A half century after a bewildered British press began writing about the quintessential bad boys who became one of rock n’ roll’s most successful and iconic bands, a German publishing house is releasing an e-book compendium of those buried articles to commemorate the Rolling Stones’ 50th anniversary this year.
(See gallery below).
The articles comprising 50 Years: The Rolling Stones are pulled from the archives of print leviathans like the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard. And the skepticism about the band exhibited in those articles from 1960s, when the Stones first burst onto the scene, is a far cry from the paps’ symbiotic and sycophantic attitudes toward today’s celebs.
“They hadn’t even achieved anything,” said Mathias Wurfl of the young Rolling Stones who were pilloried in those articles. Wurfl’s company, the eBook People, released 50 Years this summer. “But they behaved like wild ones, from the view of those people back in the days.” (more…)
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With the Olympics kicking off this week, all eyes are on London. Taking advantage of the spotlight is Brandalism, a group made of 25 artists from eight different countries, who are using their art skills to showcase their stance against advertising and consumerism within their cultures.
The group is replacing existing billboards with photographs, street art, graffiti, and other forms of art that contain messages as their way to reclaim outdoor advertising in the UK.
We spoke to the group about how the concept came about, the kind of art work artists are creating, and if London residents are backing their concept.
See the gallery after the jump. (more…)
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Whelming.
Both Over- and Under-.
That is what E3 2012 was. Whether it was the sheer number of people (Over), the cookie cutter nature of the games (Under), the ultra-violence on display in the sizzle reels (Over), or the lack of surprises (Under) there was a whole lot of whelming going on.
Which isn’t to say that there wasn’t joy to be found. Despite landing with a thud during their press conference, the WiiU mini game collection led to a lot of laughter and smiles on the show floor. If you wanted to see grown men screaming like giddy little children all you had to do was stand by an Animal Crossing kiosk.
This was also a year all about the subtle changes at work– like the Vivitouch technology we told you about the other day. It was also about games like Watch_Dogs and Star Wars 1313, which are probably or the next generation of consoles, but no one is willing to own up to that rumor.
The gallery that follows are some of the sights of E3 2012.
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If you see this near the Golden Gate Bridge, don’t even bother to run.
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Activision found the $$ for this video wall in their sofa cushions.
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People say Ubisoft won the press conferences. What they didn’t win were any design awards for their booth.
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Snapped this to give you a sense of the sensory overload. Sonic. Star Trek. Race Cars. Whoa.
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While this blasted out desert bus was set up for Spec Ops: the Line, it had more of a zombie attack vibe.
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Oh THERE are those Zombies! J/K Luvs Youse Guys!
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This might have gotten mixed in from my last Vegas trip. Not really sure.
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Nothing says E3 like massive dioramas that will one day be adorning a developer’s lobby.
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Shout out to the guys at the Playstation Booth who though it was their job to just beat everyone who came through at Battle Royale. Not THESE guys, but this is where they were hanging.
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Undead dragons are the WORST.
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This kid is already way better at NBA Baller Beats than either you or I will ever be. Give up now.
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Horrible truth about the Planetside armor: actual armor. These actors were wearing plate for hours.
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No one seemed to be having more fun than the people at the NintendoLand kiosks. No one.
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This IS Kratos’ happy face.
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I should really spend the money on making this a Gif.
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Three minutes after the doors to E3 opened on Thursday the line was already bursting.
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The Warthog was there in case the Halo fans got out of line.
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On your marks! Get set!
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Go!
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Horde Mode: the fans just keep coming.
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This is pretty much what E3 looks like: a bunch of dudes standing in front of monitors playing games under weird lighting. Beats me why Arcades went away.
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Those who were not afraid to look silly looked like they had a lot of fun playing this Avengers fighting game for Kinect.
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This guy must be a REDDITOR.
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Mama Mia!
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Revengereveneancerraalamadingdong.
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I would SO steal this.
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Welcome to our mega-ultra-multi screen future.
