Culinary Cultures of the Kinder/Garden, Latitude 53, Visualeyez 2010, Edmonton, AB
Alison Loader and Kelly Andres
Is the kitchen the original laboratory? Is food BioArt? Is the garden the primordial site of technology integrated with nature? We (Kelly Andres and Alison Reiko Loader, Montreal) will explored the unseen processes of plant and bacterial life through a kitchen/lab installation and a series of performances and workshops based on our recent research at the Concordia University rooftop greenhouse in downtown Montreal. Our work comprises three strands: growth & movement of the non-animal, the assisted reproduction of plants, and the kitchen as laboratory. The installation was set up as a portable kitchen laboratory and could be used in a variety of public sites, at events and via reservations. Some components of the installation include:
Growth & Movement
Installation of an integrated mobile workspace featuring suspended, live and growing non-animals (plant and bacterial) in addition to still and moving images – photography, microscopy, time-lapse
(<www.kellyandres.com/nastic.html>):
Plants are always moving in a circular direction, a spiraling from the moment the cotyledon emerges from the seed. Their physical movements, for the most part, exist in a different time-space, one that is difficult to witness during regular human observation- time. Yet in comparison, my growth seems less visible. Perhaps my hair is longer, or I trim my fingernails but I am not spiraling towards the sky a foot a week like the vines, or stretching my roots to the earth inches per day like the squash - or am I? (Kelly Andres, Timepeices and Tropism's text, 2010)
Assisted Reproduction
Participatory performances of the (costumed) human and non-human demonstrate techniques for the breeding of greenhouse plants including the gender identification and pollination of squash flowers, and the growing and shaping of fruit into predetermined forms. Images and artifacts from Kinder/Garden (<http://aloader.wordpress.com>) feature fetal-shaped squash,
grown then pickled for display (and perhaps consumption).
New technologies continue to augment the media(tiza)tion of procreation, with disciplinary techniques such as assisted reproduction, surveillance, and bioengineering that promote the growth and design of both our children and the beings (plants and
animals) we eat. While reproductive potential is common to all living organisms, infertility is not exclusively human – plants often require inter-species participation to create offspring and the growing absence of pollinators (such as bees) obliges human intervention in (re)production for food. Flower-human sex and fairy-tales may culminate in garden-grown infants. De-naturalized breeding problematizes the question: Where do babies come from? (Alison Loader, Kinder/Garden text, 2010)
Kitchen/Laboratory
Culinary Cultures: the Lunchlab is a performative installation in the guise of a buffet-style dinner party that will bridge two socially separated spaces – the kitchen and the institutional laboratory
– thereby mixing techniques, flavors, smells, sounds and forgotten culinary practices while referencing current materials that provide base samples for science experiments and education. If we consider these two groupings of words, first: wetware, mold, clones, bacteria, yeast culture, tissue cultures, living and recently-living organisms, dissection, preservation, temperature, humidity. This list will most likely bring to mind the image of an institutional laboratory. Where these; cheese, carrots, yoghurt, mixed greens, vinegar, wine, bread,
flay, chicken bouillon, pickles, 350 degrees, moisture - denote a much different image, that of the domestic - a kitchen, and the banal ingredients in a typical home. The two lists, although seemingly dualistically paired are actually interchangeable if one shifts the backdrop between the lab and the kitchen.
Review of the exhibition by Cindy Baker "Everything I need to grow I learned in Kinder/Garden", and "Only Here for the Food" by Sharon Yeo.
