Artist: Jason Huff
Title: Snow Globe (accessed March, 25 2010)
Size: 5.5” x 5.5”
Medium: Glass, Water, Rapid Prototyped Letters, Acetate

Artist Statement:
Snow Globe (accessed March, 25 2010) is a readymade snow globe with self-defining contents. Printed inside are all 419 characters and three photos that define a snow globe on Wikipedia. This snow globe acts as a unique object that has encapsulated its own definition from an online dynamic source, forever freezing an instance of its mutating online identity.

Bio:
Jason Huff was born in the Atlanta suburbs in 1981. In 2004, he received his BFA in New Media at the University of Georgia. Upcoming shows include Pixilerations in downtown Providence, RI and Americana at the Gelman Gallery at the RISD Museum in Providence, RI. His recent project AutoSummarize was blogged about in The New Yorker. He currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island where he is completing his MFA in Digital Media at the Rhode Island School of Design (2011).

Artist: Joshua Spodek
Title: Szilvia
Size: Dimensions variable
Medium: Linear Zoetrope

Artist Statement:
Spodek’s work was inspired by the zoetrope, a 19th century seminal
animation device, which he reinvented and reinvigorated with 20th and
21st century technology unimaginable more then a few decades ago, such
as laser-cut steel and extremely high-resolution video converted to
precision-placed still images. An avid Free Software user and supporter,
he developed all the required software using Free tools, working with
the Free software community to create necessary new tools. An avid
French New Wave film fan, the novelty of his medium creates images
improvising with available equipment and subjects on personal themes.

Bio:
Joshua Spodek, is an artist, entrepreneur and former physicist. He
works in a medium of his own creation that uses the viewer’s motion to
animate still images. Besides a public piece now in Bryant Park, he has
shown at Lincoln Center, the Museum of Sex (Manhattan), Art Basel Miami
Beach; galleries in Manhattan, Miami, Santa Fe, and more. His commercial
works show motion pictures to subway riders moving between stations. He
holds a PhD and MBA from Columbia University. Esquire Magazine named him
Best and Brightest in their 2003 Genius Issue.

Writer: Andrianna Natsoulas

Title: Food Voices: Stories of the Food Sovereignty Movement

Farmers and fisherfolk across the Americas are embracing a new political and economic system to feed and strengthen their communities.
They are collectively creating a regime change by sowing the seeds and pulling the nets to ensure their communities have healthy and culturally appropriate food. “Food Voices: Stories of the Food Sovereignty Movement” captures the stories and images of people working towards and living a just, sustainable and sovereign food system. They are indigenous peoples, urban farmers and migrant workers. They are men and women, young and old. They are Haitian, American, Latino and Brazilian. They are creating a self made food system.

Bio: Andrianna Natsoulas has been an environmental and community activist for two decades. She has worked at various organizations from Greenpeace to Public Citizen to the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance. She has coordinated with the global food sovereignty movements to protect local food production and distribution, fight trade agreements and build alliances. She has participated in protests around the world from Washington, DC to Cancun to Geneva to Hong Kong and has stood shoulder to shoulder with farmers and fisherfolk to defend their rights to provide local and culturally appropriate food for their communities. That is where her passion lies – in the global fight for food justice.

Excerpt “Food Voices: Stories of the Food Sovereignty Movement”

Dena grows beans, corn, tomatoes and an array of produce, while also raising lambs, chickens and pigs. She and her husband have been farming in Glendive, Montana since 1981.

Food sovereignty is something I never named. It is something I grew up with and thought that is the way life should be. My grandparents came from eastern North Dakota. We always ate out of Grandma’s organic garden.  It was always my intention to feed ourselves as much as possible, the way my Grandma fed us. She is the one who taught me about food preparation, canning, soap making and about being self-sufficient.

