Food Bigger Than The Plate — Incredible Bulk

We were lucky enough to head up to London to check out an interesting exhibition, curated by the V&A called Food: Bigger Than The Plate that looked to investigate our relationship with food. It was a great exhibition, offering plenty of food for thought! With Incredible Bulk we’ve found ourselves not only in the business of wanting to reduce our plastic consumption but also involved in the food industry and this exhibition offered us the time to consider the different aspects of that and to think about what that means to us and how we want to be involved. As with the plastics issue we want to make sure we are having a positive impact so it was a great opportunity to increase our awareness of the larger issues of the food industry and be inspired by various creative projects looking to disrupt the norm, here are some of our key highlights from the exhibition:

“What we eat is one of the most important decisions we make everyday. Food connects us - to each other, to our culture, and ultimately to nature, shaping the world we live in….Some of the biggest issues we face globally - from climate change to workers rights and public health - stem from how and what we eat. And as the distance between field and fork widens, many of us feel detached from our food, often not knowing where it came from or how it was produced….Today, desire is mounting for a food system that is more sustainable, fair and delicious. As technology is reinvented and societies transform at an unimaginable pace, now is the moment to decide what kind of food future we want. What could it look like? And taste like?….The future of food is in our hands. Nothing is off the table.”

Interestingly the exhibition started with what most would consider the end, our waste, highlighting the importance of design that makes use of our waste:

Some great designs highlighting the use of waste:

Street Farmhouse, 1972. A two year experiment in creating a completely closed-loop, self-sufficient home in the centre of London. Architecture student Graham Caine built the system with human waste at its core. Excrement drained into an anaerobic digester where it was converted into methane gas for cooking. Treated solids and liquids then passed to the greenhouse to be used as fertiliser. Street Farmhouse was pulled down in 1975 when it was denied permanent planning permission.
Loowatt, 2019. For places with no plumbed-in sewage systems Loowatt offers a solution - a waterless flush technology that captures and seals excrement in biodegradable bags. The waste is collected and then converted into energy and fertiliser. The design of each toilet is tailored to local needs and behaviour - it is currently used both in residential neighbourhoods in Madagascar and at music festivals in the UK.
Daily Dump, 2006. Bangalore’s growing population has a big trash problem. Instead of a city-run collection service, most rubbish is scavenged by the citys poorest residents who sort through garbage to find items they can sell. Daily Dump want to get everyone to take resposibility for their waste. Their pioneering home composting system turns waste into fertiliser, which can then be used for gardening or sold. The natural terracotta of their handcrafted pots encourages people to appreciate the organic beauty of the composting process and incorporate it into daily life.
Merdacotta, 2016. Merdacotta, meaning ‘baked shit’, is a terracotta-like material made from dry cow dung. It is the brain-child of Gianantonio Locatelli, who manages a herd of 3500 diary cows, who generate around 150,000kg of manure every day. Inspired to transform this waste into something useful, Locatelli developed ways to extract energy, heat and fertiliser from the manure. The remaining solids are mixed with Tuscan clay to create Merdacotta, used for bricks, floor tiles and even tableware.

“Waste Materials : We know that plastic is a huge problem for the planet, but what are the alternatives? Today designers are working to transform the waste products of farming and eating into exciting new materials. In particular, organic waste offers rich opportunities for creating biodegradable materials and re-integrating manufacturing processes with natural cycles of growth and decay:

This is Urine, Sinae Kim, 2016. Ceramic vessals glazed with human urine. Beyond glazing ceramics, urine was once used for many purposes, from theraputic medicine to whitening teeth and tanning leather.
Protein Bowl, Tessa Silva, 2019. Inspired by discovering that before the invention of synthetic plastics in the early 20th Century, casein (a protein extracted from cows milk) was used to make a popular alternative, Tessa sourced waste milk from a dairy farm to create a versatile, natural alternative to plastic.
Anima, Kosuke Araki, 2018. Vessels made from non-edible food waste and urishi (Japanese lacquer). Historically urushi craft has a close relationship with leftover food like rice and tofu, which is mixed with the lacquer to make a glue.
Waterschatten, Nienke Hoogvliet, 2016-19. The Dutch Water Authorities have developed a new process to filter used toilet paper from the national sewers and turn it into clean pulp. Nienke Hoogvliet used this material to create a series of bowls, coloured by dyes created with substances derived from waste water.
Blood-related, Basse Stittgen, 2017-ongoing. Cow blood is discarded in vast quantities by industrial slaughterhouses. This project explores its potential as a material and examines our emotional and often contradictory relationships with blood and meat.
Kaffeeform, Julian Lechner, 2015-ongoing. Reusable coffee cups made from used coffee grounds collected from cafes in Berlin.
Malai, Zuzana Gombosova and Susmith C. Suseelan, 2018-ongoing. Malai is made from the waste products of the coconut harvest in South India. A substance produced by bacteria during fermentation in coconut water it is strong, flexible and breathable. Products made from Malai can be composted at the end of their life and biodegrade in 90 days.
Orb, Biohm, 2016-ongoing. Biohm is a start-up working on bio-based sustainable materials to replace those currently used in the construction industry. They make Orb by binding food or farming waste into a material that can be formed into sheets or 3D shapes. No synthetic additives or chemicals are used, and it is safe to eat.
Parblex, Chip(s) Board, 2018-ongoing. Parblex is a translucent bioplastic made from potato peelings left over from the production of McCain Chips in the UK.