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My new business plan: 1) Break out a prop lane 2) Dress a couple of girls in 40′s era outfits 3) ???? 4) Profit.
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That’s an ORDER, Virtual Solider!
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[Content Advisory: The following article contains graphic content that may unsettle some readers.]
In a culture obsessed with progress, we live in a perpetual state of change and adaptation. It can feel like technology and knowledge become obsolete almost immediately. We don’t often stop to think about what we are leaving behind or forgetting along the way. At the Firefly Gathering in Hendersonville, North Carolina you can find people who are not only thinking about it, but have created an entire community around their philosophies. But is this ideal that they strive for the key to true progress and innovation for a sustainable future, or are they just romanticizing a golden age that we should safely leave in our past?
[Article Continues After Gallery]
The rolling green hills of Western North Carolina and some of the oldest mountains in the world are the backdrop for the four-day festivities that make up the Firefly Gathering in Hendersonville. Days at Firefly, like other primitive skills gatherings, are spent learning about harvesting wild foods, permaculture, making crafts from available local plants and rocks, processing wild game/road kill using the whole animal and learning the various methods of fire starting using friction. Many of the classes are led by people with years of experience homesteading or living in the wild. As the sun sets, people slowly make their way to the fire pit. A few lone drummers call to the rest with a simple slow rhythm that can be heard throughout the grounds. People come flocking in from all directions out of the darkness like moths attracted to the light. Soon the sound of drums engulf the space and dancers circle the fire, moving with the drumbeat and mimicking the motion of the flames with hands flailing upward. The scene is a visual enactment of the connectedness that is continuously emphasized at Firefly .
At Firefly this human connection is sacred as is the connection with all things that live or provide life. Tanning a hide and making buckskin shorts is hard work, and making fire by rubbing sticks together is frustrating and tedious, butparticipants say the result is a profound sense of understanding the materials that you work with. Firefly co-founder Natalie Bogwalker explained, “Firefly is here to stave off the amnesia of modern techno-cratic culture…When normal people come here they are really inspired and feel that things are possible.”
For the hardcore primitivists and naturalists who teach the classes, it offers an opportunity to broaden their knowledge and hone skills that they can apply practically in their daily life. Matt Hansen, one of the teachers at Firefly, credits much of his knowledge to gatherings like this, and now comes with a sense of responsibility. “I’ve actually been approached by elders requesting that I carry on the torch and I’m like yeah, I’m there.”
To some who attend the Firefly gathering, the primitive skills that they learn simply serve as a novelty or a fun way to spend a weekend. To others, the skills that are taught and shared at the gathering are a part of daily life and survival. If the predictions of many of the primitivists at Firefly are accurate, the imminent collapse of civilization will soon make these skills a matter of life or death for us all. If there is one theme that seems to permeate all aspects of the gathering it is connectedness. “It’s all about rooting ourselves deep into the earth and into our connections with each other,” said Bogwalker. She continued, “…when we look all around us and people aren’t interacting with each other, they’re like, looking at their iPads…they’re all like robots, half human half machine… it’s really creepy to me.”
Bogwalker founded Firefly with Kaleb Wallace five years ago. The gathering has grown greatly in popularity since its humble beginnings at a family farm near Asheville, NC and now boasts over 100 instructors with expertise in a broad range of subjects. Similar gatherings have popped up all over the country, some of which have been going strong since the 80s. Rabbit Stick Gathering, for example, was started in 1976 in Utah by the grandfather of the current primitivism movement, Larry Dean Olsen. Rabbit Stick was then reintroduced in Idaho by David Wescott and remains the largest primitive/earth skill gathering.
Steve Watts directs the Aboriginal Studies Program at the Schiele Museum of Natural History in Gastonia, North Carolina. His replicas of prehistoric tools and weapons are featured in museums throughout the US. He attended Firefly for the first two years but is usually too busy teaching an annual series of primitive technology workshops at Scheile to make the trip.
