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**feasability study for sustained sustenance: installing a Feral Trade Cafe at HTTP gallery, London UK, from autumn/winter 2008. A platform to present feral trade goods and develop the protocols of refreshment service, in line with the other public communications of the gallery. This research emerges from an interest in the public diet of cultural organisations where foods for thought and consumption might crossover; and includes testing the regulatory limits and social expectations for a cafe, as well as preparing the resources, human and otherwise, required to run it. ** 


Feral Trade http://feraltrade.org
HTTP http://www.http.uk.net

===== CAFE motives, structure and infrastructure =====
 
  * Motives for opening a cafe as an art project.

Practical

1. HTTP is located in the back of beyond, an industrial estate in the residential London borough of Haringey http://www.haringey.gov.uk, from the point of view of its public. A cafe would offer visitors something to chew on alongside the art: sustenance and conviviality, enriched space for contemplation, information and reading, oppportunity to elongate visit.

2. A service for local residents and studio occupants. The neighbourhood is changing - incoming small business and studios - the cafe would be an interface to that. A means of connecting with the local community that's more fluid and open, a softer and more everyday interface than the gallery. 

Conceptual 

    http: The cafe will demonstrate an alternate economy and ecology that promotes free   
    processes and experiences other than those governed by hegemonic global capitalism:
    so many shops deal with just money. 
    Feral Trade is an economy based on other peoples' activities and how you get from A to B. 
    Even at this small scale it has a polemic value.
[[feral_trade_economy]] 

Economic

Profit is not a necessary motive, which opens up the operating territory considerably.
Although stock should still pay for itself plus provide surplus for office consumption.

  * income scenario 

Slow start. 
All transactions logged and accounted for.
The cafe will be designed as financially self sufficient, although seed funding required for start-up equipment and utensils.

   Feral Trade runs at a fabulous loss, in business terms.
   It operates in an absence of the principle of least effort, excluding it from basic 
   market measure of success. 
   The investment is in the network. 
 
  * hours of operation, visitor patterns, winter plan 

Gallery hours are currently 12-5PM Fri-Sun, possibly extending to Thurs.
Average 15-20 visitors per weekend, mainly arriving via Manor House tube. 
There is no cafe between the tube and HTTP although it is possible to take a 
detour to Costa Coffee, a commercial chain in the business mall on Green Lanes. 
Portuguese cafe in the other direction has cheap and good espresso and a largely Portuguese clientele.

The cafe would not necessarily be linked to shows.
The gallery has an exhibit approximately 3/4 of the year.
There are gaps between shows. In winter and gaps, the distributed library http://www.http.uk.net/docs/exhib6/summer_of_folk.shtml and Feral 
Trade cafe could occupy the gallery space. People would visit for the library, or for meetings.
Library visitor numbers are low but it's the intensity of the experience that counts.
    http: It would be a coup to overcome geography and keep the cafe open in winter.
    Without affecting global warming. 
    
Patio bonfires worth looking into.

  * caretaking: human resources as they currently stand

When the gallery is open, there is someone always available to respond to visitors.
Saturday and Sunday have dedicated invigilation, Fridays can be more hectic.
Currently Ale (Furtherfield administration and coordination) does Fri-Sat; Sundays there is an outside invigilator. 

Hazards: At what scale would the cafe interfere with other office activity?

    * roles for cafe. 

**Service:** preparation, waiting, cash-taking.
Cafe service role would be rotated amongst present core personnel, 
this kind of distributed culture is integral to the way Furtherfield works as a group.
http://www.furtherfield.org/about.php
Cafe service should be continuous with natural office life, disinvesting refreshment service of any separate lowered status. [[householding]]

**Management:** Feral Trade would remain involved in the politics and practicalities of supply. Day to day stock management would be 1 person's responsibility,
probably Ale who deals with this kind of thing anyway.

  * physical setup: service and storage spaces, equipment investment, utensil choices

Initial investment will be necessary (equipment, utensils, presentation media).
At a minimum, tables, chairs, umbrellas and signage to communicate cafe presence to the nighbourhood.
    
The decking along the side of HTTP building is potentially prime seating area. HTTP to sound the landlord out on this between rent payments,
Landlord relations are distantly friendly. There is a janitor who keeps a close eye 
on the compound. If landlord rejects decking plans, the parking spaces in front are 
formally HTTP's, included in their rent. Cafe could serve from here with guests seating themselves informally (on the decking).

    Liability would need to be thought through or ignored.

  * publicity

Cafe would have its own publicity strand as a HTTP project.
Also promoted as background for exhibitions.

  * other models (positive and negative)

    Cafe Kino http://www.cafe-kino.com/about/index.htm, Bristol. 
    Run by a collective of artists etc who also run the Here Shop & Gallery over the road.
    Many of their customers are from their extended social networks, probably from 
    within a few blocks radius. People go there for the sociability, decor, wifi, 
    good tea/coffee, cultural contagion plus pleasure of investing in own social 
    networks. 

    Leila's Shop, Shoreditch. Groceries and cafe, review covers the for & againsts: 
    http://londonreviewofbreakfasts.blogspot.com/2008/04/leilas-shop-shoreditch.html

===== HTTP structure  =====

Umbrella company is Catlow & Garrett, a partnership and tax entity, deals with rent and overheads, PAYE etc.
HTTP is a http://furtherfield.org project.
HTTP & Furtherfield are not for profits, with written constitutions.
Furtherfield has an advisory board and is funded by Arts Council England.
HTTP is located in a business arena zoned as mixed use (typically integrating residential, retail, commercial and social amenities) / live-work.

