Intimate Eating

In Intimate Eating Anita Mannur examines how notions of the culinary can create new forms of kinship, intimacy, and social and political belonging. Drawing on critical ethnic studies and queer studies, Mannur traces the ways in which people of color, queer people, and other marginalized subjects create and sustain this belonging through the formation of “intimate eating publics.” These spaces—whether established in online communities or through eating along in a restaurant—blur the line between public and private. In analyses of Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia, Nani Power’s Ginger and Ganesh, Ritesh Batra’s film The Lunchbox, Michael Rakowitz’s performance art installation Enemy Kitchen, and The Great British Bake Off, Mannur focuses on how racialized South Asian and Arab brown bodies become visible in various intimate eating publics. In this way, the culinary becomes central to discourses of race and other social categories of difference. By illuminating how cooking, eating, and distributing food shapes and sustains social worlds, Mannur reconfigures how we think about networks of intimacy beyond the family, heteronormativity, and nation.

Dead voices and lost sounds: an imagined sonic history

A project description of a sound art installation and interactive performance presented as part of the Up Close Festival in New York City in the winter of 2019/2020. The article is authored by the creator and director of the piece, Adrienne Kapstein. Created for an all-age audience, the piece was a unique, relational and socially engaged experience that merged sound art, live performance, illusion, technology, and audience participation. Designed to be completed in partnership with members of the community it sought to serve, the piece invited participation from every audience member through multiple and varied means of engagement.

The Illustrated Chicano: Chicano Border Methodology in Practice

<p>What is Chicano Border Methodology? In my thesis I am answering this question by showing that this is a key part of my practice, and revisiting my past work and experiences to re-construct the development of this methodology. Chicano Border Methodology is a living methodology based on lived experience that is constantly in praxis, and not just theoretical. It is rooted in a knowledge space that is specific to a locality, La Frontera/US-Mexico border. I began to assemble the methodology using epistemological pluralism as the framework and modified this framework to produce a decolonising epistemological pluralism. Using the colonial matrix of power, this position questions the assumption of epistemic privilege of western knowledge production. Using a personal narrative structure, I start the re-construction process by describing the beginnings of my decolonising process with the re-discovery of my Chicano identity. I then describe the knowledge space developed along La Frontera/US-Mexico Border and how it shows up in my art practice. Looking at the concepts of decolonisation process, practice-led research, performative research and Kaupapa Māori, I contrast and analyse the position of my Chicano Border Methodology, highlighting the differences that make my Chicano Border Methodology unique. I go on to describe and analyse how I applied this methodology to the production of The Illustrated Chicano, an art installation that looks at issues of place, home and immigration in Aotearoa New Zealand. The Illustrated Chicano, as a practical application of the Chicano Border Methodology, revealed that this methodology is robust and can be modified by Chicanos to match the specific needs of research areas, where a decolonising approach is required or beneficial to the outcome. I also explore how the community reacted to my installation built through the Chicano Border Methodology lens by documenting and analysing the community’s reaction to this work. I conclude with a discussion of the significance of local knowledge spaces, the value of different methodological models, and the flexibility of a decolonising epistemological pluralism framework, such as the Chicano Border Methodology.</p>

The Illustrated Chicano: Chicano Border Methodology in Practice

<p>What is Chicano Border Methodology? In my thesis I am answering this question by showing that this is a key part of my practice, and revisiting my past work and experiences to re-construct the development of this methodology. Chicano Border Methodology is a living methodology based on lived experience that is constantly in praxis, and not just theoretical. It is rooted in a knowledge space that is specific to a locality, La Frontera/US-Mexico border. I began to assemble the methodology using epistemological pluralism as the framework and modified this framework to produce a decolonising epistemological pluralism. Using the colonial matrix of power, this position questions the assumption of epistemic privilege of western knowledge production. Using a personal narrative structure, I start the re-construction process by describing the beginnings of my decolonising process with the re-discovery of my Chicano identity. I then describe the knowledge space developed along La Frontera/US-Mexico Border and how it shows up in my art practice. Looking at the concepts of decolonisation process, practice-led research, performative research and Kaupapa Māori, I contrast and analyse the position of my Chicano Border Methodology, highlighting the differences that make my Chicano Border Methodology unique. I go on to describe and analyse how I applied this methodology to the production of The Illustrated Chicano, an art installation that looks at issues of place, home and immigration in Aotearoa New Zealand. The Illustrated Chicano, as a practical application of the Chicano Border Methodology, revealed that this methodology is robust and can be modified by Chicanos to match the specific needs of research areas, where a decolonising approach is required or beneficial to the outcome. I also explore how the community reacted to my installation built through the Chicano Border Methodology lens by documenting and analysing the community’s reaction to this work. I conclude with a discussion of the significance of local knowledge spaces, the value of different methodological models, and the flexibility of a decolonising epistemological pluralism framework, such as the Chicano Border Methodology.</p>