Watts explained that the lure of primitivism goes way back. “The stone age is the great common denominator of humanness.” He continued, “Primitive skills are our shared heritage. The fascination comes from a “longing (usually romanticized) for a golden age.” Obviously, primitivism seems to be driven primarily by a backlash to modern culture, but as Watts pointed out, “That has been stated as a reason/cause for several centuries now. But, I suppose high tech does demand high touch in response.” The other great irony surrounding the current primitivism movement regards what Watts calls “neo-primitives.” Much of the spread of information and networking within the movement is now done via the Internet, cell phones and all types of modern gadgetry. The newfound ability to spread information about gatherings and primitive skills classes is a large part of what is keeping the movement alive. “It’s just folks using new tools to discover old ones,” said Watts.
Hansen has spent years living in the woods in wattle and daub huts gathering his own food without use of money or cars. He believes that technology should evolve in a responsible way. “It needs to be interacting with an ecology, not just people. Without that there is not going to be any human progress.” With his vast understanding of the way the natural world works and the way humans are affecting it, he does not fear the collapse of civilization as many do, he said. “I’m way more scared of civilization continuing as it is for twenty more years than for a collapse situation. I embrace that idea. It’s necessary.”
Mike Belleme is a freelance photographer living in Asheville. He is a seeker of profound truths, constantly in search of untold stories and new perspectives on humans and the world around him. Belleme has worked for such publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, Time magazine and CNN.com. His primary focus is long-term documentary projects, where he’s able to fully immerse himself in the story. Belleme has lived in Western North Carolina his entire life. You can see his work at www.mikebelleme.com
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Hundreds of fun-loving “Baydestrians” gathered on at 20th and Vermont Streets in San Francisco, California for the 12th annual Bring Your Own Big Wheel Race on Sunday. Basically people of all ages ride big wheels down a hill purely for kicks. Sounds awesome enough for Turnstyle!
Here are some photos of some of the outrageous outfits and wipeouts from this years BYOBW:
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How did a $69 weather balloon, a $5 dollar Styrofoam cooler and a digital camera get from downtown Oakland, California, to hover 90,000 feet above the Bay Area region?
Engineering students at Youth Radio (Turnstyle’s parent company) took those materials and created a weather balloon with a cooler attached with a camera inside. The camera took shots above through a hole drilled in the cooler.
The weather balloon was floated into “near space,” the region of Earth’s atmosphere that lies between 65,000 and 350,000 feet above sea level.
The students planned the launch of the balloon using Google Maps, the CUSF Landing Predictor and terminal area charts of the San Francisco Bay Area. They also programmed the camera to take pictures every couple of seconds , and installed InstaMapper software to track the balloon’s trajectory.
The balloon was launched from a small practice field at Monte Vista High School in Danville, Calif. The weather was perfect for the launch, offering clear views for miles. It was retrieved two hours and 40 minutes later at an empty field behind Jeannie Womack Park in Elk Grove, Calif.
The balloon traveled a total distance of 48.8 miles from Danville to Elk Grove, Calif and reached an estimated altitude of 75,000 to 90,000 feet. During its flight, it took 835 high resolution photographs, one every ten seconds, of the earth at various altitudes.
The pictures taken offered spectacular views of the earth. At the height of its ascent, the curvature of the earth could be faintly seen.
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Using online software from CUSF(Cambridge University Space Flight), we got an accurate prediction of where the balloon and payload would land. That helped us to determine a suitable launch site.
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Pictured are the San Pablo, Suisun and Grizzly Bays and the Sacramento River Delta.
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Picture showing parts of the Sacramento River Delta.
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The weather balloon near the top of its ascent
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Earth’s curvature seen from the weather balloon near the top of its ascent
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A bird’s eye view of the weather balloon near the top of its ascent
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A hazy day as the weather balloon nears the top of its ascent
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Picture taken from weather balloon at an altitude of approximately 75 – 90,000 ft.
