Participants would research, design and build emergent systems for convivial food distribution and consumption and would, initially, commune via learning how to build/bind 18thC work-books, schematic journals, map-books. We will build alliances with urban farmers and gleaners. We will open a nomadic restaurant for 1-week.
*The food narrative is an increasingly powerful subgenre of autobiography, growing in sophistication and criticality. This class explores the intersections of writing, food-memories situated between the claims of history and the demands of the future, and the form of the book as repository and metaphor. As we reclaim individual food memories we also recover culinary habits and aspirations of neighborhoods, individuals and global populations. These narratives reflect a cultural history of self-development, interpersonal engagements, and intercultural negotiations as they document relational life stories. A major unit for this class will be learning to bind 18thC book structures that will form the basis for our journals, design/strategy workbooks and, finally, our class-devised six food actions.
Book binding examples here: http://www.leonjohnson.org/projects/longbell.html
We will, in addition, remember, write, cook, plot, read and emerge collectively with a bound structure, a field-guide and blueprint for Six Food Actions For The New World: class-derived strategies for engaging communities through food, memory and sustainability. An example of a food action I am currently developing is The Blue Hammer Nomadic Dinner Theater:
http://www.whitneyartworks.com/article_174.shtml
http://bluehammer.wordpress.com/
http://thephoenix.com/Portland/Arts/81723-Conversation-piece/
*A class developed and co-taught with Dr. Myron Beasley: http://www.bates.edu/x202915.xml
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