Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Consumer Edu.

Wednesday is one of our favorite days for the NYTimes because it has the Dining section. Our favorite food related article today was about celebrating the butcher and offal.  It was particulalry fun to read as Jake was breaking down and lamb and pig and working on some head cheese!

But the aricle that made us start talking was about  candy and a Samira Kawash, PhD aka the Candy Professor. Its not just that we love chocolate and candy corn, but it was the ways in which the article and  Kawash talk about the strange contradictions, misconceptions, dogmatic rule people have about food. Somehow somewhere we got it our mind that sugar is bad for us, especially children, and thus candy is bad. While it is true too much sugar is and for anyone, candy is not inherently bad.

What is even more interesting to us is that people will vehemently oppose candy for their children and then feed their children Tyson chicken, Gatorade, and Nature Valley Organic Granola bars with out blinking an eye. These things have as much if not more chemicals and sugars as most candies. People now are insisting more and more on organically labeled products, which is a good impulse. But few people really ask what that means, and whether it is what they think it is.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

The Sheep and Wool Festival


Last Sunday we attended the the Sheep and Wool Festival at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds, in Rhinebeck, NY. We have been looking forward to this event since we first took a hand-spinning class at The Yarn Tree last spring. The Festival is one the largest in country, and the largest on the east coast. We were overwhelmed by how many vendors and attractions there were.
Some of our high-lights were the sheep shearing demonstrations, learning about new natural dye methods, and seeing and touching many of the breeds we had read about. The whole thing was pretty exciting, so many people from everywhere all there for one reason- the love of wool. And here you could see the whole operation, from sheep to wool to roasted lamb. Also exposed were all sides of the wool operation- Blue Seal (one of the largest American producers of animal feed) sponsoring a building dedicated to showcasing heritage breed sheep. We cam away most excited at the prospect of someday having a flock of sheep (maybe some Jacob (pictured below) or Icelandic). We also have some new ideas for what to put in our weavers garden- like Osage Orange trees. A project we want to start this spring!

Monday, October 18, 2010

A pound of flesh.

Being a doctor must be strange. One must look at the people differently. Butchers are no doctors. They have the relief of knowing they are cutting dead flesh and the worst that can happen is you fuck up the tenderloin. But after just two weeks of separating muscles and cutting meat off of bones- slowly learning the basic skeletal muscular structure of mammals- we are looking at all four legged creatures and bi-pedals differently. We see how meaty the shanks are. Where the atlas bone is- making it easy to separate the head in one quick cut. Where one would remove the loin from the ham. It's strange how the daily abstraction of the animal form- into parts, sections, and commodities- trains one to objectify and systematize all bodies. We can only imagine how a doctor must begin to see people. 

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Contradictions in Meat

One of things that we have found ourselves thinking and talking about a lot recently is the relationship people have to meat (flesh). Because of the diverse crowd of consumers at Fleisher's we are exposed many different conceptions and receptions of meat. People want, expect, or believe strange and often contradictory things in terms of the meat products they consume.

Here are just some of the things we have seen:
-People think they want 100% grass-fed meat but they would be outraged at the idea of buying an animal that has been frozen four eight-months. 100% grass-fed animals have a three month period when those animals are ready to slaughter, right after summer, when they have been eating fresh grass all day and gaining wight. The animals eat hay, which has no real nutritional value, all winter and don't put on weight, which means the meat wont be as good. If you want to have grass-fed meat all year long that means the animals must be slaughtered Sept, Oct, and Nov, and be frozen for the year.
-People want to buy high-quality meat- full of flavor, fresh, and tender. But people are freaked out by the fleshiness of meat and cook it till there is no remnants of life, and thus no flavor. Than they are angry that they paid good money for what they think is bad quality meat.
-People want pasture-raised meat, but they expect to see heavy marbling. The kind of marbling we are used to seeing comes from inactive muscles, the result of a penned in animal in factory farming.
-People want to buy sustainably but they expect that every cut of meat should be available to them at all of times. Nose-to-tail butchering is sustainable butchering. It means no parts are wasted, what can't be sold as a cut of meat (for whatever reason) is in to sausage or dog food. It also means that every animal you breakdown that week must sold that week, meat does not ahve a long shelf life. Yet, every animal only has so much of each cut (you must choose between your tenderloins and porterhouses and there is only one skirt per steer).

Monday, October 11, 2010

Nothing is kosher!

Watch artist Christien Meindertsma breakdown how every part of a pig is used as a material: Christien Meindertsma: How pig parts make the world turn | Video on TED.com



We just learned about her and we look forward to exploring her work more. She has also done a wool project similar to ours, go to her website to learn more.

NYTimes Magazine Food Issue(s)

There is a great article, by Christine Muhlke, in this last Sunday's NYTimes Magazine (the annual food issue), titled "Growing Together". The article is all about the way in which food and the current food movement in particular have created different kinds of communities, it is also very honest about the limits of those communities. Everyone should read it, really, it is worth reading the whole issue. Rob Walker describes 'kitchen incubators' in his column 'Consumed'. Michael Pollan, a hero of ours, has a great piece about a 36 hour local food party, we wish we could have been there. Pollan describes the building, the use of, and the symbolic meaning of the communal hearth, an idea that we think and talk about a lot (probably a future SM project). Another short little piece of interest is 'The Cow-munity' about a community of people who buy shares in a pasture raised local steer. It is an example of a good option for those who don't have a Fleisher's nearby, and also of how food can create unusual communities.  Also read Pie + Design = Change an article about food, community, art and social intervention!!! It describes a design collective, very much like us, called Project M, we look forward to learning more about them. Finally, is the the west coast that much cooler than us? Certainly the Bay Area seems to be a few steps ahead of us North Easterners: Food Groups.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Many Meats

The first week of training at Fleisher's Grass-fed and Organic Meats is over. The week really flew by. Fleishers is a unique place for a lot of reasons: the personalities that work there and shop there, the love of food (meat in particular) and the dedication to sustainability. There is a lot to talk about and a lot more time (at least 7 more weeks) to experience and learn new tings.


