Posts Tagged ‘Fallen Fruit’

At around 4:00 PM on Sunday, June 27^th, Guy Hatzvi of Farmlab, in association with Metabolic Studio, was rushing down to Marina Del Rey to find a replacement pump for the installation project entitled “Bldg. 209: Garden Folly (Indexical of Strawberry Flag)” that was to officially open to the public at the LACMA Campus in the next hour. Fortunately, he knew exactly what he was looking for: it’s a type of aeroponic generator that allows for a nutrient-rich water solution to be drip-fed through a series of I.V. tubes connecting a system of sick strawberry plants. The project was conceived by Lauren Bon, the founder of both Farmlab and Metabolic Studio, and her team of dedicated employees had been setting up the installation all week. But at the last minute, of course, the original pump broke down, and it was up to Guy to get a new one up and running by 5:00 PM.

This one task—obviously essential to the success of Bon’s operation on its opening night—was actually just a small tributary within the vastly ambitious constellation of works now going on at LACMA under the title of EATLACMA. In a sentence, this one-year-long, multi-faceted commitment from the Museum sets out to delve into the social, artistic, cultural, environmental, and humanitarian meanings behind natural food growth. In fact, this undertaking is so large, it’s hard to do it justice in a simple blog post, so I’ll just focus on the garden installations for now:

Along with “Bldg. 209: Garden Folly (Indexical of Strawberry Flag)”—which itself is indexical of a much larger work entitled “Strawberry Flag,” located three miles west of LACMA at the Veterans Administration of West Los Angeles (a bus will soon be available to take visitors in between the two sites)—there are also five other installation gardens on or around the LACMA campus.

One is called “Promiscuous Production: Breeding is Bittersweet” by the National Bitter Melon Council (yes, it exists). This tunnel-shaped, bamboo structure doubles as an experimental breeding ground for the hybrid, never-before-seen, BitterSweet melon. Through the age-old process of cross-pollination, visiting participants can actually partake in the experiment themselves by attending a series of day-long events intended to promote community, generate discussion, and—don’t forget—make melons.

A little bit further east is “Food Pyramid”—conceived by Didier Hess—which is a solar-powered, aquaponic garden that simultaneously questions the traditional food pyramid most Americans grew up on; presents an eco-friendly, soil-free alternative to gardening; and cultivates all the necessary ingredients for a delicious fish taco—including the Tilapia. It’s also aesthetically pleasing, peaceful to be around, and fun to contemplate with friends.

Just off the southeast border of the LACMA complex, on the corner of Wilshire and Curson, sits your typical traffic circle, the median point between pedestrian walk signs, the border between east-bound and west-bound traffic. But now there is also a garden of radishes, as planned and planted by Islands of LA in a project they call “The Roots of Compromise.” The traffic island itself is controlled by a variety of bureaucracies, and together, they agreed upon the root vegetable of the radish as the appropriate plant for their shared circle of land. The resulting food is representative of this small, but successful compromise.

Way over on the west end of LACMA, a crooked, polygonal potato garden lays flat and almost unnoticeable between the Ahmanson and the Art of the Americas buildings. But, according to the little placard placed in the soil, amidst at least 12 types of potato plants, “The varieties [of potato] exist as a result of coincidences, accidents, planning, violence, and careful custody over thousands of years. Through tracing their different backgrounds, a history of human desire appears.” The placard also directs viewers to a website, allowing them to cellularly interact with the incredible stories behind each strain of potato. The website is www.potatoperspective.org, the project is titled “The Way Potatoes Go 8000-BCE-Present: A Potato Perspective on an American Matter,” and was developed by sa Sonjasdotter in collaboration with the communities of the Potato Park (yes, it too exists).

Finally, on the north end of the LACMA campus, just below 6^th street, there stands a small, Roman theater of sorts, not unlike a miniature version of the restored Theater of Caesaria. Beginning November 7^th, this is the site of what shall be known as the “Public Fruit Theater,” a magical little installation concocted by the people of Fallen Fruit. In this theater, there will be only one performer (depending on how you look at it, that is), and that performer is a tree. Visitors are invited to come watch the growth process of this concrete-locked tree as if they were witnessing the slow arc of a character’s development on stage. In this way, the episodic relationship between the tree, the viewer, and also the other audience members creates a story, much like the ones we look for in theatre.

But back to Guy, and his aeroponic generator. Come 4:30 PM, he’s able to make it back to LACMA, and set up the device just in time for the first waves of curious onlookers. I observe the fragile configuration of hanging strawberry plants he helped set up, each interconnected by small life-lines of dripping nutrients, each literally holding on by a thread of survival, completely dependent upon one pump. I know it’s supposed to be representative of the plight of the Veterans in Los Angeles, but it’s also symbolic of the six gardens themselves, and beyond that, EATLACMA as a whole, and beyond that, the city of Los Angeles. I could go on and on, but you should probably just visit for yourself, and that way, become part of the garden.

For more information on EATLACMA, please visit http://eatlacma.org/about/, or call (323) 857-6000.

It seems only natural to combine our two first loves – art and food.  Yet that combination is rarely accomplished in a tasteful manner — that is, until recently.

The artist group Fallen Fruit has pioneered a considerable effort that is changing the way we view Los Angeles’s urban landscape, one tree at a time.  Fallen Fruit, founded by Matias Viegener, David Burns, and Austin Young, mapped areas of Silver Lake that have public access to fruit trees — i.e. free, locally grown, organic food.  This project continues to connect those with too much and those with too little of that good stuff.

Fallen Fruit’s next big project is at LACMA and is aptly titled EATLACMA.  Both today and tomorrow, Fallen Fruit will be giving away free fruit trees to kick off their year-long investigation into food, art, culture, and politics.  And keep your ear to the ground as their program unfold seasonally, including the exhibition Fallen Fruit Presents the Fruit of LACMA and day-long event in November.

An apple a day never tasted so good – or so free for that matter.

For more information about Fallen Fruit, click here.  For more information about EATLACMA, click here.

We (21st century Americans) take so much for granted.  Our food supply is but one example.  And unless you’ve read Squeezed or Fast Food Nation, you’re probably blissfully unaware of the journey most of our food takes to reach the local market.

Consider the banana.  At one time, the banana was an exotic tropical delicacy as mysterious to some as the block of ice which makes its improbable appearance in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude. (Fans of the book might remember that it is the establishment of a banana plantation that leads to the demise of the story’s fictional village, Macondo.)  Nowadays, bananas are ubiquitous and we don’t even blink an eye while chomping into a piece of fruit that originated halfway around the world.

The banana was first brought to Colombia over a century ago by the United Fruit Company.  As is often the case when outsiders reap the natural resources of poor countries, copious amounts of blood, sweat, and tears were shed.

United Fruit marks Fallen Fruit’s first solo show and runs from June 17 through September 29 at LACE.  It premieres a new body of work generated during Fallen Fruit’s recent residency in Colombia that features a series of photographs and video installations exploring the social, political, and pop history of the banana.

Fallen Fruit is a collective of artists and activists comprised of David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young. It originally started as a neighborhood project to map a section of Silverlake charting fruit trees – neighbors were then encouraged to share fruit with each other through direct exchange as well as partaking of ripe fruit that had fallen beyond the perimeters of a neighbor’s property.  Fallen Fruit’s website now has several neighborhood fruit maps for your perusal.

When you combine art, activism and food, good things abound.  Fallen Fruit uses fruit to get people thinking about social connections in new ways so that we consider how we can improve the dynamic of our societies — one apple, orange, and banana at a time.  Yum!!

-By Peter Lee

Fallen Fruit’s United Fruit  will be at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions until September 27.