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research_report_feral_trade [2009-02-03 21:04] – katerichresearch_report_feral_trade [2014-12-03 12:09] (current) – Links to fairtradenotes changed to fairtrade_notes nik
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-The broad context for this research is the increasingly informationalised context in which our food products are sourced and distributed: a proliferation of gourmet desires and additive fears, a growing consumer appetite for food miles and other metrics of provenance, and the rise of Fair Trade and 'local food' as standards for engagement with the politics of supply. This research aims to challenge these markers of equity/ethics, and collect and cultivate a broader and more complex landscape of references for food trading, beyond the overworked binaries of Fair vs Free Trade or local vs global.+The broad context for this research is the increasingly informationalised context in which our food products are sourced and distributed: a proliferation of gourmet desires and additive fears, a growing consumer appetite for food miles and other metrics of provenance, and the rise of [[fairtrade notes|Fair Trade]] and 'local food' as standards for engagement with the politics of supply. This research aims to challenge these markers of equity/ethics, and collect and cultivate a broader and more complex landscape of references for food trading, beyond the overworked binaries of Fair vs Free Trade or local vs global.
  
-The physical context for the research is the medium of food reporting, both embedded in the product (the text and imagery found in food packaging) and external (in marketing and media). It is in part a response to the substantial data gap between the ubiquity of information sharing on screens - the multiplication of news agencies, blogs and other feeds – and the scarcity of expanded, critical or contestual viewpoints in other contemporary media operating closer to the surface of real, circulating commodity culture, such as food packaging.+The physical context for the research is the medium of food reporting, both embedded in the product (the text and imagery found in food packaging) and external (in marketing and media). It is in part a response to the substantial data gap between the ubiquity of information sharing on screens - the multiplication of news agencies, blogs and other feeds – and the scarcity of expanded, critical, documentary or contestual viewpoints in other contemporary media operating closer to the surface of real, circulating commodity culture, such as food packaging.
  
 The research is an extension of an already active project, Feral Trade (www.feraltrade.org), an actual grocery business trading goods along social networks since 2003. Feral Trade was established to develop an alternative set of protocols to Free or Fair Trade: a public experiment to test the capacity of computer-formed social networks to carry more substantial traffic, such as groceries. This research is intended to further that investigation and place Feral Trade itself in a larger context of trade methodologies. The research is an extension of an already active project, Feral Trade (www.feraltrade.org), an actual grocery business trading goods along social networks since 2003. Feral Trade was established to develop an alternative set of protocols to Free or Fair Trade: a public experiment to test the capacity of computer-formed social networks to carry more substantial traffic, such as groceries. This research is intended to further that investigation and place Feral Trade itself in a larger context of trade methodologies.
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 A particular focus is the nomad/resident diet: prescriptions for survival in the art world via nutritional suggestions for the travelling artist or stationary institution, to attempt a continuity between knowledge work and the immediate environment it takes place in.  A particular focus is the nomad/resident diet: prescriptions for survival in the art world via nutritional suggestions for the travelling artist or stationary institution, to attempt a continuity between knowledge work and the immediate environment it takes place in. 
  
-At a daily level, the question is how to unravel the clamour of often conflicting criteria that ambush the critical shopper at point of sale - your time, its sell-by date, freshness, additives, freight and its attributes, your travel to purchase it, vendor politics, packaging, localness, farming methods, labour relations, seasonality, economic impacts including global responsibility, and of course the price - with the aim to identify actionable priorities.+At a daily level the question is how to unravel the clamour of often conflicting criteria that ambush the critical shopper at point of sale - your time, its sell-by date, freshness, additives, freight and its attributes, your travel to purchase it, vendor politics, packaging, localness, farming methods, labour relations, seasonality, economic impacts including global responsibility, and of course the price - with the aim to identify actionable priorities.
  
