An international collective of artists and educators of agroecology and permaculture present:
Food is one of the basic needs of every human being. The coming food crisis is not a fiction. The dominant model of industrial agriculture today creates dangerously fragile societies and ecosystems. It focuses on eliminating farmers, globalizing rural areas and transforming them into global food factories. However, the cumulative negative effects of its impact, leading to the depletion of natural resources, remain disturbingly unnoticed by a large part of society.
We need solutions that will enable us to produce and enjoy healthier eating, living in harmony with nature and its rhythm, and healing the planet so that it can heal us. The COVID-19 pandemic, mass migrations and the climate crisis show like never before that we must look for new solutions and also use those that already exist. Worldwide, new initiatives operating on the fringes of the mainstream or in niche areas are paving the way for the alignment of new, more sensitive and environmentally conscious social DNA into our planet’s biosphere.
Edible City Warszawa and Supermarket Museum were created as part of the cooperation of two entities: Biennale Warszawa and Agro-Perma-Lab Foundation. We propose two different reflections on how we can become independent from the big food industry and develop and support urban agriculture and horticulture, local food initiatives and farmers who appreciate the principles of regeneration and ecology. Little visions matter. Intertwining our creative imaginations with each other has the potential to redirect the notion of “growth” to intangible, non-destructive and non-profit solutions. Let’s use it.
The Agro-Perma-Lab Foundation received a grant from the European Cultural Foundation. The Fund supports imaginative cultural initiatives that strengthen solidarity and address the aftermath of a pandemic in European societies. The project is an international collaboration between a network of permaculture and agroecology practitioners, artists and volunteers, and involves 5 organizations:
Asociación La Bolina (Spain)
Permakultura na Ukrainie, (Ukrainę)
Lebende Samen – Living Seeds (Germany)
Asociace místních potravinových iniciativ (Czech Republic)
Fundacja Agro-Perma-Lab from Poland – coordinator of the project.
The project answers the question: “How are we going to LIVE TOGETHER in the context of intersecting crises – climatic, ecological, economic and social, and the related constraints?”
A group of artists, agroecology and permaculture educators and volunteers will create an online international audiovisual exhibition “The Supermarket Museum”. The first “path” in the museum perversely explores and interprets through the prism of art the “supermarket culture”: its modus operandi based on convenience, monoculture and profit, which destroys the social, economic and ecological values of solidarity. Contrary to this dominant culture, the museum’s second ‘path’ describes existing, successful grassroots alternatives and civic initiatives – based on food sovereignty and solidarity and respect for the earth.
What is behind the idea of the Supermarket Museum?
A project aimed at strengthening the common public space in Europe, as a space moving towards food sovereignty, based on locality and universal human rights values regarding access to healthy food and wise use of the Earth’s resources. By creating a futuristic image of transformed, sustainable local food systems from a 2030 perspective, the project will address issues such as building solidarity in the rights of supermarket workers and food producers, the disappearance of local food producers and a huge climatic footprint of long food distribution chains.
The supermarket food system and its cultural, economic and ecological consequences are dangerously fragile and based on values very far removed from solidarity: at the root of the value of the supermarket economic model is profit, failure to respect local communities, failure to respect cultural and biological diversity, the supermarket model destroys small farms , monopolizes local food systems and does not respect the dignity of employees, and often avoids paying taxes, long-chain production, distribution and waste issues harm the environment and health.
Imagine…
It is 2020. Your parents still remember going shopping with a wicker basket, and your grandparents telling you about going for vegetables and dairy products (necessarily with their glass bottle!) To a neighbor two houses away. They tell how fields and gardens could smell and how tomatoes could taste. It was only 20, 50 years ago …
It is 2030. We are entering the building of the “Supermarket Museum”. Which of our behaviors, attitudes and products that led the way in 2020 have already gone down in history? A group of artists, permaculture and agroecology educators and volunteers will create an on-line exhibition called “Supermarket Museum” as part of the project. The first path of the museum will be about critical reflection on the “supermarket culture” – a culture that is based solely on monoculture, comfort and absolute (you) profit.
The second path of the exhibition will present the existing alternatives – those solutions of food policy that are based on models of food sovereignty and solidarity.
PARTNERS OF THE PROJECT
The project will be implemented until December 2021 and is co-financed by the Culture of Solidarity Fund – European Cultural Foundation (FB / Twitter).
