cacao
By Gillian Goddard
Watch Recording
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
WORKSHOP
(PART II)
Peksimet: Life Jacket Kind of a Rusk
By Defne Koryürek
POETRY READING
Eating is Poetic: An Hour of Visual Poetry
Participants: Omotara James, William Mazza, Carolyn Monastra, Sabiyha Prince, VK Sreelesh, Michelle Threadgould, Viswan Zorba
Moderated By Betsy Andrews
Watch Recording
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
ARTIST TALK
Pensamiento Campesino
(Peasant Thinking)
By Asunción Molinos
Watch Recording
PANEL DISCUSSION
Land, Water and Resource Distribution
With Andrew Bell, Ramón Cruz, Defne Koryürek
Moderated By Livia Alexander & Isin Önol
Watch Recording
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
SPECULATION
Climate Change Imaginarium – Which Day of Creation, Is It Now?
By Jenifer Wightman
Watch Recording
LECTURE
Manifesting Food Between Home and Homeland: Exploring Armenian Culinary Heritage in Flux
By Liana Aghajanian
Watch Recording
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
DIALOGUE
Black & Blue: Compassion, Dignity, Equity
Scott A. Barton in Conversation with Cynthia R. Greenlee
Watch Recording
LECTURE PERFORMANCE
polliNation broadcast
By Jessica Segall
Watch Recording
5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
LECTURE PERFORMANCE
Edible Urban Landscapes: The C.U.R.B and Stuyvesant Cove Park
By Candace Thompson
Watch Recording
ARTIST TALK
Not a Drop to Drink
By Keg de Souza

6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
LIVE READING & ARTIST TALK
ZÁO: A History of Chinese Dishcourse through Famine and Revolution
By Siri Lee
Watch Recording
LIVE RADIO PROGRAM
Sensory Space-Time Continuum: Notes on Change Blindness, Smell, and Food Systems
By Allie Wist
With Melissa Metrick
Hosted by Montez Press Radio