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Here’s another look from the top of the balloon’s ascent
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Another angle of the weather balloon near the top of its ascent
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The weather balloon near the top of its ascent
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Photo taken from approximately the top of the ascent of the balloon.
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Two of the participants in the project getting ready to launch the balloon.
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I know you’ve probably seen the images on Facebook of “What People Think I Do.” An image containing six panels, each portraying what friends, loved ones, coworkers, and what society thinks they do. By now, it’s become a full-blown meme.
But the first one, “What People Think Contemporary Artists Do,” was created by artist Garnet Hertz. It started as a funny image that was only meant to be shared with his friends on Facebook, but Hertz says it was instantly liked and shared by others.
Turnstyle spoke to Hertz about this new trend, what he hopes to accomplish with this project and about other projects he has lined up.
Turnstlyle News: How did the idea for “What People Think I Do” come about? What inspired you?
Garnet Hertz: I saw a similar image with the caption “Role Playing” the day before I made my version. I had also been working on a proposal that week, and made the image to poke fun at that. When I made the image, I had just intended it to be enjoyed by my Facebook friends, many of whom are artists, curators and academics.
TS: When did you realize that this project was a hit?
GH: It immediately had 100 shares per hour, and I smelled that something was going on bigger than I had intended.
TS: I know you said when you first started this image you had no intentions of it going viral, but looking back at how popular this got, what are your thoughts?
GH: I’m happy that it became popular, but I’m a bit embarrassed that I’ve got so much attention for this.
TS: What do you hope to accomplish with this project?
GH: I was just procrastinating getting done a proposal – and all this press hasn’t help me get done the proposal.
TS: What are you working on next?
GH: My most recent large scale studio project is an arcade game cabinet from the 1980s that has been converted into a vehicle that actually drives.
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Photographer Jasper James, who is from Beijing, has lived and worked in various parts of the world while working on projects for notable magazines including Vanity Fair and Traveler. One project, “City Silhouettes,” which he began several years ago, was shot in several parts of Asia, and his technique is striking: James overlaps two different styles of photos to create what he calls a “personifying” picture.
“The choice of city is key for these portraits,” he says. “I especially like the Asian mega cities such as Tokyo or Shenzhen with their vast panoramas of high rises. I think the the scale of these places works particularly well when matched with the people portraits. The key is finding the right vantage point to shoot from and gaining access.”
The series is ongoing and James hopes to eventually stage it in New York City. James is currently looking for an exhibition site for “Silhouettes.”
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Two years ago at Sundance actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt started up his online, collaborative production company Hit RECord with an event and installation at the film festival’s experimental vanguard, the New Frontier. Back then, the New Frontier was regulated to the basement of one of the Main Street malls here in Park City, Utah.
Now Gordon-Levitt, known as RegularJOE to his fans on the site (and @HitRECordJoe on Twitter) has returned to Sundance with the fruits of his experimentation. This time the HitRECord crew pulled in a packed house at the festival’s biggest venue, the Eccles theater, for the live cinema event known as HitRECord at the Movies.
The theme of the night was independence, and Gordon-Levitt screened a number of shorts on the theme while large chunks of the audience recorded nearly every moment of the event. A lot of that footage will make it back to HitRECord’s website where it will be recycled into new works.
The event has the energy of a rock concert, the depth of a great shorts program, and acts as an embodiment of the spirit of creative collaboration that is the best of what our networked society has to offer.
It’s little wonder then that strains of the Occupy movement’s brand of anti-corporate authority were woven through the night, at one point taking the form of a cartoon sing-a-long starring the ghost of Ben Franklin, who teaches a young girl, a cop — and by extension the audience — that it’s perfectly within our rights to take photos in public places.
The gallery below represents some of the highlights of the night.
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The sing-a-long crew gets ready.
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Parker Posey and Gordon-Levitt on stage along with a slide declaring the theme of the night.
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Gordon-Levitt directs an audience volunteer through a voice over reading of a “Tiny Story”.
