space to grow: women, art, and the urban agriculture movement

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Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory Vol. 21, No. 3, November 2011, 385–395 Space to Grow: Women, art, and the urban agriculture movement Ame Gilbert a * and Yael Raviv b * a Communal Table, New York; b Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health Department, New York University ‘‘Sharecropper, a series of micro farming installations is an artistic, practical and philosophical exploration into how growing, cooking and eating beautiful food together from within a community might change us ... Sharecropper is an act of hope.’’ 1 Leah Gauthier’s description of her Sharecropper project is an example of an artist/activist perspective on the recently growing urban agriculture movement. Rather than viewing the vegetable plot as an extension of the home kitchen (domestic, private space, women’s domain), it expands the private vegetable plots into the public sphere, tending them with the aid of small communities rather than individuals. The domain of the restaurant kitchen has by and large been male dominated and has focused on an individual talent shining in public space. In contrast, the urban agriculture and ‘‘DIY’’ (or do-it-yourself) movements, which include bee-keepers, poulterers, community gardeners, and artists, have a strong leadership of women engaged in creating accessible, decentralized environments. Some of the growing spaces are public, some private, but all are tended with collective help. Primarily, the gardens produce food for domestic use, even if it is sold in a public market. Often there are community-based educational workshops conducted within the larger spaces, or potluck gatherings and ‘‘swaps’’ organized to unify dispersed participants. Urban agriculture has expanded the spectrum of food-based industry in New York City, which in the last 50 years included processing and marketing, but not much growing. In the last few years three new outdoor markets filled with small artisanal vendors have opened in NYC (The New Amsterdam Mkt, Brooklyn Flea, and Smorgasburg) and several urban farms run weekly markets in diverse neighborhoods (East NY, Bushwick, Red Hook, Long Island City, Williamsburg) that are independent of the citywide farmer’s markets. The burgeoning DIY movement that includes artisanal production and a re-emergence of old-fashioned production techniques has increased interest in heirloom varietals, organics, and community participation in the growing process. 2 Growing food engages many kinds of people and brings multiple threads to the table: food justice, social activism, the development of sustainable technologies and ecologies, and opportunities for *Corresponding authors. Email: [email protected]; [email protected] ISSN 0740–770X print/ISSN 1748–5819 online ß 2011 Women & Performance Project Inc. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0740770X.2011.625715 http://www.tandfonline.com

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Page 1: Space to Grow: Women, art, and the urban agriculture movement

Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theoryVol. 21, No. 3, November 2011, 385–395

Space to Grow: Women, art, and the urban agriculture movement

Ame Gilberta* and Yael Ravivb*

aCommunal Table, New York; bNutrition, Food Studies and Public Health Department,New York University

‘‘Sharecropper, a series of micro farming installations is an artistic, practical andphilosophical exploration into how growing, cooking and eating beautiful foodtogether from within a community might change us . . . Sharecropper is an act ofhope.’’1 Leah Gauthier’s description of her Sharecropper project is an example of anartist/activist perspective on the recently growing urban agriculture movement.Rather than viewing the vegetable plot as an extension of the home kitchen(domestic, private space, women’s domain), it expands the private vegetable plotsinto the public sphere, tending them with the aid of small communities rather thanindividuals.

The domain of the restaurant kitchen has by and large been male dominated andhas focused on an individual talent shining in public space. In contrast, the urbanagriculture and ‘‘DIY’’ (or do-it-yourself) movements, which include bee-keepers,poulterers, community gardeners, and artists, have a strong leadership of womenengaged in creating accessible, decentralized environments. Some of the growingspaces are public, some private, but all are tended with collective help. Primarily, thegardens produce food for domestic use, even if it is sold in a public market. Oftenthere are community-based educational workshops conducted within the largerspaces, or potluck gatherings and ‘‘swaps’’ organized to unify dispersed participants.