 Information Information
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   - Feral Hamper, a boxed collection of tracked and reannotated food products, asssembled in edition of 12. These were raffled at FoAM (also during Open Kitchens) and sold to individual collectors. The hampers were accompanied by a brochure http://feraltrade.org/hamper/hamper_brochure.pdf detailing negotiations, social connections and territorial information encountered in the procurement of each product. Presentation information archived here [[feral hamper]] and at http://feraltrade.org/hamper    - Feral Hamper, a boxed collection of tracked and reannotated food products, asssembled in edition of 12. These were raffled at FoAM (also during Open Kitchens) and sold to individual collectors. The hampers were accompanied by a brochure http://feraltrade.org/hamper/hamper_brochure.pdf detailing negotiations, social connections and territorial information encountered in the procurement of each product. Presentation information archived here [[feral hamper]] and at http://feraltrade.org/hamper 
   - A single intensive case study was undertaken of Kazi & Kazi tea, ecofarmed in the northwest border area of Bangladesh. Visits to the tea garden and corporate HQ took place in February 2008, gathering information and images to compile a more nuanced story than is currently visible in the company brochure or on-package. The Kazi tea plantation proved to be fertile territory to study the chasm between market-oriented information and locally gleaned research around this emblematic product. 300 teabags plus 1kg loose leaf tea was purchased and delivered to UK/Belgium; repackaged and distributed with complementary research findings. A video essay that traces the source of this particular tea into almost all reaches of Bangladeshi political, ecological and economic life is currently in production.    - A single intensive case study was undertaken of Kazi & Kazi tea, ecofarmed in the northwest border area of Bangladesh. Visits to the tea garden and corporate HQ took place in February 2008, gathering information and images to compile a more nuanced story than is currently visible in the company brochure or on-package. The Kazi tea plantation proved to be fertile territory to study the chasm between market-oriented information and locally gleaned research around this emblematic product. 300 teabags plus 1kg loose leaf tea was purchased and delivered to UK/Belgium; repackaged and distributed with complementary research findings. A video essay that traces the source of this particular tea into almost all reaches of Bangladeshi political, ecological and economic life is currently in production. 
-  - Expansion of the Feral Trade database, including a utility to output maps rendering the delivery routes of single and multiple shipments of goods (see http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3366/3222364749_9e68d0d2ae_o.jpg); and a tablemat function, which assembles selected ingredients into an ingredient menu for table service, annotated with elaborate shipping information. See  http://flickr.com/photos/foam/3223277358/sizes/o/in/set-72157612898123967 for prototype.+  - Expansion of the Feral Trade database, including a utility to output maps rendering the delivery routes of single and multiple shipments of goods (see http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3366/3222364749_9e68d0d2ae_o.jpg); and a tablemat function, which assembles selected ingredients into an ingredient menu for table service, annotated with elaborate shipping information. See  http://flickr.com/photos/foam/3223277358/sizes/o/in/set-72157612898123967 for tablemat prototype.
   -  Further outcomes of the research included the Nomadic Picnic, a collaboration with FoAM and gRig to serve a dinner composed of products and ingredients freighted in to Brussels in the hand baggage of travelling cultural peers. The event was commissioned by Kaaitheater, Brussels for the Burning Ice festival in January 2009. The dinner showcased socially sourced groceries - both imported exotics and essential goods procured through FoAM's own local shopping alliances, and was served to an audience of 60 conference presenters, technicians, staff, board members, friends and general public in a temporary kitchen/dining room at Kaaitheater. Documentation of the event can be found here, http://flickr.com/photos/foam/sets/72157612898123967   -  Further outcomes of the research included the Nomadic Picnic, a collaboration with FoAM and gRig to serve a dinner composed of products and ingredients freighted in to Brussels in the hand baggage of travelling cultural peers. The event was commissioned by Kaaitheater, Brussels for the Burning Ice festival in January 2009. The dinner showcased socially sourced groceries - both imported exotics and essential goods procured through FoAM's own local shopping alliances, and was served to an audience of 60 conference presenters, technicians, staff, board members, friends and general public in a temporary kitchen/dining room at Kaaitheater. Documentation of the event can be found here, http://flickr.com/photos/foam/sets/72157612898123967
   - A Feral Trade Cafe for active continuation of the research is scheduled to take place at HTTP gallery in London, Summer 2009, as a located, physical interface to the project. The Cafe will serve and exhibit Feral Trade goods (current and retrospective); provide a local trading station and depot for the Feral Trade network; and present research and discussion around both food providence and hospitality protocols for artist-run venues. As well as Feral Trade products, the Cafe will actively solicit food producers from local social networks - family connections, artworld contacts, migrant groceries, home farming. These non-standard supply chains provide an opportunity to expand a conception of localness beyond the land-bound model of the village, to a shared set of connections and navigable routes, like the scale-free hubs of the internet. All products will be displayed/sold/served with their informational baggage attached. The product data and stock curatorial concepts will be made available as a reading menu, for inhouse or takeaway consumption. The Cafe is in part conceived as a micro-economic model: a sustainability rehearsal for broader climate changes in which other supply chains (food delivery, cultural funding) could go belly up.    - A Feral Trade Cafe for active continuation of the research is scheduled to take place at HTTP gallery in London, Summer 2009, as a located, physical interface to the project. The Cafe will serve and exhibit Feral Trade goods (current and retrospective); provide a local trading station and depot for the Feral Trade network; and present research and discussion around both food providence and hospitality protocols for artist-run venues. As well as Feral Trade products, the Cafe will actively solicit food producers from local social networks - family connections, artworld contacts, migrant groceries, home farming. These non-standard supply chains provide an opportunity to expand a conception of localness beyond the land-bound model of the village, to a shared set of connections and navigable routes, like the scale-free hubs of the internet. All products will be displayed/sold/served with their informational baggage attached. The product data and stock curatorial concepts will be made available as a reading menu, for inhouse or takeaway consumption. The Cafe is in part conceived as a micro-economic model: a sustainability rehearsal for broader climate changes in which other supply chains (food delivery, cultural funding) could go belly up. 
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 On the other hand, one of the motivating problems - the overload in strident truth claims and fuzzy data in the bewildering business of shopping for food - seemed to resolve itself without much further interrogation. Both in the context of Feral Trade and at the FoAM events there emerged an apparant consensus that relations with supplier, whether the goods' producer or its handler (vendor, courier etc) was broadly valued over other criteria of origin. More than an ethical standpoint this position holds strategic value when mainstream supply chains for food and other essential goods may be suddenly under threat. On the other hand, one of the motivating problems - the overload in strident truth claims and fuzzy data in the bewildering business of shopping for food - seemed to resolve itself without much further interrogation. Both in the context of Feral Trade and at the FoAM events there emerged an apparant consensus that relations with supplier, whether the goods' producer or its handler (vendor, courier etc) was broadly valued over other criteria of origin. More than an ethical standpoint this position holds strategic value when mainstream supply chains for food and other essential goods may be suddenly under threat.
  
