Disorganising (FARN x School of IO)

July 2021
Collaboration with Meenakshi Thirukode

Part of Disorganising, a project by Liquid Architecture, Bus and West Space

Breadcrumbs in the Forest is a project that took shape over three iterations, a workshop, a text and set of online conversations with artists. For Disorganising, the Food Art Research Network collaborated with the School of Instituting Otherwise to explore artist and community led economies that foster circularity, interdependence, and bio-cultural diversity.

Instituting as if other worlds were possible

In this collaborative text for the disorganising workbook, with dear friend and collaborator, Meenakshi Thirukode we explore the micro politics of friendship and our own anxieties and vulnerabilities in the making of new collaborative projects and try to understand what we each mean when we use the phrase “Instituting Otherwise”

Disorganising Metabolisms

In this workshop we asked how artist led economies are re-imagining collective health in a metabolic relationship to the earth/soil/gut biome. The workshop started with some messy methods for inefficient mapping with artist Linda Knight, in which we mapped our mouths while eating.  Collectively metabolising our evening meal. Then we got on to the meaty questions about whether the metabolism might be a site for disorganising our relationship to capitalism, sharing some examples of organisations led by artists that explore food as a collective resource, beginning with Cocina Collaboratorio, Tenacious Bee, Company Drinks, Manthithoppu Milk Coperative Society.

Conversations with the Food Art Research Network

This conversation is with Malini Kochupllai who is part of the amazing team that run Tenacious Bee Collective who bring scientists, researchers, artists and community together to restore and care for indigenous bee keeping practices. https://tenaciousbee.com/our-team

This conversation is with Mariana Martinez Balvanera who is part of the amazing team that run Cocina CoLaboratorio in Mexico who bring scientists, researchers, artists and community together to share knowledge over a kitchen table.

This conversation is with Kathrin Böhm who is part of the team that run Company Drinks in Barking and Dagenham who have started a community led drinks company. Kathrin Böhm is also an artist who is part of my villages, she facilitates Centre for Plausible Economies and brings artists and rural knowledges into dialogue.

This conversation is with Ira Barker who is part of the amazing team that run Murnong Mummas on Dja Dja Wurrung Country in Central Victoria. They are part of an indigenous led catering and native plant growing local enterprise.

Suggested Readings

Jason W. Moore, Towards a Singular Metabolism

Hannah Landecker, On the Odor of Rancid Butter, a Twenty-First Century Update.

JK Gibson Graham, Take back the Economy

Gargi Bhattacharya, Food and Anticapitalism

instead of treating the interminable question of the capacity to act in terms of ‘possible vs impossible,’ we examine what it might mean to institute otherwise politically and performatively, ‘as if it were possible.’’

Athena Athanasiou, Former West, 2016