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Gordon-Levitt and Parker Posey on stage at the Eccles.
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Gordon-Levitt directs a very eager group of volunteer singers.
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Gordon-Levitt and HitRECord are in love with Sundance
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The line at the Eccles for HitRECord at the Movies was packed.
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The animated ghost of Ben Franklin teaches a lesson about freedom of the press.
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Whitney Henry-Lester on Tuesday, Jan. 24th
By Whitney Henry-Lester
Fereshteh Toosi is an interdisciplinary, Chicago-based artist who works with art you can interact with. While designing a community garden accesible to people with disabilities, she began her latest project: Garlic & Greens. Inspired by her interest in growing food and cultural migration, Garlic & Greens aims to capture soul food stories in Chicago. She also teaches art at Columbia College Chicago. Turnstyle contributor Whitney Henry-Lester spoke to Toosi about her new project and the documentation of soul food.
How do you describe yourself as an artist and the art that you like to make?
I collect and recombine sounds, words, images, and actions. I’m interested in migration issues, social geography, and sustainability. I enjoy exploring the history and people of a particular place, and I like working with other people and I like working outside of traditional gallery spaces. Sometimes the work I make doesn’t seem like art, and that’s ok. I don’t really care if it’s understood as art or not.
How did your interest in art begin?
I get a lot of satisfaction from taking material meant for one thing and using it in an unusual way, transforming it into something unexpected. My art education was in a liberal arts context, and as a result I’ve always been focused more on concepts and ideas than on purely technical explorations.
Tell me about the ARCHEWORKS Garden project and how it evolved into Garlic and Greens.
GARLIC & GREENS began at Archeworks, a multidisciplinary design school in Chicago. Our collaborative team was designing for a site at the north end of Chicago’s Washington Park. The garden project we developed was called INSPIRE! Gardens for all. At Archeworks we were developing a multi-modal project that included a toolkit to help groups who wanted to create dynamic, accessible community gardens for people with disabilities. Among other things, we wrote gardening tutorials for people with stroke-related disabilities and designed outdoor furniture for a high school located on our site. The team was full of amazing people and ideas and they all played a role shaping GARLIC & GREENS.
GARLIC & GREENS was motivated by my perspective on our design dilemma. I was bothered by the fact that none of us on the design team were directly connected to the culture and history of this black neighborhood where our project site was located. There are a lot of ways to do good socially-engaged, participatory design, but ultimately, the best design happens when the users can play a direct role in developing creative solutions for their own community. Designers have a lot of power, and it’s hard to find ways to distribute it. We need to be mindful that the people and history of a place are its strongest assets. I really felt like race and cultural difference was an elephant in the room that we needed to address head on. GARLIC & GREENS my best idea for solution using the skills I had with audio and oral history.
So what is Garlic & Greens?
GARLIC & GREENS offers public programs on migration history, food heritage, social justice, the arts, and disability studies. There were two events scheduled in the summer of 2011. Phase One of the project focused on the production of free public events showcasing the work of artists and community experts, Phase Two of the project focuses on collecting and sharing food and migration stories. The final product will be a multi-media art experience accessible for people with visual disabilities and their allies.
Why are you focusing on food? Are you telling food stories or people stories or a community stories? How do they intersect?
GARLIC & GREENS focuses on food because of how the project evolved from a community garden design initiative. At Archeworks, we were doing a bit of landscape architecture, and with that you get to choose the plants. We threw around ideas about what it would mean to have a soul food garden: okra, garlic, beans, yams, collards, turnip greens, kale, et cetera. That’s when I started thinking about the cultural connections between gardening and the personalities and histories of the people who garden. Gardens are very personal, they’re curated spaces where you get to grow things that you like or that are important to you. If you don’t like eating okra, you’re probably not going to grow it. Or you may decide to grow it because it’s an interesting tropical-looking plant that has a devastatingly beautiful flower.
