A Plea for Culinary Modernism

food, cooking, history, local, slow food, fast food, ethics, globalism, industrialisation, labour

Culinary Luddites are right, though, about two important things. We need to know how to prepare good food, and we need a culinary ethos. As far as good food goes, they’ve done us all a service by teaching us to how to use the bounty delivered to us (ironically) by the global economy. Their culinary ethos, though, is another matter. Were we able to turn back the clock, as they urge, most of us would be toiling all day in the fields or the kitchen; many of us would be starving. Nostalgia is not what we need. What we need is an ethos that comes to terms with contemporary, industrialized food, not one that dismisses it, an ethos that opens choices for everyone, not one that closes them for many so that a few may enjoy their labor, and an ethos that does not prejudge, but decides case by case when natural is preferable to processed, fresh to preserved, old to new, slow to fast, artisanal to industrial.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/05/slow-food-artisanal-natural-preservatives/

The Yamnaya were nomadic herders from the steppe in what is now Ukraine and Russia. Archaeological evidence shows that they…

“The Yamnaya were nomadic herders from the steppe in what is now Ukraine and Russia. Archaeological evidence shows that they swept into Europe around 4,500 years ago, bringing with them horses, wheels, their famous “kurgan” burial mounds and quite possibly Proto-Indo-European, the ancestral tongue of most European, as well as many South Asian languages. Just like farming before it, their package of resources, technologies and behaviours gave them an advantage over the pre-existing Europeans and they seem to have left a substantial genetic legacy across Europe.”

–Daniel Zadik in War in Context ( The Conversation).A handful of Bronze-Age men could have fathered two thirds of Europeans (viaprotoslacker)

WE ARE OVERTAKEN BY EVENTS A round-up of talks, art events & experimental electronic music in London over the next couple of…

hautepop:

WE ARE OVERTAKEN BY EVENTS

A round-up of talks, art events & experimental electronic music in London over the next couple of months.

Aka Hautepop’s Attempt To Avert Complete Failure In Keeping Track of Things And Actually Have A Social Life.

Friends, if you are doing a Thing and I should know about it, please let me know.

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TONIGHT 16 May 19.30 Trace Bodies, ICA bar

Caspar Heinemann (@angstravaganza) & some other people in a group performance which “looks at affective online alienation in relation to corporeality and identity production and consumption.”

Sold out but Caspar says come along anyway, apparently…

TONIGHT 16 May 19.30 Ezra Sound single launch, Power Lunches, Kingsland Road.

Thom Dinsdale @thomdinsdale aka Sweet Breads is playing.

TOMORROW Sunday 17 May, 18.50, Industrial Soundtrack For The Urban Decay, ICA

“The first film to trace the origins of industrial music, taking you on a journey through the crumbling industrial cities of Europe to America’s thriving avant-garde scene”.

This showing may be sold out (IDK) but there are others until 21 May. People who wear black are obligated to attend.

THURS 21 May, 19.30, Kate Bornstein in conversation with Roz Kaveney, Hackney Attic

Performance-artist-theorist-gender-activist Kate Bornstein does her thing. Facebook is saying sold out but I’ve just bought a ticket (£10) off the Picture House website, so…

SAT 23 May, late, KAOS presents Orphx, Electrowerkz

Horrible industrial techno. Who wants to come? Tickets here (£15)

THUR 28 May onward, FIELD: Violescence / Forays, The Hospital Club WC2H, FREE

“Violescence is a continuation of FIELD’s ongoing exploration of new formats and platforms for digital art including immersive virtual reality experiences connected to sculpture, photography and video manipulated with visual effects, the blend between physical and digital environments and identities.”

Private view 28 May, artist’s talk Sat 30 May.

FRI 29 - SUN 31 May, #FOMO series of talks at ICA

Lots of good things here, including:

FRI 29 May, 17.00 - Judy Wajcman, Olia Lialina and Karen Archey, SOLD OUT
SAT 30 May, 14.00 - Tony Prescott, ZENO the robot, Eleanor Saitta, £10
SUN 31 May, 12.00 - Yuri Pattison, McKenzie Wark, £10
SUN 31 May, 15.00 - Helen Hester, FOMO Panel chaired by Hito Steyerl, SOLD OUT

SAT 30 May, 11-17.00, Walk the Peckham coal line, Bussey Building, Copeland Park SE15, FREE

In Peckham’s inexorable gentrification apparently entails pitching for its own version of the High Line, Manhattan’s (admittedly gorgeous) elevated railway-park. On 30 May you can walk the 1km route.

WED 10 June, 20.00, Holly Herndon at XOYO, EC2A

Electronic music artist Holly H. live, promoting her new album Platform. First saw her at Brighton Digital Festival & she is amaze. Tickets £13, here.

WED 17 June, 18.30, Technofeminism Now, ICA, £7

“Panel discussion chaired by Helen Hester revisiting the contributions of technofeminism, in light of recent developments in leftist critical thinking.

This marks the English language publication of the transfeminist collective Laboria Cuboniks’s Xenofeminism: a Politics for Alienation (2015).”