=====  REGULATORY STRUCTURE =====

[[uk_premises_regulations]]   
    Produce a Regulatory reading menu as research project. 
    Use existing regulations as a template/ jelly mould for evasion or compliance. 
http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=jello+mold&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title

=====  MENU =====  

   * Curatorial guidelines

   Coincide with HTTP core curatorial principles
   Promote Feral Trade experimental trader aims.

   Food goods will be informationalised (onboard or on menu).
   Customer receipts can be A4 laser prints with a torrent of product information.

   Selection will involve a biodiversity of criteria, none of which should be 
   primary or exclusionary. Stock considerations include:

   - compliance with or skirting the regulatory perimeters [[uk_premises_regulations]]
   - shelf life: to avoid sales incentive or waste
   - the facility of the food item to host information, including
   - information on source, relations with land, embodied by the transport of its produce
   - information on carriage, network and delivery relations embodied by courier/s.
   - seasonality, including transportation seasons
   - localness

   Expand understanding of localness beyond the territorially bounded, landlocked 
   village model, to a shared set of connections and navigable transit routes 
   like the scale-free hubs of the internet. 

[[common_products]]

   Ingredients and products with questionable ethics can be included, along with their 
   source information. The main thing is to expand the product monologue to articulate a 
   larger picture of the world it moves through.
[[tea_from_bangladesh]]
    Compared with Fair Trade which limits its communiques to the the iconic picture of 
    farmer/producer/collective, a restricted landscape
http://feraltrade.org/fair

    and one that reverses earlier breaks with tradition in visualising agriculture 
    labour as a statement on rural poverty as opposed to example of pastoral virtue. 
    Gleaning: François Millet 1857

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~waste/timeline/story-pic1.htm

   Feral Trade takes food-labeling as a space for diverse communications as  
   opposed to righteous boasting / the promotion of purity fetishes. 
   Undercut profit-motivated product constructions, elevated origins and destinies
   (gourmet, organic, fairdom, health) in the truth claims propagated by the likes of
   fresh and wild.
http://feraltrade.org/research/righteous_products

[[breakdown_of_expenses]]: The cafe menu to also include itemisations in the transit of cash as witnessed in the goods' procurement: particularly obstacles, as the materiality of money in small quantities generally defies the idea of the smooth movement of finance across global networks.

   Read-write menu. Open to intervention from random vendors eg. customers can contribute 
   menu items via sell/trade/gifting stock.

   Economy of miniaturisation / smallscale. Enables hosting small batches/single items,
   ultra short seasons and microclimates.
   Menu should be easily updated and transmitted (database-driven) and include 
   out of stock items - wishlisted, in negotiation or pending delivery.

   Courier process. Use moving social networks including known and funded travel to HTTP 
   to deliver goods from afar, including store-bought ones. Documenting these journeys and
   relationships expands attention to food provenance beyond a gourmet-style fetishisation 
   of origin or source, to the broader ecology of supply. 
   Promote inter-organisational trade with artistic peers, local and foreign.               

   Source producers or recipes from HTTP social networks, commission or collect artists' 
   food projects, plus social connections to city farm, allotment, home cultivation 
   (cake, jams, herbs, sprouts etc). 
   
   Regulatory limits: Define and stock emergency food products; define emergency; outer 
   limits of biscuit; cream teas. 

   Feral Trade staples start menu. 
  -    Coffee from El Salvador
  -    Tea from Bangladesh (TBC)
  -    Cola from Bristol.
  -    Salt from Gujarat

  Other organisational contenders
  -    Fo.am Brussels. Grappa, Latvian cured meats, computer chocolate biscuits.
  -    Mejor Vida Corporation, Mexico City. Hot chocolate
  -    Irational.org, Bristol. Food for Free apple mush 

   Challenge fresh+wild to a duel.

===== OUTPUTS =====

   proposed demo for mid-september ( jeremey bailey show)
   possibly a harvest party / launch in oct

   external: present at fo.am open sauces in brussels in november as part of public diet 
   disucssion


===== SHORT VERSION =====
Feral Trade cafe at HTTP gallery

Feral Trade http://feraltrade.org
HTTP http://www.http.uk.net

HTTP gallery (media- and net-art) is a cultural minority in a mainly working 
class / cafe free residential area of NE London. The cafe will start off very small 
scale and is modelled as a means of extending natural office tea and coffee service
to gallery visitors and locals. It is not motivated by cash profit, although goods 
should cover their own costs.

All goods will be served with information about source and/or delivery,
including the materiality of cash transactions performed to procure them. 
Visitors should be able to buy coffee etc either by the cup or in bags to 
take home.

The feral trade courier process uses moving social networks, including
known and funded cultural travel, to conduct international grocery
trade by primarily social means. In documenting this process it expands the 
idea of food provenance beyond a gourmet-style fetishisation of origins, to 
broader relationships of supply. 

The cafe hopes to promote inter-organisational trade with artistic peers,
local and foreign, and to expand a definition of localness beyond the
territorial boundaries of the village or state.