Urban agriculture has expanded the spectrum of food-based industry in NewYork City, which in the last 50 years included processing and marketing, but notmuch growing. In the last few years three new outdoor markets filled with smallartisanal vendors have opened in NYC (The New Amsterdam Mkt, Brooklyn Flea,and Smorgasburg) and several urban farms run weekly markets in diverseneighborhoods (East NY, Bushwick, Red Hook, Long Island City, Williamsburg)that are independent of the citywide farmer’s markets. The burgeoning DIYmovement that includes artisanal production and a re-emergence of old-fashionedproduction techniques has increased interest in heirloom varietals, organics, andcommunity participation in the growing process.2 Growing food engages many kindsof people and brings multiple threads to the table: food justice, social activism, thedevelopment of sustainable technologies and ecologies, and opportunities for

*Corresponding authors. Email: [email protected]; [email protected]

ISSN 0740–770X print/ISSN 1748–5819 online

� 2011 Women & Performance Project Inc.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0740770X.2011.625715

http://www.tandfonline.com

Page 2: Space to Grow: Women, art, and the urban agriculture movement

alternative economies. All of this also engages artists who participate, invent, and

critique the movement.These artists gravitate towards the garden for several reasons, among them the

lure of the collaborative and multidisciplinary nature of the work (often bridging two

or more fields such as art and biology or art and engineering); the literal grounding

of the artistic creation, its intrinsic link to everyday life and materials; and the time-

based nature of the work, its focus on process and change rather than on a fixed

product.Seeing garden work as ‘‘art’’ is counter-intuitive, as much of it – weeding,

watering, and pest management – falls outside the bounds of traditional art forms.

However, the eclectic and creative approach of artists often pushes boundaries and

opens alternative perspectives. The artist/scholar/restaurateur Alicia Rios demon-

strated the beauty and resonance of the garden in her project Temperate Menu (1994,

1996) when she created an edible ‘‘garden’’ in a greenhouse setting. Even though

Rios’ garden was based on substitutions and inversions, playing with the idea of the

garden more than an actual planting and growing, she transformed her audience into

gardeners for a time, and had them actively engage with the structure and with the

sensorial feel of garden work.3 Her work can be seen as one of the precursors for the

work of the artists included in this essay.4 There is beauty and drama in watching

things grow, and in nurturing and manipulating this growth and the systems that

disseminate these labors. In some instances, the lines between farming and art blur,

or perhaps the ‘social practice’ of urban agriculture grows as its own art form.

Vegetables have become ‘‘cultural capital,’’ and farmers have become pop stars in

much the way restaurant and TV chefs captured the last decade’s cultural

imagination. We are used to the restaurant as a theatrical space, and now we see

the garden in the same light: a space where performance is both doing and showing.As with much of the movement in general, many of the artists engaged with these

materials are women. Studying these artists in the context of earlier performance

work by women, especially works that focused on feeding the body and nature, can

offer insights into this current work. Ana Mendieta (1948–1985) highlighted these

connections by inserting her naked body into natural settings in her Silueta Series

(1970s), creating what she termed ‘‘earth-body’’ art. Eleanor Antin shaped her own

body in Carving: A Traditional Sculpture, by starving herself and documenting the

process (1972). Other female artists of the same period used their bodies in

performance work shaping, exposing or covering themselves with a variety of

substances. These artists took control of their body and of the meaning attached to

it. In contrast, the artists described here, shape and take charge of the space around

them. Their work may seem like it should be less intimate, less personal, because the

human body seems removed from it. Yet, the process of growing and nurturing, of

shaping the earth, can be just as intimate as shaping a body.The communality of much of this work, raises questions regarding the value and

meaning of art, issues of ownership and property, and the relationship between artist

and audience, but that is precisely what makes these projects relevant in a

performance context, where work is often communal, often a ‘‘group effort.’’ (And

here too there are roots in earlier feminist collaborations. Judy Chicago’s The Dinner

386 A. Gilbert and Y. Raviv

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Party (1974–79) was created with the handiwork of 400 volunteers, and Mimi

Shapiro and Chicago’s Womenhouse (1972) carved one large house into small

workable plots, tended by different artists.The artists’ work surveyed in this article often reshapes or questions space,

inverting ideas of public and private, domestic and commercial. Several of the artists

have backgrounds in architecture, engineering, or design. They are trained in shaping

space. Earlier food-centered work by female artists questioned and often strove to

(re)shape women: how they view themselves, how they are seen, their bodies, their

roles. The artists and activists engaged with the urban agriculture movement strive to

(re)shape the world as well.

