Exhibition

Water(Proof)- Food Art Week Berlin

10 Aug 2019 – 15 Sep 2019

Event times

WATER(PROOF)
Opening: 10 August 6-10pm
Exhibition: 11 August - 15 September 2019
@ MOMENTUM
Kunstquartier Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2

Cost of entry

Free

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MOMENTUM | Berlin

Berlin, Germany

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Food Art Week and Momentum Worldwide invite you to WATER(PROOF), an exhibition of contemporary art curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch, featuring internationally renowned artists engaging in a broad dialogue around our environment.

About

WATER(PROOF)
Opening: 10 August 6-10pm
Exhibition: 11 August - 15 September 2019
@ MOMENTUM
Kunstquartier Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2

Food Art Week and Momentum Worldwide invite you to WATER(PROOF), an exhibition of contemporary art curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch, featuring renowned artists: Shaarbek Amankul, Andreas Blank , Stefano Cagol, Nezaket Ekici, Yuyai Fujinami, Iara Guedes & Tainá Guedes , Bonnie Tchien Hwen-Ying, Shaakira Jassat , Janet Laurence, Magpie Art Collective, Shahar Marcus, Almagul Menlibayaeva, India Rose Klap, Nina E. Schönefeld, Shingo Yoshida,with members of Mathilde ter Heijne's class for performance and time based media at UdK.

Through video, installation, performance, photography, and design, the diversity of works brought together for WATER(PROOF), the exhibition of contemporary art for Food Art Week 2019: WATER, engage in a broader international dialogue on the deterioration of our environment. Shaarbek Amankul’s video "New Society", documents the devastating ironies of economic privation in his native Kyrgystan, where poor villagers drain the contents of water bottles into the arid earth, preferring the quick cash from recycling to the water itself. Renowned environmental artist Janet Laurence addresses the fragility of water as a vital resource through her installation H2O: Water Bar. Stefano Cagol’s video performance amidst the ice of the arctic circle, "Evoke, Provoke (the border)", raises issues of mankind’s unrelenting impact upon even the harshest of environments. Almagul Menlibayeva’s photo series illustrates this year’s Food Art Week, while her film, "Transoxiana Dreams", documents the desertification of the Aral Sea, poetically following the plight of fishermen who now have to drive for hours from their village to reach the rapidly shrinking sea. Nezaket Ekici and Shahar Marcus’s video performance "Salt Dinner" is set within another shrinking sea, Israel’s Dead Sea. What looks like an absurd aquatic picnic is in truth a brutal endurance test for both artists, the excess of salt they are consuming with the sea water being as lethally dehydrating as the midday sun. Nina E. Schönefeld’s video "Dark Waters" takes place in another poison sea. Set in a dystopian future where the oceans are poisoned with plastic and only jellyfish can survive in their waters, this sadly bears more resemblance to truth than science fiction. Shingo Yoshida’s film "Réprouvé" is striking for its very absence of water; turning a garbage strewn wasteland in Chile into a beautiful sound installation, it is nevertheless a frightening glimpse of what our planet may soon look like if we do not take better care of our most necessary natural resource - water. These and the other outstanding works in this exhibition for Food Art Week may be only tangentially about food, and yet each work illustrates in its own way the vast diversity in which water impacts upon the cycle of life on our planet. From the desertification of climate change to the predicted floods of melting glaciers, water is as deadly in its scarcity as it is in excess. And yet, life cannot exist without it. Water(Proof) is about such paradoxes. In our utter dependence on water, we nevertheless contrive to poison and squander it. Nothing is waterproof, in the sense of being impervious to water, when water is perceived as integral to most every industry which sustains our lifestyles and quality of life. Yet our lifestyles are poisoning our planet. Water(Proof) assembles the positions and experiences of twenty international artists, each proving, in their own way, the precarious paradoxes of the cycles of water consumption and production.

FOOD ART WEEK CONCEPT:
The topic of Food Art Week 2019 is WATER.

Life on our planet started in the water. We, ourselves are 70% water, like our planet. Yet our oceans suffocate, our rivers are polluted, many living beings have no access to clean water. Plastic pollution, nanoparticles, pesticides and antibiotics are damaging our freshwater and oceans. Only 2% of the total water on our planet is clean.

By 2025, half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas. Industrialized livestock farming is draining and polluting water, threatening our planet’s most precious resource. Globally, 29% of the water footprint for agricultural production goes to raising animals. 98% of that water is to grow their feed.

Water scarcity is a critical challenge to the future of sustainable food production. Since the water footprint for beef is six times larger than for pulses, our meat consumption is throwing the planet off-balance.

We want to address with the selected artists and venues, different artistic perspectives - informative, narrative, empathetic, surprising and more.

The events will gather together famous, as well as young and upcoming artists. For the entire month the visitors will have the opportunity to discover the intersection between the wide panorama of modern and contemporary art and the increasingly popular (healthy) food culture in the selected cities. Through performances, dining events and exhibitions the festival will aim to present how food can be the medium of artworks and how it can open a dialog between thoughts and emotions. Food Art Week focuses on discovering the different connections between art and food by exploring the worlds of design, photography, collage, performance, food experiences and books related to this topic.

In addition to the exhibition at Momentum Worldwide, Food Art Week is occupying Steinplatz, a public space in Berlin across from the University of the Arts (UdK), for the whole month of August, with greenhouses designed by Tainá Guedes, one in collaboration with BSR and the other with the Bio Water Rheinsberger Preussenquelle, that will host educational art installations on the subject of the festival. On Saturday 17th of August, there will be curated art performances, workshops for kids and adults lead by NGO restlos glücklich, a panel discussion, and info booths from environmental organisations working on water preservation.

Location: Steinplatz
When: the whole month of August, with special program on 17th of August

Food Art Week Berlin this year takes place in August in collaboration with MOMENTUM, UdK, Programm der Kulturagenten für Kreative Schule Berlin, Berliner Stadtreinigung (BSR), Rheinsberger Preussenquelle and Stabstelle Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung und internationale Projekte Bezirksamt Charlottenburg- Wilmersdorf von Berlin.

Food Art Week, created by artist Tainá Guedes in 2015, is a non-profit project, whose mission is to promote positive change in our environment and society by raising awareness about many important topics related to our eating habits. It is the first contemporary art and food festival focused on educating people through various activities which includes exhibitions, workshops, panel discussions, talks, performances and film screenings. It has been held in various cities since 2015, including Berlin (2015, 2017), Bologna (2017), Paris (2016, 2018) and Mexico City (2018).

With a special focus on sustainability, animals and human rights, and environmental-social-economic issues, the festival analyses this year’s theme “water” and how the production and consumption of our food is affecting this essential natural resource.

Media Partners:
Berlin Art Link
Bpigs
Cee Cee
Himbeer Berlin

Special thanks to: Almagul Menlibayaeva, photographer of our year's campaign, Camila Soares/ Mila Productions, Cecil Maker, Thomas Meyer, all volunteers and makers at Food Art Week.

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