How do we eat as people change climates?
The Campaign
As part of Back to Earth, spatial practitioners Cooking Sections are continuing their ongoing research project, CLIMAVORE. Working with scientists, chefs, farmers, policymakers and practitioners from several other disciplines, CLIMAVORE proposes an adaptive, regenerative form of eating – a shift in the economy and ecology of how we consume, interact with and produce food, towards environmental well-being in the climate emergency. Restaurants in museums across the UK are Becoming CLIMAVORE, removing farmed salmon from their menus and replacing it with ingredients that improve water quality and cultivate marine habitats like seaweeds, sea vegetables and bivalves. The cafe at Serpentine has introduced a CLIMAVORE menu, which includes seaweed soda bread, rope grown mussels and an agar panna cotta. By Becoming CLIMAVORE, cultural institutions worldwide can be at the forefront of a collective effort to re-imagine existing food justice models and create new ones in the face of the climate emergency.
To learn more and join Becoming CLIMAVORE visit: becoming.climavore.org
You can taste the CLIMAVORE menu at participating institutions across the UK:
Aberdeen Art Gallery
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead
BFI Southbank, London
Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry
Holburne Museum, Bath
London Transport Museum
Manchester Art Gallery
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
Royal Museums Greenwich
Science Museum, London
Science and Industry Museum, Manchester
Serpentine, London
Tate Britain, London
Tate Liverpool
Tate Modern, London
Tate St Ives
The Whitworth, The University of Manchester
Turner Contemporary, Margate
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Wellcome Collection, London
And in Skye and Raasay:
Edinbane Lodge
Eòlach
Isle of Skye Baking Company
Loch Bay
Raasay House
Rosedale Hotel
Scorrybreac
The Ferry Inn
Three Chimneys
About the Project
Initiated by Cooking Sections in 2015, the long-term project CLIMAVORE includes a variety of site-responsive iterations, which are either self-initiated or commissioned by cultural institutions. As part of CLIMAVORE, Cooking Sections work on the Isle of Skye (in a project initially commissioned by ATLAS Arts), to pivot from an economy dependent on polluting salmon farming to one based on filter feeders and seaweeds, which are crucial in maintaining robust and healthy intertidal ecosystems. Collaborating with farmers, restaurants and local stakeholders alike, Cooking Sections have set up a CLIMAVORE Station on the island, which includes the CLIMAVORE Apprenticeship Programme. They are currently working towards the establishment of an intertidal polyculture farm to cultivate food, ecology and habitats. The project started with the installation of an oyster table in the intertidal zone in Portree that served as a multispecies home for other bivalves and seaweeds at high-tide. At low-tide it was activated through public workshops and performative meals to discuss alternative aquacultures for the island.
In areas affected by water scarcity, CLIMAVORE researches drought-resistant plants and architectural interventions for the establishment of microclimates to enable ‘watering without water’ and ‘watering with stones’ by reinterpreting ancient techniques of cultivation (Sharjah, UAE and Palermo, Italy). CLIMAVORE has worked on exhausted soil in the Ukraine, Japanese knotweed and real estate in the UK, and subsidence in New Orleans, USA, among others.
About Cooking Sections
Cooking Sections is a London-based duo examining the systems that organise the world through food. Using site-responsive installation, performance and video, they explore the overlapping boundaries between art, architecture, ecology and geopolitics. Established in 2013 by Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe, their practice uses food as a lens and tool to observe landscapes in transformation.
Cooking Sections were nominated for the 2021 Turner Prize.
They have worked on multiple iterations of the long-term site-responsive CLIMAVORE project since 2015. In 2016 they opened The Empire Remains Shop, a platform to critically speculate on implications of selling the remains of Empire today. Their first book about the project was published by Columbia Books on Architecture and the City.
Cooking Sections’ work has been exhibited at Tate Britain; SALT Beyoğlu, Istanbul; 12th Taipei Biennial; 58th Venice Biennale; the U.S. Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale; 13th Shanghai Biennial; 2019 Los Angeles Public Art Triennial; 2019 Sharjah Architecture Triennial and 13th Sharjah Biennial; Performa17; Manifesta12, Palermo; Atlas Arts, Skye; Lafayette Anticipations, Paris; Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, Columbia University New York; Serpentine Galleries; Grand Union; Atlas Arts, Skye; Storefront for Art & Architecture New York; New Geographies; and HKW among others.
Their latest book Salmon: A Red Herring is published by isolarii (2020) on the occasion of the namesake Art Now exhibition at Tate Britain.
Back to Earth
As part of its commitment to CLIMAVORE, the Back to Earth project is gathering support towards the realisation of the regenerative aquaculture farm on the Island of Skye. This includes support of the project, collaboration with Serpentine café, convening an advisory board and working with stakeholders to implement CLIMAVORE principles across key food industry infrastructures.