All I wanted to be was a farmer. While raising my children, we had at least one garden, and we hunted and fished. I taught my kids and they are self-sufficient. I thought most people lived the way I did from their gardens and the land. And then I found that even my farm neighbours weren’t living that way. The farm agencies told them it was not efficient to grow their own food, milk a cow and it was much better to buy it at the grocery store.  That was in the late 70’s and I started to question the whole system.

Now you read reports that nutritionally, food is much poorer today than it used to be.  We don’t pay attention to healthy soil, and then we don’t have rich soil full of nutrients.  Soil is becoming a medium to hold plants upright, and not a living entity in its own right.  If we are looking for the earth to feed us, then we need to take care of it.

Unfortunately, it takes dead bodies and people dying from e coli and listeria to see that the food supply is not as safe as they think it is.  Because of convenience, people have given up their responsibility for a safe and nutritious food supply.  Now that food nutrition deficiencies, like obesity and diabetes, are an epidemic in this country, people are beginning to pay attention.  But the infrastructure is gone, and so are the people – the family farmers and fishermen. The corporate food system has destroyed the small infrastructure.  They pay off Congress to pass rules in the guise of food safety, but it is really about getting rid of competition- small producers and small processors.

………………

Carlos has been organizing migrant agricultural workers since 1977 in South Texas, the Río Grande Valley, and now in the border area between the United States and Mexico.

In 1992, I was mapping the field in Southern New Mexico for a labor stoppage. While I was there, people arrived to test the field, the chiles, and the crop. Suddenly the owner and farmer of the field arrived.  When he saw me, he knew he was the farmer who was the target for our labor stoppage. I asked him, who are those people? He said they were the owners of the crop.  They were there to check the quality of the chile, to check whether the chile was ready for harvest.

At that point I realized the farmer did not have control over production or the price. He was also a victim of the food system controlled by a few corporations and food processors who set the rules of the game. At that time we changed our attitude towards producers and realized they were not the enemy. At the beginning of the year the farmer signed a contract with the company to set the price, what to grow, when and how.  The contract clearly specified the quality of the product and told the farmer what kind of seeds to use, the fertilizers and the chemicals. Everything was imposed upon the farmer.  I started to dialogue with this specific farmer and realized there was no margin to increase salaries and improve the working conditions in the field. We started to understand the plight of the agricultural worker in a bigger context. We were so focused on the conditions of the farm workers that we did not realize that it was a system.

One of the new programs at the 5^th Annual Last Supper Salon will feature an architectural installation, designed and built by young emerging designers in New York City. Come meet one of the 100+ artists in the AURAL GARDEN. This outdoor space features a parabolic canopy that plays on the use of pattern, light, and surface. The AURAL GARDEN will be home to the outdoor music area and animated by visualizations from selected animators and filmmakers, creating a synthesis of the mediums and demonstrating the transformative effects of architecture.

Collaborative Installation designed by Ryan Lewandowski, Daria Supp & Lili Trenkova

Produced by Dyami Allen & Thomas Newman

Sponsored by

  +

Artist: A. BONNEL

Project Title: MAKING MR. SOFTEE

Size: APPROX 4’ X 5’ PROJECTION

Cost: $1.75 PER CONE AFTER THE FIRST 100 CONES

Medium: INTERACTIVE PERFORMANCE VIDEO

Ingredients: VOLUNTEERS/ICE CREAM CONES

Bio:

A. BONNEL is a Brooklyn-based artist working primarily with video. She conceives each project as a singularity that can be presented in a number of ways i.e. installation, performance, etc., depending on environment. Her subjects are diverse and sometimes reactive whether it is to other artworks or to ideologies. Thematically, she explores fantasies of death, psychological theories, and the metaphysical, but she also enjoys using Pop and Punk elements of humor and irreverence in relation to topics that she considers superficial such as mass consumption and commercialized sex. Drawing from classic and experimental filmmaking, she embraces current and past technologies and challenges herself to combine disparate media into traditional forms [text + performance + video = drama; video + headphones + booth = peepshow; architecture + video + podcast = public art/sculpture].