-Significantly a singular shift in public focus toward the intersection of ecologic and economic concerns over the period of the project, served to focus public attention on the research territory (as evidenced by Kaaitheater programming its first conference around climate change and reaction with relation to the performing arts, in January '09).+Significantly, a singular shift in public focus toward the intersection of ecologic and economic concerns over the period of the project served to focus public attention on the research territory (as evidenced by Kaaitheater programming its first conference around climate change and reaction with relation to the performing arts, in January '09).
  
 Audience response showed an appetite for criticially sourced goods, as the Feral Trade hamper raffle sold 60 tickets, with 3 hampers raffled and 9 other hampers sold separately. In other supply chain progress, as a result of the Public Diet dinner, Brussels artist studios Nadine http://www.nadine.be became a new longterm client for delivery of Feral Trade office coffee.  Audience response showed an appetite for criticially sourced goods, as the Feral Trade hamper raffle sold 60 tickets, with 3 hampers raffled and 9 other hampers sold separately. In other supply chain progress, as a result of the Public Diet dinner, Brussels artist studios Nadine http://www.nadine.be became a new longterm client for delivery of Feral Trade office coffee. 
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     * Black Gold (movie)     * Black Gold (movie)
     * Bill Brown, thing theory (JSTOR journal of critical inquiry) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Brown_(critical_theory)     * Bill Brown, thing theory (JSTOR journal of critical inquiry) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Brown_(critical_theory)
 +    * Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Sleepwalking in a Dialectical Picture Puzzle, Part 1: A Conversation with Avery Gordon http://e-flux.com/journal/view/20
 +    * Feral Trade courier database http://www.feraltrade.org
      
 //visual/sonic/tactile material generated in the research to be archived at [[:foam]]// //visual/sonic/tactile material generated in the research to be archived at [[:foam]]//
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   * [[recipes_for_disaster]]   * [[recipes_for_disaster]]
   * [[feral hamper]]   * [[feral hamper]]
 +  * room self-service experiments at http://www.feraltrade.org/room_selfservice
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