With works by Haya Alghanim, Sonia Leimer, Åsa Sonjasdotter with activations by Punctures (Alfredo Zinola, Micaela Kühn, Maxwell McCarthy) with support by Carpar Plautz, Munich and Stray Coffee Roasters

The program series “Did you eat today?” is interested in food culture(s) and food as an (im)material cultural asset, food politics, food production and -distribution, agriculture as well as subjective and cultural history(s), traces and memories that are connected to dishes, drinks and eating as well as preparation rituals. The format also aims to address wider topics around body absorption, which may include body fluids, pharmaceutical products, aphrodisiac or psychedelic substances et al.

In addition to the artistic works, we open a street food corner in the hall, which reacts to the video works shown and in which certain dishes are served, associated with the respective program. Street food stands are idiosyncratic, often provisional spaces—less architecture than functional urban infrastructures. This creates spaces for encounters for different social groups that are situated in parking areas, on street corners, near stops and stations or other transit locations.

The second edition continues the questions about a broader understanding of food culture(s) as well as the social space of street food stands and adds the dimension of agriculture. It is focused on works that are interested in the knowledge and efforts that are intrinsic to cultivation methods, the cultivation of new varieties and seeds.

Haya Alghanim's work "Amo," 2016 portrays a grocery store owned by a Syrian immigrant in Brooklyn that offers baklava and food from the Arab region that also provides insights into New York's Arab community. Sonia Leimer's video work "Pink Lady (California)," 2017 relates to the annual apple crown ritual in the town of Merano, bringing it together with the transformation of the landscape as well as the loss of varietal diversity in favor of the trademarked "Pink Lady" apple. "Cultivating Abundance," 2022 by artist Åsa Sonjasdotter questions the ethical and aesthetic relationships to cultivated plants associated with new and traditional methods of plant breeding.

Åsa Sonjasdotter: Cultivating Abundance. In dialogue with plant breeder Hans Larsson and the seed association Allkorn (Common Grains), 2022, 64:00 min.

“Cultivating Abundance” enquires the ethical and aesthetical relations to cultivated plants comprised by the so-called 'modern' and 'traditional' methods of plant breeding. With the establishment of the Swedish Seed Association in Svalöv in 1886, a modern method for plant breeding was invented that still today is in use by more or less all plant breeding industries across the globe. “Cultivating Abundance” studies the consequences for human and more-than-human relations which this shift in method would come to bring.

Sonia Leimer: Pink Lady (California), 2018, 7:07 min.

The video offers an insight into the annual Apple Crown ritual of Merano, when a wooden crown is decorated with apples. Leimer documents the relation between work and tradition. In the subtitles, Leimer describes the alternation in fruit growing as a result of the monitoring, instituted when Italy joined the Economic Union: the decrease and loss of the range of varieties, transformations in the landscape, and the standardization of cultivars. The artist subverts the original character of the ritual by having the traditionally used varieties of apples replaced with the standardized trademarked ‘Pink Lady’.

Haya Alghanim: Amo, 2016, 4:00 min.

Shot on 16mm, the digitized film "Amo" is a short documentary about a Syrian grocer in Brooklyn, New York. There, he offers food and groceries from the Arab region as well as baklava—a nutty puff pastry whose preparation and filling also varies depending on cultural spaces. Alghanim's portrait of this grocery store and its owner also provides insights into the social liveliness of this place as well as into the local Arab-US-American community.

Punctures

In the context of the 2nd edition of “Did you eat today?”, the collective Punctures, consisting of the three artists Alfredo Zinola, Micaela Kühn, and Maxwell McCarthy, activates the street food corner with a dish made of cereals and potatoes as well as an invitation to exchange about their project.

Programm curated by Luzi Gross & Christina Maria Ruederer