Save the Date!

The Rhizome Alliance Presents

Chicago Symposium Fall, 2013

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Rooting: Regional Networks, Global Concerns  

Organized by core group Deborah Boardman, Rodger Cooley, Kevin Kaempf, Eric May,  Rooting: Regional Networks, Global Concerns will be a symposium and web publication, connecting networks of artists, cultural workers, radical chefs, and urban farmers creatively responding to the extreme environmental, social and economic changes facing local and global communities.

Chef, Artist, & Farmer Trios

Rooting is hosting a series of collaborative dinner parties.

Working together to plan a thematic menu and setting for a meal evocative of the content of the symposium, selected trios of Chefs, Artists, and Farmers will create dinners as delicious opportunities to spark dialog with other symposium goers.

Rooting: Regional Networks, Global Concerns will be a 3-day symposium highlighting emerging programs and projects by artists, cultural workers, radical chefs, rural and urban farmers, and small businesses. The program will spotlight creative responses to the extreme environmental, social and economic changes facing local and global communities with a focus on the Chicago region in the United States and New Delhi and other regions in India.  The event will pull together local, regional, and international presenters to share projects and best practices addressing soil health, water conservation, advocacy, food production and distribution, and building sustainable communities. Presentations will be documented on video and posted online with a companion online publication with contributions by symposium participants.

The symposium will kickoff with New Delhi-based artist Akshay Raj Singh Rathore as keynote speaker. Rathore, Flora Boillot, and the Rhizome Alliance, supported in part from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago EAGER grant and a Propeller Grant, are establishing a new international collaboration that expands Rathore/Boillot’s project, NegotiatingRoutes, which re-introduces heritage seeds and indigenous trees in Madhya Pradesh, India.

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Working under the nameThe Rhizome Alliance, Eric May, Kevin Kaempf, Deborah Boardman, and Rodger Cooley are partnering with a mutual desire to support sustainability, create global partnerships, and promote creative work by artists, chefs, urban farmers, and cultural organizations.

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Symposium Schedule (Subject to Change):

THURSDAY

Morning: Fieldtrip to M's Organic Sustainable Farm, Woodstock, IL

Evening:

Keynote Presentation: Akshay Raj Singh Rathore

Reception

FRIDAY

Morning:

Bike tour(s) featuring City Farm, Center for Green Technology, Pacific Garden Mission Greenhouse, The Plant, Growing Power, Growing Home

Afternoon Sessions:

Political Advocacy Now: Small Farmers Respond to Industrial Farming Pressures

Urban Food Justice Initiatives: From Food Deserts to School Lunches

Evening:

Dinner and Discussion on Distribution Networks: Reconciling and Strengthening the Relationships between Producers and Consumer

SATURDAY

Morning Activity:

Forage Walk in Humbolt Park

Afternoon Session:

Collective Resources: Air Quality, Brown Fields, and Water Sheds

Healthy Systems: Traditional Cleansing Techniques and Innovative Remediation Technologies

Evening:

Film Screening

SUNDAY

Morning:Concurrent Workshops on Urban Permaculture, Year-round Growing Systems, Composting and Vermiculture, Mycoscaping

Afternoon Session:

Covert Messaging: Aesthetics in Food and Farming Issues

Cross Pollination: Experimental Projects in the Arts and Food Culture

Closing Remarks

Keynote Speaker

·       Akshay Raj Singh Rathore: http://akshayrajsinghrathore.blogspot.com/?view=classic

 

ABOUT THE RHIZOME ALLIANCE
DeborahBoardman is a painter and installation artist and founding member of International Network for Urban Agriculture (INUAg) who has worked on numerous collaborative and community based projects. She recently spent seven weeks in India, where she worked with art students on collaborative projects in Mysore and Bangalore. 

-->She is a recipient of recent grants from the Illinois Arts Council, Indiana Humanities Council, an EAGER from SAIC and a Propeller grant with the Rhizome Alliance.   Her work is in the public collection of the Chicago Cultural Center, and her artist books are in collections of the Bibliothecha Alexandrina, Egypt, Newberry Library's Wing Collection and at Harvard University's Houghton Library, among others.

