TLS Farms/Chefs 2010- Aneikit Bonnel
Artist: A. BONNEL
Project Title: MAKING MR. SOFTEE
Size: APPROX 4’ X 5’ PROJECTION
Cost: $1.75 PER CONE AFTER THE FIRST 100 CONES
Medium: INTERACTIVE PERFORMANCE VIDEO
Ingredients: VOLUNTEERS/ICE CREAM CONES
Bio:
A. BONNEL is a Brooklyn-based artist working primarily with video. She conceives each project as a singularity that can be presented in a number of ways i.e. installation, performance, etc., depending on environment. Her subjects are diverse and sometimes reactive whether it is to other artworks or to ideologies. Thematically, she explores fantasies of death, psychological theories, and the metaphysical, but she also enjoys using Pop and Punk elements of humor and irreverence in relation to topics that she considers superficial such as mass consumption and commercialized sex. Drawing from classic and experimental filmmaking, she embraces current and past technologies and challenges herself to combine disparate media into traditional forms [text + performance + video = drama; video + headphones + booth = peepshow; architecture + video + podcast = public art/sculpture].
Interpretation:
MAKING MR. SOFTEE is an interactive performance/video projection that hyperbolizes the act of absolute consumption. Amidst a social setting, volunteers are videotaped within a specified frame as they devour ice cream cones of various flavors and toppings. The live video is projected in real time to emphasize the tactile acts of licking and mastication, commenting on the obsessive and sensual nature of eating. A simple pleasure-desire, to eat ice cream, is hampered by choice [which flavor? what toppings?]. That choice is further complicated by the submission/permission to be recorded in a specified construct [the frame]. Finally, the volunteer is temporally faced with the iconic self in the immediate presentation of his own consumption thereby presenting identity as action.
MAKING MR. SOFTEE embodies the “making of” approach to DIY creation. Part of a larger work, The Last Supper provides the opportune place and time to record footage needed for a future, edited piece wherein the recorded images are sped up, reversed, and sequenced so as to appear that the cone is eaten and regurgitated in an endless, yet ever-varying loop.
TLS Farms/Chefs 2010- Curatorial Statement
Farm City: Micro-Farm Installations and Food Performances
We explore the meaning of exhibition theme of ‘self-made” through performances and installations posing challenges to the existing blandified and industrial food system. Increasingly, metropoles act as passive consumers disconnected from food production. To convey a sense of this flavor gap, we present projects that vividly contrast “home-made” and “home-grown” with “processed” and “factory-farmed.” The selected work embodies goals of FarmCity.US to promote interventions by artists and activists that aim to transform our collective sense of the future of food. The Last Supper is provisioned by Guest Chef Matthew Lundquist from The Waterfront Ale House, who will be grappling the grill and providing all comers with succulent sustenance throughout the evening.
by Farm/Meal curator: Derek Denckla, Farm City
TLS Farms/Chefs 2010- Adopt-A-Farmbox
Farm: Ronald & Aki Hirata-Baker
Title: Adopt-A-Farmbox
Size: 2’ x 4’ x 12”
Ingredients: reclaimed ceder, recycled plastic, plastic bottles
Bio: Adopt-A-Farmbox will donate farmboxes to several schools in the New York City area this Fall, including several schools throughout Brooklyn. The organization is volunteer-based and they need help to o set the costs of the reclaimed wood and other recycled materials used to construct the farmboxes. This grass-roots campaign started in their backyard in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn and has become an exemplar project integrating community development with education, food, creativity and agriculture.
Interpretation:
A Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn based couple and proud parents of two children; Ronald & Aki Baker invite you to engage in urban farming with Adopt-a-Farmbox. A “Self-Made” community action project, Adopt-A-Farmbox began in May 2010 as a solution-based non-profit initiative that empowers people through food by providing an opportunity for children and adults in New York City to learn to grow vegetables and fruits. Through their company, Baker Design + Build, they build and donate farm boxes made from 100% recycled wood to schools and community organizations for the purpose of growing food. Along with the farmboxes, they provide resources, educational materials, and support to facilitate the learning process from planting to harvesting. “We use farmboxes to create opportunities for people to reconnect with food,” says Ronald Baker, “We believe that the best way to help families and communities break the cycles of diabetes and obesity is to expose them to healthier food options and to engage them in the process from seed to fork. Our goal is to create a sense of pride and ownership while de-mystifying the concept of healthy, wholesome food.”
TLS Farms/Chefs 2010- Slippery Slope Farm
Farm Collaborative: Frieda Lim, Ashley Smith Steele, Steven Boling, Alexis Kraft of Slippery Slope Farm: A Modern Sub-irrigated Gowanus Rooftop Micro-Farm
Title: Slippery Slope Farm’s Pick Your Own
Size: 6’ x 42” x 2′
Ingredients: Sun, water, potting mix, #5 containers and window boxes, up-cycled water bottles and nursery flats, corrugated perforated HDPE drain pipe, electrical conduit
Interpretation: Slippery Slope Farm’s Pick Your Own installation demonstrates a modern perspective on growing food in the city through the practices of sub-irrigated planter systems (SIPs) and nutrient density. No offense to all the urban gardens that have taken root on rooftops and empty lots all over the city, but given the challenges of urban living, soil contamination and climate change, why are most people farming as they were still in the country?
