The exhibition features retrospective display of Feral Trade goods (2003-present) alongside ingredient transit maps, video, bespoke food packaging and other artefacts from the Feral Trade network.
The exhibition notes tell us:
“The term ‘feral’ denotes the project’s wilful wildness (as in pigeons) as opposed to romantic or nature-wildness (wolves): it offers street-wise survival tactics for urban environments. Since the first registered Feral Trade import of 30kg of coffee direct from the growers in El Salvador to the Cube Microplex in Bristol in 2003, Kate Rich has used social networks to traffic edible produce from around the world. Feral Trade participants become mules, carrying food items with them on trips they would have taken anyway and delivering them to depots (usually friends’ and colleagues’ flats or workplaces) in the growing network.”
“The process is facilitated by an online database, handcrafted by the artist, where couriers log their journeys. This forms the sole physical infrastructure for an alternative freight network, which operates without any material assets (vehicles, staff, communications devices, depots). It enables producers, couriers and buyers to track not only the transit of their own produce but all grocery movements in the network; outputting waybills that document the details of sources, shipping and handling with the kind of microattention that ingredient listings normally receive.”
See/eat it at:
http://www.http.uk.net/exhibitions/FeralTradeCafe/index.shtml