Deborah Boardman is as an Adjunct Associate Professor at SAIC, where she will work with students to develop the content and design of the Symposium. Building on her recent visit to India, where she conducted collaborative workshops with Indian art students and cultivated relationships with Indian artists and NGO’s, she brings together a wide ranging of individuals and communities both locally and globally.

Rodger Cooley for the past 12 years has worked on urban agriculture, food systems, planning and policy issues.  He spent 9 years at Heifer International supporting the development of community-based sustainable agriculture projects in Chicago and the Midwest.   He helped found urban agriculture and food policy coalitions in Chicago.  Rodger has served nationally on the board of the American Community Gardening Association and chaired the Community Food Security Coalition's Urban Agriculture Committee.  Rodger is currently the Executive Director of the International Network for Urban Agriculture (INUAg) and is an adjunct professor in the Landscape Architecture Program at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT).

Rodger Cooley’s extensive experience working with non-for-profits and coalitions focused on sustainability, food systems and urban agriculture will provide significant access to practitioners in the field. Through his affiliations with many organizations, we will be able to perform significant outreach and marketing for the symposium.

Kevin Kaempf works in diverse collaborative combinations creating projects, events, and publications. His creative practice values conversation, social spaces, and participatory processes. Kaempf’s projects have included jointly running the experimental community space Mess Hall in Chicago, creating environmental pilot programs in locations throughout the US; and, working with People Powered on the exhibition Manifesto with accompanying workshops. Most recently his collaborative video work has been exhibited in Budapest and Chicago.

Kevin Kaempf’s unique background brings significant experience to the content and planning of the symposium. He is currently Adjunct Assistant Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and taught in various departments including Sculpture, Art Education, and Contemporary Practices. Kevin completed the Permaculture Certificate Program (2010) at the Regenerative Design Institute in Bolinas, CA. He also has extensive experience in programming/marking gained while working at the American Bar Association as Program Coordinator for Legal Education Programs (3 years) and Marketing Manager for he Section of Labor and Employment Law (3 years).

Eric May is a Chicago based artist and chef. His practices cross disciplines between visual, performative, and culinary arts. At its core, this range of practices examines ecologies, not only environmental and biological, but also social, focusing in particular on issues surrounding food and its sources. In some works he examines sustainable food sourcing from foraging to re-evaluating potential urban food sources such as invasive species. In other works he focuses on the social issues of how we eat. Specific projects document and celebrate cultural histories and foodways. Other works challenge dominant power structures that serve capital gains over society’s collective health and wellbeing. All of these facets of his work celebrate what and how we eat while addressing prejudices that impair a contemporary way of eating.

Eric May’s broad practice explores ecologies both in biological and social terms. A primary point of investigation is the relationships between people and food sources. Projects such as "Edible Invasives" challenge our preconceptions about culturally maligned ingredients and suggest sustainable alternatives to urban food production. He studied the cuisines of South Asia for nearly 15 years, working with and receiving training from cooks working with Punjabi and Mughlai cuisines. In addition to being the head chef of Ox-Bow School of Art and Artist's Residency in Saugatuck, Michigan, he established and directs a nonprofit gallery Roots & Culture. 

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Akshay Raj Singh Rathore’s work explores societal transformations. His project in his native Aulinjaa is part of Negotiating Routes: Ecologies of the byways, a KHOJ program.  His partner Flora Boillot is a cultural liason for French artists on residency in Delhi. She previously managed the studios of Bharti Kher and Subodh Gupta and published writings on their work.

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Finalist of the FICA Emerging Artist Award (2010), he was nominated to the Sanskriti award (2011), the Skoda art Prize (2010) and was awarded the 2012 Pro Helvetia Studio Residency. In 2012, he will be participating to Negotiating Routes: Ecologies of the byways, a KHOJ program and will be artist in residence at the Sally and Don Lucas Montalvo Arts Centre, Saratoga, California in 2013. Recent exhibition participation include: Generation in transition, New Art from India, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland (group exhibition), Tolstoy Farm : Archive of Utopia, curated by Gayatri Sinha, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi,India (group exhibition), To be continued…FICA Award Show, by Vadehra Art gallery, Gallery Volte, Mumbai, India (group exhibition).

 

SAIC Student Blog with interviews!

http://rootingourfood.wordpress.com/