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| NonFood bars information plaque at exhibit |
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| NonFood bars, algae based |
The first piece I choose to from the Gallery Feast or Famine was "Non/food" by Sean Raspet and Lucy Chinen. Here they presented a bar which is algae based and very healthy and easy to make and can act as a food source for people across the world including countries with high rates of famine. Where can't you find Algae? Algae is in all the oceans of the world which make up more total area than all the continents combined. Upon doing further research it is noted that Sean Raspert worked in research and development for a company called Soylent and founded his own company Nonfood to promote the use and availability of algae in foods across the world. More about Sean Raspert can be found at
Sean Rasperts Page. After researching there was not much about Lucy Chinen on the internet as an artist, or scientist, or even mention of her working with Sean Raspet on this project but she did. This project can be correlated to the 2004
Free Range Grain project because it focuses on how public science can address issues such as food production. However, this Project is more focused on testing for organic verse non-Organic GMOs which goes against my main project (Interventionists pg. 116). My project focuses not on getting rid of GMOs but rather the manifold benefits of GMOs and how they have helped 3rd world countries and other people in the world who lack certain nutrients, or food supplies, or have other issues that GMO crops can target such as shelf life. I feel the NonFood bar correlates more to GMOs in agriculture as it looks at alternative methods to increase food supply. I definitely can relate these exhibits to Seeing Power "Occupying Space." Bringing science alternatives into art to promote food for the starving and hungry across the world brings this Art / science product to the everyday gallery viewer who can see the issue and a possible alternative to help presented through art even though it is a scientific invention. And although an extreme example of occupying space, "ON January 25th, 2011, 50,000 protestors occupied Tahrir Square, in Cairo, demanding the removal of President Hosni Mubarak... Tahrir, meaning liberation, after the Egyption Revolution of 1919"(Seeing Power, pg. 150). Although this quote doesn't directly relate it shows how a symbolic area can have a huge impact on the space occupied, just like science alternatives occupying museums and art galleries, and other public venues can bring light to GMOs and how much they are helping humanity. The shelf life on the Nonfood bar is not as short as most other foods too and I can relate this to the GMO tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables which have genes edited to increase shelf life. I do feel like too that if more people in power looked at these alternatives of GMOs and even NonFood bars and informed the public more and put out fliers and even ads to promote these in a better light a great service would be done for the hungry in the world. For some reason though some interest groups erroneously and pumping out false information about GMOs correlating them too health hazards, and even death, which is false and not based off of any true data. Nobody died from GMOs, not one person. If not one person died from GMOs and they have been studied for decades by institutions like Harvard, and clearly the government has no stance for or against GMOs us as the activist must take a stance to support GMOs and other products that promote similar ideas to GMOs like NonFood bars. Let's bring science into the equation by occupying more space and informing people out there of the benefits of GMOs and nonFood bars.
The next exhibit I did was by Shanthony Exum
Taco 2018. This exhibit shows a big Papier-mâché taco. The exhibit didn't say too much but the rest of the exhibits and the curator Anonda Bell told me that they represent the over production or supersizing of foods in America. This I could relate to other countries doing without and all the waste we have here in America. I could relate this to GMOs spoiling too or going back, or being overproduced in Usa and thrown out when 3rd world countries starved. I can relate this to Cultural Capital. "Over the last 100 years, the corrosive byproduct of tjhe machines of culturual production has gathered like smog over all of us, radically obscuring our vision (Seeing Power, pg. 83). Here I feel like yes our machines do have their vices. Yes we produce more, but 40% of all food produced each year in the United states goes to waste according to the Washington Post. The page can be found
here (Washington Post, Online). I feel like maybe Shanthony Exum is bringing like to this supersizing of foods, and mass waste of food in America. Let's just face the facts a lot of Americans over indulge and waste a lot of food.
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| Exhibit sign for Taco |
Please take the time to look at the exhibit and plaque on the left and below.
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| Taco Exhibit by Shanthony Exum |
As you can see the taco is exaggerated in size just how things are in America when it comes to food production through machines and waste. A further note is GMOs have increased the size of fruits and vegetables. More fruit than can go to waste, however, increasing the size of agricultural products through transgenes and selective breeding provides more for 3rd world countries which is not bad, but rather only bad in the USA as waste is so high. Please take the time to check out and support Shanthony's work at
Shanthony Exum's Webpage.
Works Cited
Bell, Anonda. Paul Robeson
Galleries at Express Newark, Curator.
Exum, Shanthony. http://shanthony.com/
Paul Robeson Galleries at Express Newark
Plumer, Brad.
Washington Post. Published August
22, 2012.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/08/22/how-food-actually-gets-wasted-in-the-
united-states/?utm_term=.a7cb9a14ecec
Raspet, Sean. https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/artist-sean-raspet-on-making-things-
nobody-asked-for/
The Interventionists.
Mass Moca Publishers. 2004
Thompson, Nato.
Seeing Power. Melville House Publishing. 2015
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