SIPs offer a better, more accessible and environmentally sustainable alternative to conventional urban gardens. Anyone with a fire escape, small backyard, or rooftop can create temporary, portable, nomadic gardens. From your micro-farm to your table—pick your own.
Bio: Misc. Frieda, creator of Slippery Slope Farm, a modern urban sub-irrigated rooftop micro-farm located in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Recently she burst out of a magical baby bubble with her daughter Blaze into the greenscaping world of sub-irrigated urban farming. It was in her nesting years that she came into developing her micro-farm out of her personal love of fresh organically grown food that she could share with her family and friends. Misc. Frieda is an interdisciplinary designer of gardens and greenscaping products, events, food, interiors, home furnishings, clothing, miscellaneous.
Alexis Kraft runs an interdisciplinary architecture and design studio, based in Park Slope. Kraft Studio works at large and small scales, redesigning the Gowanus neighborhood and designing kitchens for foodies. Design and food are beyond passion for Kraft, they are his red and white blood cells.
In addition to his design work, Kraft is a part-time Assistant Professor of architecture and interior design and Parsons the New School for Design.
Recent projects include: New Amsterdam Market, Gowanus 2020, Maria MOK Salon, and many, many apartments.
Steven, is an Arkansas transplant who’s had a love affair with growing things since sowing his first garden at the age of six. Determined to stay connected to gardening, even without a plot of land to till, he developed a form of “extreme window gardening” in which nested stacks of containers served to triple the amount of planting space available on a typical window sill. Steven’s out-of-control Hanging Gardens of Brooklyn, which girdled the entire second floor of his building, delighted Park Slope neighbors for years until the intervention of his nervous landlord. Now he keeps a decidedly more modest sub-irrigated window garden and spends his extra time helping Frieda and others to develop and promote new urban gardening techniques. Steven is a visual designer and video artist currently affiliated with the multi-media performance groups Exploding Moment, Facade/Fasad and Desperate Comfort.
Ashley Smith Steele has been performing, choreographing, dancing, hoola hooping, and event producing professionaly in NYC since 1993.
Donating Organization to Slippery Slope Farm Piece:
Certified Organic Plant Starters Courtesy of Silver Heights Farm, Cochecton Center, NY, http://www.silverheightsfarm.com/
Condiment Ingredients Courtesy of Stinky, 261 Smith Street Brooklyn, http://www.stinkybklyn.com/
TLS Chefs/Farms 2010- Becca Lofchie
Artist: Becca Lofchie
Title: The Late Night Diner
Ingredients: 6 Dozen Eggs, 12 Lbs Flour, 2 Gallons Milk, Baking power, Oil, Butter, Bananas, Chocolate chips, 4 Loaves Bread (for toast), Cinnamon, Sugar, Honey, Syrup, Salt
Interpretation
So much of our identity and politics is reflected and embodied in not only what we eat—but also in where, when, how and with whom. Food, and the opportunity to eat together, provide incredible opportunities to construct new environments, relationships and experiences. In light of this year’s theme of a collective approach to art making and consumption—particularly food consumption—I propose to hold a Late Night Diner in the final hour of the Last Supper Festival. Based on an ongoing series of events that I began last winter, this late-night meal will be a space to for artists/participants to come together in an expression of the day’s themes. Inspired by the classic 24-hour diner, my previous Late Night Diners have been held at night, often as late as 2am. I began the project last winter on my college campus, and have since held over of dozen Late Night Diners at a number of locations. I serve inexpensive, yet satisfying, diner-style comfort foods such as eggs and pancakes. The food and preparation are intentionally simple and transparent to show that the Late Night Diner is a piece that can be easily recreated and disseminated by anyone in attendance— without fancy equipment, culinary skills, or a restaurant. The Late Night Diners functions as a venue for many forms of participation. Friends, colleagues and acquaintances have “co-hosted” diners with themes based on their interests, including stargazing, metal music and art therapy. Others have participated as guest chefs, cooking their favorite comfort foods. Many have participated simply with their presence. The Late Night Diners are thus created by all who attend, thus challenging the notion of the singular artist/creator. I would extend an invitation to all participating artists and chefs from the Last Supper Festival to ‘co-host’ the diner with me in order to make this a shared opportunity for learning and expression during the final hour of the festival.
Bio:
Becca Lofchie was born in NYC and schooled in LA—and currently has one foot in each city. She studied visual art at Pomona College—which is where she started the Late Night Diner, a weekly event that integrated food, art, stargazing, metal music, séances, bird watching, poetry, jazz and more. She hopes to continue to find and create new sites for eating, learning and connecting.
The Last Supper Film Festival is an indoor-outdoor film, food, music and art festival occuring in Brooklyn during the crux of seasonal change in September. Referencing the celebratory nature of the feast, and the symposium of genres, the festival kindles the creative miasma sparked by NY's peppery fall and inventive community.The last exposure to outdoor interaction before the shearing winter...