“Farming is one of the most fundamental human activities. The way we grow our food determines what we eat, how we use the land and the impact we have on the natural world. Yet today in industrialised countries, only a tiny part of the population is directly involved in agriculture - about 1.5% of the workforce in the UK. Globally, there is an ongoing movement of people leaving their work on the land and moving to cities. For many of us, growing food has become something abstract and remote. But farming isn’t a passive backdrop to our lives. Current methods of intensive agriculture are forcing climate change, depleting natural resources and reducing biodiversity. Finding ways to feed the world that allow people and the planet to flourish is an urgent challenge. Now is the time to involve more minds in imagining the future of farming, and to explore the potential of connecting people with growing food. More sustainable technologies, livable cities, empowered communities and flavourful food are all on the table.”

Works exploring the role of farming from around the globe:

HK Farm, produces zines to document the experiences of the different farmers they work with, to explore the philosophy and politics of urban farming and, above all, to share practical knowledge and local farming wisdom. Like seeds, the publications are meant to be activated, planted, grown, cooked, tasted and tested.
Fallen Fruit, artists Fallen Fruit map and plant fruit trees to create ways for people to interact with the city and each other. By drawing attention to communal edible resources in London today, these maps prompt us to start re-thinking the city.
CV Campesino, Molinos Gordo. Compared to modern agri-businesses, small-scale family farmers are often either dismissed as backwards and old-fashioned, or romanticised as timeless and authentic. For CV Campesino, Molinos Gordo has written a CV for small scale farmers, highlighting how their skills and knowledge are vital in meeting todays economic and ecological challenges. By adopting the self-promoting jargon of a document normally associated with urban profesionals she challenges assumptions that culture and innovation come solely from the city.
Our Daily Bread, Nikolaus Geyrhalter and Wolfgang Widerhofer. This documentary is intended to open our eyes to the world of European industrial food production and high-tech farming. Through colossal factories and surreal landscapes, it reveals the sometimes bizarre, sometimes shocking system of people, animals, crops and machines that make up the inner workings of food production in modern society.
Company Drinks, this community enterprise brings people together to pick, process and produce drinks. Based in Barking, it looks back at the shared history of working class families from London’s East End, who migrated from the city to farms in Kent each summer for the hop harvest.
Bare Bones, designer Nienke Hoogvliet learned from a porcelain expert that the quality of bones from industrially farmed animals today is too poor to create good bone china. She decided to test this and compared how bones from factory-farmed and organically-raised chickens perform in making porcelain, her results support the idea that the quality of the porcelain reflects the quality of the animals life.
The Human Pollination Project, in a world without honeybees would we be prepared to take on their enormous workload? Bees pollinate over one third of the worlds food supply. Their services are worth an estimated $15 billion per year. But since 2006 honeybees have been mysteriously disappearing in a phenomenon known as ‘Colony Collapse Disorder’, Artist Laura Allcorn designed and made a toolkit for hand-pollinating fruit trees which force wearers to contemplate the overwhelming prospect of having to assume the responsibility of the bee.
Planetary Community Chicken, todays industrially bred chickens are missing around half of the genetic diversity natural to the species. Working against this trend towards uniformity, Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen has been cross-breeding chickens from different countries since 1999, aiming to produce birds that are more productive for local people in terms of nutrition, income and biodiversity.

“Think about the last meal you had. How did the food get from the field to your plate? Our food used to be produced locally and eaten seasonally. But over time the distance between food producer and consumer has increased, and the complex logistics and economics that underpin the global journeys our food makes are now shrouded in mystery. Industrial production may have lowered the price of food on supermarket shelves, but the costs haven’t gone away, in reality they have just been shifted. The invisibility of its true costs means we devalue food, making it easier to throw away.