Interpretation:

MAKING MR. SOFTEE is an interactive performance/video projection that hyperbolizes the act of absolute consumption. Amidst a social setting, volunteers are videotaped within a specified frame as they devour ice cream cones of various flavors and toppings. The live video is projected in real time to emphasize the tactile acts of licking and mastication, commenting on the obsessive and sensual nature of eating.  A simple pleasure-desire, to eat ice cream, is hampered by choice [which flavor? what toppings?]. That choice is further complicated by the submission/permission to be recorded in a specified construct [the frame]. Finally, the volunteer is temporally faced with the iconic self in the immediate presentation of his own consumption thereby presenting identity as action.

MAKING MR. SOFTEE embodies the “making of” approach to DIY creation. Part of a larger work, The Last Supper provides the opportune place and time to record footage needed for a future, edited piece wherein the recorded images are sped up, reversed, and sequenced so as to appear that the cone is eaten and regurgitated in an endless, yet ever-varying loop.

Farm: Ronald & Aki Hirata-Baker

Title: Adopt-A-Farmbox
Size: 2’ x 4’ x 12”
Ingredients: reclaimed ceder, recycled plastic, plastic bottles

Bio: Adopt-A-Farmbox will donate farmboxes to several schools in the New York City area this Fall, including several schools throughout Brooklyn. The organization is volunteer-based and they need help to o set the costs of the reclaimed wood and other recycled materials used to construct the farmboxes. This grass-roots campaign started in their backyard in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn and has become an exemplar project integrating community development with education, food, creativity and agriculture.

Interpretation:
A Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn based couple and proud parents of two children; Ronald & Aki Baker invite you to engage in urban farming with Adopt-a-Farmbox. A “Self-Made” community action project, Adopt-A-Farmbox began in May 2010 as a solution-based non-profit initiative that empowers people through food by providing an opportunity for children and adults in New York City to learn to grow vegetables and fruits. Through their company, Baker Design + Build, they build and donate farm boxes made from 100% recycled wood to schools and community organizations for the purpose of growing food. Along with the farmboxes, they provide resources, educational materials, and support to facilitate the learning process from planting to harvesting. “We use farmboxes to create opportunities for people to reconnect with food,” says Ronald Baker, “We believe that the best way to help families and communities break the cycles of diabetes and obesity is to expose them to healthier food options and to engage them in the process from seed to fork. Our goal is to create a sense of pride and ownership while de-mystifying the concept of healthy, wholesome food.”

Farm Collaborative: Frieda Lim, Ashley Smith Steele, Steven Boling, Alexis Kraft of Slippery Slope Farm: A Modern Sub-irrigated Gowanus Rooftop Micro-Farm

Title: Slippery Slope Farm’s Pick Your Own

Size: 6’ x 42” x 2′

Ingredients: Sun, water, potting mix, #5 containers and window boxes, up-cycled water bottles and nursery flats, corrugated perforated HDPE drain pipe, electrical conduit

Interpretation: Slippery Slope Farm’s Pick Your Own installation demonstrates a modern perspective on growing food in the city through the practices of sub-irrigated planter systems (SIPs) and nutrient density.  No offense to all the urban gardens that have taken root on rooftops and empty lots all over the city, but given the challenges of urban living, soil contamination and climate change, why are most people farming as they were still in the country?
SIPs offer a better, more accessible and environmentally sustainable alternative to conventional urban gardens. Anyone with a fire escape, small backyard, or rooftop can create temporary, portable, nomadic gardens.  From your micro-farm to your table—pick your own.

Bio: Misc. Frieda, creator of Slippery Slope Farm, a modern urban sub-irrigated rooftop micro-farm located in Gowanus, Brooklyn.  Recently she burst out of a magical baby bubble with her daughter Blaze into the greenscaping world of sub-irrigated urban farming.  It was in her nesting years that she came into developing her micro-farm out of her personal love of fresh organically grown food that she could share with her family and friends.   Misc. Frieda is an interdisciplinary designer of gardens and greenscaping products, events, food, interiors, home furnishings, clothing, miscellaneous.

