11-20 August, 2023
Decomposing, decaying, fermenting: The Mediterranean
The specific location of Babakale opens to a reflection towards the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean has been through a complex history, uniting on its shores people, cosmovisions, habituses that have contributed in the emergence of powerful political and symbolic systems; from the Egyptian Kingdom through to European Union, through Greco-Roman Empires, the Levantine diaspora to the Ottoman and Phoenician Empires. Currently it is a complex geopolitical zone, entangling dramatic dynamics, whether it is the ongoing aftermath of the Syrian war, the migration movements to the EU, the Israel-Palestine conflicts.
Evy Jokhova and T*Félixe Kazi-Tani propose a cross approach to their practices focusing on how we are socialized through food, its value, politics and distribution. The Mediterranean food traditions built the foundations of many western and middle eastern nurturing imaginaries, cultures and practices: wheat, wine, olive oil and seasonal cooking. Here conservation through fermentations played a major role. Fermentation implies transformations and evolution through a successful symbiosis. This dramatic process is always one step away from rotting and tainting. This year’s focus will consider the metaphors at works regarding the Mediterranean through the lens of fermentation: a decaying empire or a complex symbiotic fermentation? The line is thin between a reviving entanglement and a silent poison.
Garp Sessions 2023 programme will focus on the local historical and current food system (food availability, management, and culture); it will consider practices such as foraging, fire and fermentation as a metaphorical narrative to explore the complexity of the Mediterranean zone. The programming offers the following processes to be put to the test, experimented with and implemented: using local clay to make vessels for food, creating earth kiln/pit fire to fire the ceramics; exploring quick fermentation techniques. Collaborating with local fishermen in order to create a longer ferment based on the antique recipe of garum that will be left behind to continue fermenting after the session is dismissed and be sampled by locals. This year’s session will also be an occasion to meet and discuss the social and political meanings and values of food cultures and processes.
Facilitators
Evy Jokhova
Evy Jokhova (EE/UK/RU) lives and works between Lisbon, London, and Vienna. Jokhova is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice engages with dialogue and relationships between social anthropology, architecture, philosophy and art. Working with drawing, sculpture, installation, sound, film and performance, she aims to bridge gaps between these fields and their inherent hierarchical structures. A graduate of MA Fine Art, Royal College of Art (2011) and MA Political Communications, (2013) Goldsmiths College, Jokhova is the recipient of numerous awards including Arts Council Individual Grants Award (2018), Royal Academy Schools Fellowship (2016-19), Royal British Society of Sculptors Bursary Award (2017-18), Wien Kultur Förderung (2017) and Amsterdam Fonds voor Kultur (2018). Residencies include Centro Selva, Peru (2022), Yarat Contemporary Art Space (2018), Belvedere Museum Vienna (2017), BijlmAIR Amsterdam (2017), Villa Lena (2017), Nida Art Colony (2017) and Florence Trust (2008-09) amongst others. Solo exhibitions include: Three Colours: Green, 3+1 Arte Contemporânea, Lisbon (2022); Uma Cobra Naturalmente Falsa (with Mane Pacheco, cur. Ana Cachola), Balcony (Lisbon, 2021); Within these lines I operate, Galeria Foco (Lisbon, 2019); The Shape of Ritual, project commissioned by Belvedere Museum (Vienna 2017); Towering in the conditions of fragments, Passen-gers (London 2017); Staccato, Marcelle Joseph Projects (London 2016). Recent group exhibition include: Ponto d’Orvalho, curated by Joana Horta, Leonor Carrilho & Sergio Hydalgo, (Freixo de Meio, Alentejo 2021); WOTRUBA. Himmelwärts, curated by Gabrielle Stöger-Spevak, Belvedere Museum (Vienna, 2021); Art in the Plague Year, curated by Douglas McCulloh, Nikolay Maslov & Rita Souther, UCR California Museum of Photography, (California, 2021); On Photographic Beings, Latvian National Museum (Riga 2020); Boundary Layers, Yarat Contemporary Art Space, (Baku 2019); Prevent this Tragedy, Dateagle / Vongoetz Art (London 2018); Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer, Better Living: Tenderflix film festival, The Horse Hospital (London 2017) amongst others. Since 2014 the artist has run Allotment – a collaborative research project that explores social relationships and cultural politics through food. Jokhova’s work is held in the public collections of the British Government Art Collection, UK; Lafayette College Library, USA; Royal College of Art, UK and Royal Shakespeare Company, UK.
T*Félixe Kazi-Tani
Recently graduated from a bakery vocational diploma (CAP) after having been a teacher and designer-researcher (Cité du Design, ESADSE, CoDesign Lab Télécom ParisTech), T*Félixe Kazi-Tani is a founding member of the graphic design research collective Bye Bye Binary which explores inclusive, queer and post-binary typographic forms. In their most recent work, T*Félixe Kazi-Tani attempts to uncover the role of food and cooking in the constitution of their own political subjectivity, inspired by Maggie Nelson’s autotheoretical investigations and Monique Wittig’s cannibal eroticism. By manipulating, investigating and reviving archives and documents, while turning their processes into shapes, they questions the political and intimate ambiguities of gestures and practices that are affected as much by the ethics of care as by hegemonic violence. They was associate curator of the 2017 International Design Biennial and the French Pavilion of the 2019 Milan Triennial. Their work has been presented at the Centre Georges Pompidou, La Gaîté Lyrique, Biennale Internationale Design Saint Etienne, California College of The Arts, Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Fondazione Sandretto, etc.
Participants
Jamie Allen
Jamie Allen (he/him) is an artist-researcher and organiser occupied with the resonances between metabolisms, ecologies, technologies, infrastructures, and institutions. He makes experiments and research, writing and media, material artworks and events, encounters and workshops, talks and platforms for publishing and public-making. Always seeking experimental, cooperative projects, situations, people and activities that acknowledge love, friendship and reciprocity as part of creative knowledge practices in art, media and research. Interested in open, experimental, empathetic and generous collaborative constellations.
Kıvanç Sert
Kıvanç Sert (1992) was born in Ankara, Turkey. Placing himself in between art and design he is inspired by the idea of play and everyday tools, investigating cultures, ideologies, object-users, and space relations. He uses creative activities and productions as a tool to point out problems, ask questions or create societies. He is interested in building and being a part of communities by creating free spaces where we can share and learn from each other. He was the founder of Açık Alan Collective (Open Space) which organized various nonprofit workshops, seminars, exhibitions, and events between 2014-2018. He was also the co-founder of Bankpank, a mobile art radio collective that uses broadcasting to create a physical space and connect a community. From 2018 to 2022, Bankpank experimented with the idea of creating spaces without fixed locations. He studied at Vienna Techniche University Architecture (2011-14) and Industrial Design at Istanbul Bilgi University (2014-18). He did his masters in Visual Art and Design at Sabanci University (2020-2022). At DAI Art in Research Master Program, he is currently investigating food and culture focusing on rice and tea (work, leisure and pleasure around tables). He has been working on “Intervention in the Moment” since 2016, a long-term collaborative mobile design practice that produces objects instantaneously by collecting discarded objects from the streets. He is currently based in Rotterdam.
Zarina Rossheart
Zarina Rossheart is a London-based independent curator.
Ekin Kano
Ekin Kano’s practice revolves around her research on the blurry boundaries of the human and the non-human. Kano defines the body as an undefinable and limitless structure and proposes alternative materialist possibilities of being. Her works have been shown in group shows in Istanbul, Los Angeles, Zurich, Paris, Belgrade and Wintherthur as well as two solo shows in Istanbul.