For the small number of multi-national mega-corporations that control the food industry, profit is the priority, outweighing nourishment, taste, fairness and diversity. But a growing number of creative practitioners are challenging this situation, either by making the realities of the food system more visible, or by proposing more diverse and inclusive means of trade and distribution. They are refocusing the value of food beyond just financial gain to benefit everyone involved, from eaters and producers to communities and ultimately, the planet. “

Banana Story, Johanna Seelemann and Bjorn Steinar Blumenstein, 2018, using a banana passport and an expanded label, Banana Story challenges the simplistic narrative of the ‘made in’ label, which only gives the objects place of origin and hides the complex realities of international food transportation. On its 14 day journey from a tree branch in Ecuador to a supermarket in Iceland, a single banana travels 8800km, crosses multiple national borders and passes through 33 pairs of hands.
Cerveja de Abacaxi, Atelier Dragao Baiano, this pineapple beer is brewed in a rural area in Brazil using solar power. It is bottled locally, stored in recycled bottles and the labels are printed by hand using an old government press. An experiment in ‘zero-impact design’ the project draws on local knowledge, preserving culture as well as expanding the regions financial infrastructure.
Provenance.org, within the food industry murky supply chains are the norm, keeping us in the dark about what we consume and leaving us unable to make informed choices. This digital platform allows companies to share information about their product in a trustworthy and transparent manner.
Growframe, 50% of shipping containers transporting goods from China to North America are empty on their return journey. Growframe is an idea for a collapsible hydroponic farming system, designed to fit into a standard 20 or 40 foot shipping container, which would operate unsupervised in a sealed environment. Crops cultivated during the return journey would be harvested on arrival, transforming empty space and wasted air into small mobile farms.

“Packaging the Food System: At the end of the 19th Century, global food trade accelerated and new technologies began to transform food production and distribution. Our relationship with food today is rooted in that period. One of the biggest changes was the introduction of packaged food that could be easily transported and had a longer shelf life. Carefully designed packaging also created a radical and attractive new way of presenting and selling food, giving food companies a direct line to consumers. This paved the way for widespread branding and, later, self-service supermarkets. As time has passed, our connection with food has become more visual, focused on commercial marketing and branding rather than a social or sensory experience.”

Image above showing Supernatural by artist Uli Westphal, the top image is a collage of imagery taken from Asda, the middle is from Morrisons and the bottom from Waitrose. Uli writes that ‘our detachment from agriculture creates a knowledge vacuum which is filled by information the industry provides. These depictions are obviously ridiculous, but also so mundane that we hardly notice them at all. Yet, they are subconsciously able to influence our perception and buying behaviour. It is an eye-opening exercise to walk through a supermarket and look at it through an anthropological lens. It tells us a lot about who we are as a species and society.’
Biscuits were one of the worlds first machine-made foods, and their tins remain a symbol of the emerging industrial food system. In 1861, as the Licensed Grocer’s Act allowed groceries to be individually packaged and sold, the demand for biscuits grew and diversified, reflected in the range of marketing found on the remaining tins.

“Our kitchens are where culture, politics and economics collide, not just as lively discussions around the table, but also on our taste buds. When we cook and eat, all processes that make up the food system come together. If we made every decision around eating consciously, taken collectively, these acts could have the power to shape the world….technological advances in cooking have acted as a social leveller, making meal times more efficient and freeing up our time. But how has this shifted the way we value that domestic work, which encompasses so much more than simply putting dinner on the table? Our kitchens and tables are loaded with possibility - for sensory pleasure, social nourishment, rich debate and environmental change.”

LOCI Food Lab, The Center for Genomic Gastronomy: By far the most fun in the exhibition, this interactive food bar offered you the chance to taste your own food values and create your perfect food system. From a choice of 15 you are asked to identify which 3 aspects of a food system are the most important to you and based on your choices you are served a personalised snack. We went with Zero Waste (obvious!), Nutritious and Biodiverse and it was pretty delicious! We got to taste a wild spread of foraged english mushrooms and wild herbs, revitalised relish made with tomatoes too ugly for local supermarkets and restaurants, warming waters fish dust (dried and powdered anchovy) and no soil, no sun microgreens, hydroponically grown underground in Clapham! We were visitor number 42,186, of those visitors 11% had chosen Zero Waste, 18% Nutritious and 7% Biodiverse, surprisingly 0 other visitors chose the same three attributes together?! Delicious was the most popular and Profitable the least popular so far on the day of our visit.

If you could design a better food future, what would your top priorities be?

All information from the V&A exhibition Food, Bigger Than The Plate, curated by Catherine Flood and May Rosenthal Sloan. 18 May - 20 October 2019

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