Alexis Kraft runs an interdisciplinary architecture and design studio, based in Park Slope.  Kraft Studio works at large and small scales, redesigning the Gowanus neighborhood and designing kitchens for foodies.  Design and food are beyond passion for Kraft, they are his red and white blood cells.
In addition to his design work, Kraft is a part-time Assistant Professor of architecture and interior design and Parsons the New School for Design.
Recent projects include: New Amsterdam Market, Gowanus 2020, Maria MOK Salon, and many, many apartments.

Steven, is an Arkansas transplant who’s had a love affair with growing things since sowing his first garden at the age of six.  Determined to stay connected to gardening, even without a plot of land to till, he developed a form of “extreme window gardening” in which nested stacks of containers served to triple the amount of planting space available on a typical window sill.  Steven’s out-of-control Hanging Gardens of Brooklyn, which girdled the entire second floor of his building, delighted Park Slope neighbors for years until the intervention of his nervous landlord.  Now he keeps a decidedly more modest sub-irrigated window garden and spends his extra time helping Frieda and others to develop and promote new urban gardening techniques.  Steven is a visual designer and video artist currently affiliated with the multi-media performance groups Exploding Moment, Facade/Fasad and Desperate Comfort.

Ashley Smith Steele has been performing, choreographing, dancing, hoola hooping, and event producing professionaly in NYC since 1993.

Donating Organization to Slippery Slope Farm Piece:

Certified Organic Plant Starters Courtesy of Silver Heights Farm, Cochecton Center, NY, http://www.silverheightsfarm.com/
Condiment Ingredients Courtesy of Stinky, 261 Smith Street Brooklyn, http://www.stinkybklyn.com/

Artist: Becca Lofchie

Title: The Late Night Diner

Ingredients: 6 Dozen Eggs, 12 Lbs Flour, 2 Gallons Milk, Baking power, Oil, Butter, Bananas, Chocolate chips, 4 Loaves Bread (for toast), Cinnamon, Sugar, Honey, Syrup, Salt

Interpretation

So much of our identity and politics is reflected and embodied in not only what we eat—but also in where, when, how and with whom. Food, and the opportunity to eat together, provide incredible opportunities to construct new environments, relationships and experiences. In light of this year’s theme of a collective approach to art making and consumption—particularly food consumption—I propose to hold a Late Night Diner in the final hour of the Last Supper Festival. Based on an ongoing series of events that I began last winter, this late-night meal will be a space to for artists/participants to come together in an expression of the day’s themes. Inspired by the classic 24-hour diner, my previous Late Night Diners have been held at night, often as late as 2am. I began the project last winter on my college campus, and have since held over of dozen Late Night Diners at a number of locations. I serve inexpensive, yet satisfying, diner-style comfort foods such as eggs and pancakes. The food and preparation are intentionally simple and transparent to show that the Late Night Diner is a piece that can be easily recreated and disseminated by anyone in attendance— without fancy equipment, culinary skills, or a restaurant. The Late Night Diners functions as a venue for many forms of participation. Friends, colleagues and acquaintances have “co-hosted” diners with themes based on their interests, including stargazing, metal music and art therapy. Others have participated as guest chefs, cooking their favorite comfort foods. Many have participated simply with their presence. The Late Night Diners are thus created by all who attend, thus challenging the notion of the singular artist/creator. I would extend an invitation to all participating artists and chefs from the Last Supper Festival to ‘co-host’ the diner with me in order to make this a shared opportunity for learning and expression during the final hour of the festival.

Bio:

Becca Lofchie was born in NYC and schooled in LA—and currently has one foot in each city. She studied visual art at Pomona College—which is where she started the Late Night Diner, a weekly event that integrated food, art, stargazing, metal music, séances, bird watching, poetry, jazz and more. She hopes to continue to find and create new sites for eating, learning and connecting.