VALUE | food | DIVERSITY
cooperation:arche noah https://www.arche-noah.at/
location: Bioschanze; Vienna
date: June 2016
partners: Beate Koller, Arche Noah, Bioschanze, Luise Kollars
In Vienna’s fruit and vegetable garden “BIOSCHANZE“ there are two rows of 25 chairs. Both rows face one another. This situation is irritating to the eye as a table seems to be missing between the seating. Instead, big glass jars filled with pickled vegetables stand on the ground in a long row. The food is ordered by colour. Additionally, laying on the grassy ground are an assortment of cutlery and napkins.
At the entrance to the “Bioschanze” Sonja Stummerer & Martin Hablesreiter (honey & bunny), in their costumes, greet the guests. Sonja sits silently at a work table and sews slices of bread together, reconstructing the loaf, while Martin asks each guest individually to be seated. He arranges the guests. She starts to feed the guests by hand, placing the food directly into their mouths. He begins to moderate a discussion. With a handheld microphone he questions the audience on value, food, and diversity. Opinions are exchanged while Sonja attends to the guests again and again, feeding them or “injecting” wine into their mouths with disposable syringes. Honey & bunny provoke the audience with actions and questions.
In respect to these three topics concerning sustainability, Sonja and Martin attack the cultural and emotional backgrounds of our daily lives. They try to make it clear to the guests that our western civilised culture is so full of traditions, rules, customs, belief, etc. that we are not always able to or willing to practise a sustainable lifestyle. “Everyone talks about sustainability, but no one has the courage!” The provocative actions of honey & bunny are again and again completed through statements by the audience; contributions that follow the provocations with hard facts. Three scientists are hidden among the audience: Andrea Heistinger, Ines Omann, and Wolfgang Pauser from the fields biodiversity, ecological economics and cultural history. They underpin the performance and with their statements stimulate a debate. We want a discussion on the value of food, on biodiversity, on the diversity of cultivated plants, and on the future of society and nutrition.
VALUE |food |DIVERSITY in an interdisciplinary experiment. Both food and sustainability are brought to the same table for an evening. The aim is to publicly generate so far unthought-of findings. With this project we want to create awareness for the political and ecological scope of food. So in the context of VALUE |food |DIVERSITY we force artists, scientists and activists from different fields to cooperate.