THINK BIG, act small

<p>Porirua City is twenty minutes north of Wellington, New Zealand’s capital. The city is fifty years young and is home to the youngest demographic in the country. The city is culturally diverse but lacks a clear architectural representation of this cultural diversity. The city has developed around a beautiful harbour but the waterfront is underutilised in the city’s urban design. THINK BIG, act small proposes a design strategy that re-invents Porirua City’s urban future by bringing people back to its neglected water-edge. The proposition explores how design as process and outcome can empower a community for the future of a city through spatial agency and social engagement. The thesis explores the designer’s role in this process as landscape architect, architect, and social activist. A series of large, medium and small scale interventions are proposed. The Strategy is presented in three parts: 1. The Toolkit: a kit of architectural ideas designed to re-think the city’s urban environment around its relationship to water. These ideas can be deployed over time. 2. Two Temporary Projects: two small interventions from The Toolkit are tested in Porirua. An art installation and a community pop-up space are used to initiate conversations around the future of the city with people of the city. 3. The Big Move: a series of design moves, both big and small, are proposed as a composite vision for the future of Porirua. The proposition includes outcomes from the community pop-up space. The Big Move proposes a constructed wetland park, a series of blue-green streets, public pools, and housing. The aim is to establish new ecosystems that ease flooding, improve water quality, provide catalyst areas for economic growth, and create new social spaces for the city. The design aims to draw the harbour into the city. Polynesian and Maori attitudes towards land and water are integrated in the design: land is boundless and water is a bridge. A park, Te Awaura Park, is proposed as a ‘soft’ edge to the city’s existing boundary. The narrative of the park expresses the neighbourhood characterstics unique to each suburb in Porirua. The park aims to create a true local space, a space celebrating the city’s people.</p>

THINK BIG, act small

<p>Porirua City is twenty minutes north of Wellington, New Zealand’s capital. The city is fifty years young and is home to the youngest demographic in the country. The city is culturally diverse but lacks a clear architectural representation of this cultural diversity. The city has developed around a beautiful harbour but the waterfront is underutilised in the city’s urban design. THINK BIG, act small proposes a design strategy that re-invents Porirua City’s urban future by bringing people back to its neglected water-edge. The proposition explores how design as process and outcome can empower a community for the future of a city through spatial agency and social engagement. The thesis explores the designer’s role in this process as landscape architect, architect, and social activist. A series of large, medium and small scale interventions are proposed. The Strategy is presented in three parts: 1. The Toolkit: a kit of architectural ideas designed to re-think the city’s urban environment around its relationship to water. These ideas can be deployed over time. 2. Two Temporary Projects: two small interventions from The Toolkit are tested in Porirua. An art installation and a community pop-up space are used to initiate conversations around the future of the city with people of the city. 3. The Big Move: a series of design moves, both big and small, are proposed as a composite vision for the future of Porirua. The proposition includes outcomes from the community pop-up space. The Big Move proposes a constructed wetland park, a series of blue-green streets, public pools, and housing. The aim is to establish new ecosystems that ease flooding, improve water quality, provide catalyst areas for economic growth, and create new social spaces for the city. The design aims to draw the harbour into the city. Polynesian and Maori attitudes towards land and water are integrated in the design: land is boundless and water is a bridge. A park, Te Awaura Park, is proposed as a ‘soft’ edge to the city’s existing boundary. The narrative of the park expresses the neighbourhood characterstics unique to each suburb in Porirua. The park aims to create a true local space, a space celebrating the city’s people.</p>

Wolves in the City of Domesticated Women: The Queer Wild of Olivia Rosenthal

In 2009, in the city of Nantes, a pack of six wolves was released in a public park as part of Stéphane Thidet’s art installation. A book of short stories accompanied the event. One of the authors involved was Olivia Rosenthal, who then incorporated her story into the novel Que font les rennes après Noël? (2010), in which captive wolves are reintroduced to the city. In this post-natural environment, animals provide a semblance of the wilderness for residents, yet remain enclosed in an extended zoo designed by man – an act that domesticates both sides of the fence by separating humans from wolves. Rosenthal’s protagonist is one of such captives. Her life and the lives of animals are presented in parallel narratives. She grows up in a strictly controlled environment, and social standards are imposed on her. In a semi-autobiographical vein, Rosenthal explores issues of queer and gender marginalization as well as emancipation. At the same time, she seeks to dismantle the binary oppositions that place animals, women, and non-heteronormative persons on the other side of the fence. Relying on queer ecofeminist theory developed by Greta Gaard (1997) as well as trans-species urban theory formulated by Jennifer Wolch (1998), this paper argues that we should challenge the hierarchical approach to human and non-human life, as it silences differences and denies voice, rights, and agency to women, non-heteronormative persons, and animals. Tracing inspirations behind Olivia Rosenthal’s novel, this paper also contemplates the ethics of using live animals in Stéphane Thidet’s La Meute (2009) as well as Mircea Cantor’s Deeparture (2005) – two art installations that place captive wolves in an artificial environment.

Healing House I: A Material Phenomenology of Illness

This paper is a deep investigation into one art installation, Healing House I, which materializes the lived experience of being diagnosed with a chronic illness. This artwork is part of a collaborative project between artist Darian Goldin Stahl and her sister, Devan Stahl, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Together, they use a phenomenological methodology to express the disconnections between the lived body and the body object that can occur after a diagnosis, as well as the conditions necessary to mend this separation. Joining fleshy material, sound, vibration, and scent in this artwork, Goldin Stahl analyses how a multi-sensory and artistic interpretation of her sister’s illness narratives can tacitly communicate one experience of living with MS. In sharing this artwork with others in a disability arts exhibition, the sisters aim towards fostering a collective, intercorporeal understanding and empathy for the ill body.