***

Britta Reily, social entrepreneur and designer, is CEO and founder of Windowfarms.

The project enables open-source information exchange for use in domestic spaces

(Figure 1).5

[Our goals are] to empower urban dwellers to grow some of their own food inside year-round, [and] to empower citizens to collaboratively & openly innovate online towardmore sustainable cities and improved urban quality of life.Growing some portion of one’s own food is a simple pleasure that can make a bigdifference in one’s relationship with nature. As we choose nutrients to feed plants wehope to eat in turn, we gain experience with a nearly-lost fundamental human art, get amicrocosmic view of the food system, develop a stake in the conversation, and come upwith new ideas for how to take care of ourselves and our planet in troubled times.6

Figure 1. Britta Reily, Windowfarms, 2009.

Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 387

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Leah Guathier, an artist who has been ‘‘growing food as art’’ for the past few years.

The idea behind the project Sharecropper is making small containers that individuals

tend but that comprise, all told, a hefty acreage (Figure 2).

I stitch together working micro farms from parcels of donated land, rental propertiesand community garden plots using organic growing methods. My specialties areheirloom vegetables and herbs and wild edibles . . . 7

Another of Guathier’s ongoing projects is Tending a Difficult Hope presented at

SoFA Gallery, Indiana University. She plants heirloom fruit and vegetables and later

transfers them into the gallery space, both as live plants and as harvested/pickled/

dried products.

This work is a personal journey exploring agricultural plant matter, and wild edibles assculptural material, community building through growing and cooking food, and waysof re-incorporating agrarian sensibilities and simplicity into modern life.8

Figure 2. Leah Guathier, Sharecropper, 2009.

388 A. Gilbert and Y. Raviv

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Stacy Murphy, founder of BK Farmyards, with a background in engineering and

architecture, hopes to change the Brooklyn foodscape by reclaiming underutilized

private space, exchanging sweat equity for produce (Figure 3). One of BK

Farmyards’ current projects is teaching high-school students to grow food products

on an acre in front of the school. Elizabeth Bee Ayer is Farm Manager for BK

Farmyard’s. She has been involved in sustainable agriculture/food system work for

the past 10 years with an education in ecological horticulture. Elizabeth has run

several urban youth programs on gardening, entrepreneurship and healthy eating.

The rituals of preparing and eating meals are the foundation of culture: it is how wecelebrate the gift of life, and how trust is established in a community. BK Farmyardprovides local jobs, local economic growth, and a sense of stewardship and pride in thecommunity: it educates, organizes, and mobilizes new social relations around food.Integrating a new farming model into the existing urban fabric is a radical approachwithout taking a wreaking ball to the city and without massive investments. If appliedacross all the urban centers in the United States, BK Farmyard is a lean strategy tooverhaul the food system.

Unlike most urban farming proposals, BK Farmyards presents an additional

element, the dinner party structures. These social nodes provide a space for

spontaneous or planned neighborhood groups to share food, recipes, and stories.

The dinner party structures give power back to the communities to decide what kind

of collective food culture they would like to cultivate.9

Figure 3. BK Farmyards, volunteer, 2008.

Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 389

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Eve Mosher, an artist with background in architecture,

create[s] interactive public projects that abstractly investigate the human condition inrelationship to the world in which we live. Her work utilizes art and performance toincrease knowledge and understanding around environmental and social issues.

Figure 4. Eve Mosher, Seeding the City, 2011.

Figure 5. Eve Mosher, Seeding the City, 2011.

390 A. Gilbert and Y. Raviv

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My goal with each project is to create a space for participants to have a sharedexperience from which they learn and continue to share beyond the scope of the initialproject.10

One example is a project that creates small: plots of farmable land (1 sq. foot) rather

than ‘‘giant’’ rooftops (Figures 4 and 5)

Seeding the City is a public art project that asks: Why have just one roof with 1,000square feet of green, when you can have 1,000 roofs with 1 square foot of green? (Or inthis case, about 4 square feet and a flag!) The project is about POTENTIAL. Eachinstallation is a seed of potential – potential for community action, potential for moregreen space, potential for change!11

Maria Michails is a multidisciplinary artist whose art practice bridges the

sciences, engineering and agriculture (Figure 6). Her human-powered mechanisms

are the nucleus of interactive installations that parallel human expenditure

with human consumption to address broader ecological and social issues specific to

place.