People grow foods that are connected to their homelands and the places they have lived. Unlike commercial farming, gardens can reflect not only the climate of the place, but also the desires of the growers, their tastes, and cultural backgrounds. I wanted to create a way to address this cultural aspect of gardening while focusing particularly on stories from African American residents who live in the neighborhoods around Washington Park. Since our team was focusing on issues around accessibility for people with disabilities, a multi-sensory approach seemed like a way to go about it.
I’m an enthusiastic edible gardener, and I like interviewing people about their lives, so the two elements came together naturally for me. The stories are about food, but they are more about people’s attitudes to food…I want to talk to people about what they do know, and also to use the interviews as a way to hear about the cultural histories of foods that are important to people as part of their family traditions.
What are you asking people?
I ask people where they live and where their people are from. Has their family lived in Chicago for many generations? When did they move here? I also ask them to describe a favorite family food tradition or a cherished family recipe. I ask the person to describe its preparation in the kitchen. I’ll ask the person how they learned to cook, and who in the family does the cooking. Who carries food traditions in the family? I’ll also ask them to define soul food. I don’t really go through a list of questions one by one, but these are the topics and questions I focus on, while allowing the conversation to evolve as things come up.
Have you defined what “soul food” is?
The question about defining soul food has been a favorite of mine as most people have expressed a sensibility that goes beyond race or geographic location. In an interview with 10 year-old Malik, we hear a young person struggling with the assertion that black people eat a certain kind of food. He seems uncomfortable (rightfully so) with the notion that people of different races should claim ownership over a particular food at all.
I like the connections that are emerging from the definitions that people have shared with me during the interviews. Soul food can be defined in a lot of ways, but it is often traced back to West Indian, Caribbean, and African influences. It’s southern American cooking that is often connected to African American traditions. Some of these evolved from the inventiveness of people who were slaves, who had to make-do with what little they had, taking advantage of every part of the animal and creating flavorful, filling food from limited resources. But this doesn’t begin to cover to what soul food really means. Soul food refers to comfort food, home cooking, and cooking from the heart. It’s food that is prepared from scratch with care and love. In that sense, every culture has a type of soul food.
What have you learned from the project thus far?
I’m learning how to be a better ally for people with disabilities. The first step was educating myself about the diverse ways ability and disability are defined. I’ve learned that we need to work on better design for people with disabilities. This includes products but also how to create events that are accessible and how to design cities and communities that are inclusive. I’ve also learned more about the history of domestic migration in the U.S. Though I knew about it before, I’ve learned more about the details, specifically with black Americans movement within the U.S. Some people call it the “Great Migration”, but in GARLIC & GREENS I refer to it in the plural, “Great Migrations”, because it happened in waves and it continues. Recently I’ve read some stories about how some black people are moving back to the south, and I’m curious to look at the numbers in a few years, to know how this rates as another wave of the migrations.
There is a focus on visual impairment with this project. Why?
When I was at Archeworks, two members of our team had stroke-related aphasia. In order to communicate with them, the group relied on written communication, such as real-time transcription of conversations. Aphasia impacts one’s ability to produce or understand words. It is not related to loss of vision, but this factor prompted a consideration of how garden programming would necessitate communication in multiple forms: audio, tactile, written, and experiential. During the research and development phase for GARLIC & GREENS, it became clear that adjusting the project’s physical infrastructure would not be adequate to becoming fully accessible. I began to see a need for connecting the traditions of vegetable gardening to cooking traditions through multi-sensory approaches. Considering the people who have been participating in the project, GARLIC & GREENS has been making a special effort to reach audiences with low or no vision because African Americans are at a higher risk for sight loss from glaucoma, diabetes and hypertensive retinopathy. The good news is that these diseases can be prevented with a healthy diet and regular access to health care.
What will the final product be?
The final product will be an interactive project about food heritage. I’m still working on the details, but I know it will be a hand-made, limited edition multi-sensory documentary package that includes audio, tactile and aromatic elements.
All photos by Fereshteh Toosi
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