“Food is a source of nutrition.
Food is political.
Food is an ecological issue.
We weave stories to understand the truth.
We weave stories to sell the truth.
We weave stories to hide the truth.”
This piece stems from the research process and installation created for the artist residency, ‘Moving the New’ by Dance House Lemesos, in 2023.
During my time there, I became obsessed with our rhythm of life versus that of nature; how our consumption of food affects our perspective of reality and our notion of death and survival. How all this, has an impact on our idea of time. My fixation on soil was the aftermath. This basic resource we take for granted became the foundation of the interactive installation and where I invited the audience to essentially play with soil through various tasks. Our connection with the earth is so deeply rooted that even our body is programmed to detect its subtle physiological changes.
“ 'Petrichor' is the name given to the scent of the earth after it rains
It is a million times stronger than other senses the human nose can detect
Scientists are still trying to figure out why this is so
Petrichor signals river fish that it’s time to spawn and helps camels find water oases"
(click to view full images)
Food used to be gathered or hunted, rituals that created direct embodied experiences with nature. There was an acknowledgement towards the rhythms and conditions of the seasons that made it possible for plants and animals to thrive. What we consumed for food, was from the land we had an immediate experience with. When food became a product to sell, lots of aspects of reality slowly began to be morphed or hidden. Nowadays, we buy food based on what it looks like and what others convince us about it. Sight is the main and first sense we use as a foundation for forming all kinds of relationships and first impressions, creating a detachment from our bodily experiences and consequently a detachment from reality, as all our other senses are not put to the test.
Food reflects our overall lifestyle; it has become objectified and is produced and marketed to suit specific industry standards which include: durability, standardization and external beauty. Our avoidance of death is part of our culture and the fact that we are not part of the cycle that produces the food we consume, leaves us unaware and therefore unarmed to deal with situations we would normally avoid or find alternatives for, if we were faced with them in our daily lives. Social media and technology grow and follow in the same footsteps, standardizing our social interactions and first impressions in similar ways.
“I notice how I gently age
I notice how fast I age
How slowly I grow up
How I don’t grow up
How I try to slow down how fast I grow
How fast I want to slow down
When I scroll through my social media account”
Our rhythm of life does not depend on nature anymore it relies on science. And don’t get me wrong the advancement of science is not evil, in the same way that social media is not evil. This is not a conspiracy article. I love my fridge, that I can instantly connect with people from all over the world; and the fact that I can have painless and effective surgery if my bones break, is something I feel truly grateful for. The way we make use of it sometimes - eh - could definitely be better.
We thankfully created techniques of freezing, canning and of manipulating edible goods and this is exactly the relationship we steadily endeavour to achieve with our youth. And no, we don’t endeavour to stay young form the inside with plenty of laughter and a healthy relationship with our thoughts and feelings. We obsessively dwell on our visual image - on what we look like, on what we do and how others perceive us. There is a general anxiety floating around of staying young, cool and photoshopped forever. There are social media filters, plastic surgery and a global industry determining if fruits and vegetables fit the general marketed idea of what is worthy of selling. (If you ask any worm you will find out their opinion differs.) It's as if the supermarkets have adopted the same format as the Hollywood film industry.
Our daily routines and general momentum is far different than that of nature and our notion of death and birth is skewed, impacting our idea of time. How often and how close, we come into contact with death, how we grieve and the way we phrase our words around the subject directly affects our perception of it. "Eternal rest", "passing away", "loss of life" - linguistic sugar coating has always existed but the proximity and intimacy of a human or an animal's life cycle was different. Birth nowadays is equally misunderstood; when and where was the last time you saw your meal growing from a tiny seed? Through the research for this project, I found out that it takes up to 1000 years to naturally form 1cm of fertile soil. Having this knowledge is an incredible source of gratitude and a great reminder that our perception of time is constantly being morphed.
“I make tomato soup in the winter
I make tomato salad in the summer
I make tomato sauce in the spring
I make food with tomatoes all year round
I store my tomatoes in a plastic bag, in the fridge, far far away from the cucumbers”
We have this bizzare idea that if we can control time, then we can control nature. And that if we can control nature, then we can control death. I have come up with several names for this condition: Airy Hallucinations, Sweet Decadent Bites and my favourite - Turritopsis Dohrnii Fantasies.
Turritopsis dohrnii are jellyfish that are capable of living forever by reverting back to their previous developmental stage, whenever they get injured, feel threatened or scared. They can only die if they are pursued and killed by a predator, from an environmental circumstance or if they do something stupid.
“All of wisdom is locked in time
All of time is locked in nature"
Our perception of ourselves as separate to our environment is what creates a deep disconnect and and lack of symbiosis with our planet. From reading the book “An Immense World” by Ed Young I learned about the term ‘Umwelt'. It was coined by German biologist Jakob von Uexküll, to describe the environment that is created by the unique world of each organism’s sensory world. He compared each sentient being to a house that has a certain amount of windows opening up to a garden. There is a “light window, a sound window, an olfactory window, a taste window and a great number of tactile windows. Depending on the manner in which these windows are built, the garden changes as it’s seen from the house.” It seems that the majority of us, have shut all our windows and are occasionally watching the garden from our screens.
"Nature moves in rhythms and survives thanks to symphonies"
And it will only continue to do so, if we can find a deeper connection and symbiosis with our planet.
“When the almond trees blossom
When I can smell the buds of the citrus trees
When the humidity intensifies the scent of the jasmine flowers
When the wheat fields are green
I am happy
When the wheat fields are yellow
When the sea is warm at night
When the rain storms start
When the snow is deep until my knees”
♥ artemis evlogimenou
The quotes above come from the script I had written for this project, which was also presented as part of the installation.
Photographs from the installation by: Pavlos Vrionides
Collaged images created by: Artemis Evlogimenou
Model: Konstantina Skalionta
Comments