A (CAPITALIST) READING OF OUR USUAL BREAKFAST

This exercise was proposed as part of UNIDEE 2021 - Groundwork for Embedded Arts Practice a residency program curated by Andy Abbott at Cittadellarte-Fondazione Postoletto. The program focused on alternative structures, frameworks, ecologies, and organisational forms for socially engaged art projects, and the 'groundwork' required to build and sustain them.

🔗 More information about UNIDEE residency programs are available here

“We cannot engage with the complexity of this reality without turning our attention to the many layers of abstraction that are present in our daily life, abstractions that exist not just in thought but in the material, practical activity of life.” (Carpenter, Mojab, 2021)

A [Capitalist] Reading of our Usual Breakfast aims at building a score to create the collective experience of being together and apart, through an embodied practice. We propose to start with a reading of our usual breakfast because it is immediate, it is an experience that more or less everyone can recognize as part of their daily routine, and it might be one of the first morning rituals.

Starting from one's usual breakfast, it is possible to address the meaning of political economy intended as the study of production and trade and their relations with distribution law, custom regulations, and government. Through the exercise, we try to unpack and understand the relationship to global trade and individual responsibility, in order to create the basis for imagining our ‘ability-to-respond’ to the economy (Sachs, 2016).

We would like you to take a photo, describe (written or audio), record a short video with your phone, to map your usual breakfast. It can be just a drink or more! However, it should be what you usually get in the morning. 

Please feel free to think through (some of) the questions below:

Describe your food and drinks (perhaps colors, shapes, containers, etc)

How does this breakfast make you feel?

List the ingredients; focus on one, for example cereal or coffee?

Where was this ingredient/produce grown? Who grew it?

Does it contain any E numbers? If so which ones?

Are there any animal products involved in your breakfast? If so how many? Where do these animal products come from? Where were these animals kept?

Did the animal die to make this product? If so can you find out how?

Can you approximate the mileage between you and your food by thinking about where it was grown? Harvested? Packaged? Shipped from? Where did you get it? What is the distance between the store and your home?

References

👓 Carpenter, S. And Mojab,S. (2021) Revolutionary Learning. Marxism, Feminism, and Knowledge  London: Pluto Press, p. 5-6

👓 Potorti, M.(2017) Feeding the Revolution: the Black Panther Party, Hunger, and Community Survival, Journal of African American Studies v. 21, pp. 85–110. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-017-9345-9 

👓 Sacks, S. (2016) Exchange Values: Images of Invisible Lives [online] Available at: http://exchange-values.org/uncategorized/overview/