Visualizing Foodways Field School
Year:
2023

Location(s):
Milpa Alta, Xochimilco, Colonia Escandón, & Centro Historico, Mexico City


The Visualizing Foodways Field School (VFFS) explored how we can connect arts-based researchers and food justice organizers towards mobilizing meaningful collaborations around sustainable food systems, one of the most critical issues of our time. This field school in Mexico City (17-22 February 2023) welcomed researchers, artists, organizers, and scholars interested in the nexus of art and food in Mesoamerica and across the hemisphere. 


How can working with food incorporate joy, pleasure, and conviviality into our struggles for collective liberation?

Through site visits, meals, lectures, performances, and artist talks, participants augment their knowledge through embodied learning activities to gain a hemispheric perspective on precolonial cuisines and agricultural techniques, innovative urban agriculture projects, the scale of industrial food systems that feed the hemisphere’s largest city and beyond—and creative practices that engage with these topics.



The Visualizing Foodways Field School brought together Mexican, Canadian and international participants for meals, site visits, artist talks, etc. in key zones of the city that each have unique and significant agricultural and culinary traditions including Milpa Alta, Xochimilco, and the historic Centre.

Resources::
VFFS_Portfolio.pdf

Collaborators:
Produced by Laura Levin and Tracy Tidgwell and the Hemispheric Encounters Network and supported by the Food Art Research Network.

Collaborators: colectivo amasijo, Calpulli Tecalco, Mujeres de la Tierra, Beatriz Paz Jiménez, Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez, Aleph Escobedo, Eric Namour/Bacal, Valeria Mata, Pan con Madre, Masa Pasta Fresca, Sameer Farooq, Santiago del Conde, Cocina Colaboratorio, Amapola del Sabor, Colectivo Ahuejote, Chinampa Ttlazolteotl, Grace Denis, Materia Abierta, and Humedalia.

Participants: Alex de la Heras, Andréa Tremblay, Dresda Méndez de la Brena, Franklin Bonivento Van Grieken, Gifty Dzorka, Hurmat Ain, Juma Pariri, Nane Vieitas, Thaís Chilinque and Valeria Mantilla Morales.

Special guests: Dr. Priscilla Settee, Feminist Art Residency (Allyson Mitchell & Deirdre Logue), Shauna Janssen, Micheline Chevrier, Sofía Olascoaga, Chantal Garduño, Hawapi (Susie Quillinan & Maxim Holland), Deveron Projects (Natalia Palombo & Kawther Luay), the Centre for Sustainable Curating (Kirsty Robertson), and the Creative Food Research Collaboratory (Amanda White, Anahí González, and Katie Lawson).

Interpretation by Ricardo Moreno at Metáfrasi.

Photographic documentation by Rubén Garay.

Support:
The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; the Food Art Research Network.