‘‘The Handcar Projects’’ is a series of human-powered interactive works that focus onenergy and industrial process in agriculture (topsoil erosion and biofuels) and mining(Hydraulic fracking).12

Figure 6. Maria Michails, The Handcar Project, 2009.

Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 391

Page 8: Space to Grow: Women, art, and the urban agriculture movement

Christina Kelly is a visual artist and film-maker who lives in Brooklyn, NY. Kelly

createdMaize Field, a public art project consisting of ‘‘three sisters’’ Native American

corn planted in three sites in Brooklyn that were historically Indian planting grounds

(Figure 7).

I’m struck by the historical fact that the area now called Boeurm Hill, Brooklyn, wasonce highly valued by the native inhabitants as an excellent place to grow their crops.The contrast between what once was and what is now feels so extreme. The cornfieldsare gone without leaving a trace. This sense that some things disappear seems to be acharacteristic of New York reflected in the quintessential New Yorker comment ‘‘thisneighborhood has really changed.’’ The corn gardens of Maize Field are meant to be ameditation on the change and displacements that have been part of New York’s history.At the same time, they symbolize gestures of restoration and resiliency that are also apart of city life.13

Figure 7. Christina Kelly, Maize Field, 2010.

Figure 8. Vanessa Harden, The Subversive Gardener, 2010.

392 A. Gilbert and Y. Raviv

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Vanessa Harden is a Canadian concept designer, currently based in the UK.

Vanessa’s work explores the application of mainstream design processes and new

technologies to niche groups (Figures 8 and 9). In the Subversive Gardner, Hardencontinues her investigation into existing social tribes, this project looks at theGuerrilla

Gardening subculture. The members of this group secretly meet at night to illegallyplant flowers, shrubs, and vegetables in neglected urban spaces. Although their actions

seem harmless, they are still viewed by the authorities as illegal and prosecutable.

Continuing with my investigation into existing social tribes, this project looks at theGuerrilla Gardening subculture. The members of this group secretly meet at night toillegally plant flowers, shrubs and vegetables in neglected urban spaces. Although theiractions seem harmless, they are still viewed by the authorities as illegal andprosecutable.This project explores the existing instruments involved in this practice . . .By exploringthe duality of male and female apparel, familiar everyday objects and garments can alsofunction as guerrilla gardening tools, interfacing modern technology with organicproducts. Secretly dropping seed bombs on their way to work or planting flowers ontheir way home, these designs allow the guerrilla gardener to integrate their assaults intotheir everyday routine.14

***

Along with the individual artists and small collectives using gardening to

recontextualize relationships with urban space and the food shed, arts institutionsare beginning to foster and curate these works.

This past fall Parsons School of Design exhibited Living Concrete/Carrot City, an

exhibition of creative and research projects that demonstrate the possibilities of urbanagriculture. The exhibition links sociologist Thomas Lyson’s coinage ‘‘civic

Figure 9. Vanessa Harden, The Subversive Gardener, 2010.

Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 393

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agriculture’’ to Joseph Beuys’ influential formulation of social transformation andindividual creativity, ‘‘social sculpture.’’ It argues that everyday practices of foodproduction and distribution in cities, the actions of ordinary people in localneighborhoods, register as quiet but persistent challenges to the agro-industrialcomplex.

Living Concrete is a cross-institutional dialogue with Carrot City: Designing forUrban Agriculture, an initiative of the Department of Architectural Sciences atRyerson University in Toronto curated by Mark Gorgolewski, June Komisar, andJoe Nasr. Carrot City demonstrates how increasing public interest in agriculture,food supply, and food security is influencing urban design and how design canfacilitate a more robust urban food system.15

Umami food and art festival hosted an Urban Gardening Roundtable in 2010,which brought together artists, gardeners, food activists, and chefs. Two-dozenparticipants ranging across disciplines were invited to come together to discuss ideas,expertise, and to share a meal. Participants, who might not otherwise cross paths,presented their work, found points of juncture and had an opportunity to brainstormcreative approaches to the many food concerns that affect our culture, includingfood security, sustainability, and health. Several collaborative projects were hatchedat the event and implemented throughout the following year.