Obviously, when in a butcher shop that has distinguished itself by its dedication to both sustainability and high quality, it brings lots of different kinds of consumers. Customers come to Fleisher's because it is the best butcher-shop in the area, both in quality of meat and also range in product. Some come because of its cult status in the food world. Some come because of its distinctive and marked political position. Some come and buy that rare and luxurious dry aged porterhouse as a celebration, others come on an almost daily basis and buy hamburger meat or chicken wings. Hipsters, bubbies, New Yorkers, Hedge-funders, Woodstockers who never left, and locals all shop here (as well as many of the most trendy restaurants in NYC). All of this is remarkable, the diversity of consumers and there needs are astounding. This diversity is due to Josh and Jess's commitment to high quality product, sustainability, health, and local economy. It is rare to see all this balanced and the success of that balance is what opens itself up to such a wide range of consumers.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Butchering


 
Today Sourced Material chef and artist Jake Levin began his eight-week training at Fleisher's Grass-Fed and Organic Meats in Kingston, New York- just across the Hudson River from Bard where the foundation was set for Sourced Material. At Bard Jake spit roasted a whole twelve-pound leg of lamb sourced from Fleisher's during the Wool installation on 07/07/10 (shown above) He also roasted two six-pound legs of Lamb for the Wool opening at flatbreadaffair on 09/23/10, and at the flatbreadaffair artists fete on 09/29/10 we braised three seven pound lamb necks for ten-hours (seen in curator Rebecca Pristoop's hands), all sourced from Fleisher's.

Today he learned how to keep a sharp blade, cut himself, and clean the meat off of bones. It was surprising how much of the hand work of a butcher is reminiscent of being a sculptor- it was comforting. There was also lots of talk about good food and the kind of business necessitated by sustainability and a dedication to local economy. It is going to be a exciting experience and we will be sure to post more about it soon.

Web 2.O

Sourced Material loves exploring the marketing and community-building possibilities of Web 2.0 - as does any social organization that wants to remain relevant. We have our website, our blog, and a Facebook page- and we're about to start tweeting.  Web 2.0 and the internet provide a platform for public exposure, but more importantly they provide a forum for communication and community-building that can span international borders. While on the ground level Sourced Material is a part of a face-to-face community of producers, processors,  and consumers- via the web we have formed a global community of supporters and participants. The web also allows us to exist beyond the traditional gallery or retail system. Through our website we are able to have a gallery, an e-store, and a bartering system that anyone can participate in anywhere. A lot of the power of the internet has to do with its formlessness (a concept first described by Georges Bataille and one which is dear to our hearts).


It is the formlessness of  the internet that makes the Web 2.0's instant mass-communication and sharing abilities, a powerful social and political phenomenon. The ability to communicate, via text, image, or sound- anywhere, anytime, with anybody is an invaluable tool- one of the first truly anarchic and democratic communication devices. There is a really interesting article in this week's New Yorker, by Malcolm Gladwell, titled "Twitter, Facebook, and social activism". As always Gladwell's essay is intelligent, insightful and well researched. But he misses the point about the power of internet and Web 2.0. While the analogy to the American Civil Rights movement of the 60's is interesting and brings up some good points, overall it is not a useful analogy. That was a different era and needed a different form of social organization. he relationship between vertically integrated, hierarchical organizations and laterally sprawling networks of citizen activists is not a zero-sum game. Twitter/FB are tools that that traditional organizations can use to disseminate information and organize followers cheaply and in real time. Many forms of social activism do work by large numbers of "small" acts--get out the vote, letter writing campaigns, legistlative referendums. These are not trivial mechanisms for social change.



Web 2.0 offers is the anonymous and instant organizing of people for  things like flashmobs. Flashmobs have their own unique political power- the lack of hierarchy and the anonymity has an anarchic power that leaves the repressive powers dazed and confused. People arrive they do something and they vanish, there is no one accountable person or specific organization, it is people coming together because they share a point of view and want it to known. The civil rights movement made great strides under MLK's leadership, but his assassination was a major blow for the movement from which it never totally recovered; heirarchical groups have a human body, one bullet can cripple the whole body. Lateral organizations are more like a cell, constantly dividing into discreet bodies working together.



Besides social organizing and protesting, Web 2.O allows other kinds of politcal action and participation which was not available before. My favorite example, and one that Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker colleague Evan Osnos wrote about in May the artist Ai Weiwei. He is a fascinating contemporary artists and he uses twitter to allow anyone to follow his daily thoughts and moves. He has also used it to keep himself and others from being arrested and brutalized by the Chinese government as well as forcing the Chinese government to release information. His cult like status and use of twitter has kept him one step head of the Chinese government in ways that would be impossible with out twitter. There is a lot more to say about this and a lot more to read. These are just some of our reactions. We recommend that you read more about Ai Weiwei as well as reading The Coming Insurrection.