Eyebeam Art and technology Center created a Sustainability Research Group,whose main areas of focus have been energy, materials, and making, urbansustainability issues, especially transportation and pollution, and green spaces andagriculture. Eve Mosher, Britta Riley, and Leah Gauthier are among the group’smembers.

Our goals are to improve the internal practices, physical infrastructure and materialsused at Eyebeam to create a lab for workable sustainable solutions, to educate ourselvesand the public through programs and exhibitions, and to facilitate the creation ofsustainability-related projects at and beyond Eyebeam.16

Amanda McDonald Crowley, Executive Director of Eyebeam Art and TechnologyCenter, curates and facilitates new media and contemporary art events andprograms. She is also an avid gardener and has been actively engaged in promotingand facilitating the work of many of the artists presented in this piece (and manyothers).17

Notes on contributors

Ame Gilbert, an artist and an independent food scholar is a founding member of CommunalTable, an artists and chefs collective that creates salon-style cooking, eating and performanceevents in and around New York City. Ame curates and collaborates with the Umami Foodand Art Festival, The New York Food Museum and FarmCity, US. She runs a small cateringcompany, tends a tiny urban garden and makes too many pickles.

Yael Raviv (PhD, New York University) is the director of Umami Food and Art Festival,a non-profit arts organization bringing together artists and food professionals. She is also anadjunct professor at New York University’s Nutrition, Food Studies and Public HealthDepartment where she teaches courses on food and performance, combining her backgroundin theater and the culinary arts.

394 A. Gilbert and Y. Raviv

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Notes

1. http://leahgauthier.com/sharecropper/2. Bowman Simon, Daniel, Hufington Post, 2011. Derek Denkla, The Greenest, Feb. 2011.3. See Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1997 for a full description of the event and an interview with

the artist.4. Other examples of earlier work by women artists that blurred the lines between art and

growing/farming include Leslie Lebowitz’s Sproutime (1980, 1981) and Bonnie Shrek’sThe Farm (1974–80). See Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1999.

5. All images in the piece are published with the artists’ permission and are copyrighted bythe artists.

6. Britta Reily, 2009, www.windowfarms.org/about7. Leah Guathier, 2009, http://leahgauthier.com/sharecropper/8. Ibid.9. Stacy Murphy, 2008, bkfarmyards.com/philosophy/philosophy.html10. Eve Mosher, 2009, www.evemosher.com11. Eve Mosher, 2011, seedingthecity.org/12. Kelly, Christina. 2010. www.treiastudios.net/Treia_Studios/Projects/Pages/The_Handcar_

Projects.html13. Kelly, Christina. 2010. www.brooklynmaize.org/story.html14. Harden, Vanessa. 2010. www.vanessaharden.com15. Cohen, Nevin & Subramaniam Radhika. 2010. http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/

subpage.aspx?id=5595216. McDonald Crowley, Amanda. 2010. Eyebeam Sustainability Research Group, www.

eyebeam.org17. This piece was inspired by an Uran Garden Roundtable event at Umami food and art

festival 2010, curated by Ame Gilbert.

References

Bowman-Simon, Daniel. 2011. Huffington Post.Denkla, Derek. 2011. ‘‘Changing the Way We Eat.’’ The Greenest. thegreenest.net/2011/02

(cited 20 August 2011).

Gauthier, Leah. 2011. Sharecropper. Leah Gauthier. http://leahgauthier.com/sharecropper/(cited 12 June 2011).

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara 1997. Alicia Rios: Tailor of the body’s interior. TDR 41,no. 2: 90–110.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara 1999. Playing to the senses: Food as a performance medium.Performance Research 4, no. 1: 1–30.

Mosher, Eve. 2009. Eve Mosher. www.evemosher.com (cited 19 June 2011).

Murphy, Stacey. 2008. Philosophy, BK Farmyards. bkfarmyards.com/philosophy/philoso-phy.html (cited 17 June 2011).

Reily, Britta. 2009. www.windowfarms.org/about (cited 12 June 2011).

Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 395

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