Gastro-Art

There has been quite a bit about the combining of art and restaurants recently. In the spirit of New Years trend spotting we predict, and hope, that these experiments with dining and art continue with full force, especially here in NYC. It feels exciting to be on the forefront of these gastro-art endeavors, with our partner Flatbread Affair. We have been truly inspired by all of the different models of combining art making and food making.

One of the things that seemed to stir the most attention recently was Marina Abramovic (one of our heroes) and Creative Times partnering with the seasonally organized, and design heavy restaurant Park Avenue Winter. Abramovic worked alongside chef Kevin Lasko to create a dessert, Volcano Flambe, which is eaten accompanied by an MP3 player playing Abramovic;s voice guiding you through the sensual experience of eating dessert, other artist are following- including another favorite of ours- Janine Antoni. Artinfo has a good (and fuller) description.

Then there is the pop-restaurant What Happens When that Frank Bruni wrote about recently, which opens this week! We think this is a really fascinating model for creating a dining experience. We cant wait to go and see how it works. Also covered by the NYTimes recently was the trend in Berlin restaurant/gallery spaces. The descriptions of some of these places are amazing, especially Zagerus Projekt, pictured above. Maybe it is time to plan  a trip to Berlin, it sounds like an amazing city to be an artist.
There also seems to be a small resurgence of interest in the work of Gordon Matta-Clark, one our biggest inspirations and hero. There is show at David Zwirner right now of his work that grew out the experimental art space 112 Greene St, which is reviewed in The New Yorker. Matta-Clark explored food and eating in various ways including at his artist run SoHo restaurant Food, which was located at 127 Prince, hence the name of the new online art journal where we were recently interviewed. FEAST Brooklyn comes to mind as another great example of projects inspired by Matta-Clark and Food. 
We hope that more places/projects like these develop in NYC. Where things like these have been happening in the West Coast and in Europe for sometime, it seems New York is on the cusp of embracing the gastro-art world, again.  We are as always especially excited to see what happen with Flatbread Affair as these ideas gain more currency here.

The New Year

It is mind-blowing that Sourced Material has only been around for half a year. We emerged out of this summer while Jake Levin sat anxiously surrounded by raw wool in a dirty metal shop at the MFA program at Bard College. Since then so much has happened. We have launched a gorgeous website developed and designed by Sourced Material co founder Silka Glanzman (along with diving head on into the world of social-media/web 2.0). We have exhibited Sourced Material: Wool at Bard and in Brooklyn at Flatbreadaffair, for their inaugural show. We have hosted several lamb-based feasts (with the help of Flatbreadaffair partner/chef Leah Rinaldi). Jake was interviewed about Sourced Material by Sierra Radio and by David Horvitz for 127Prince. We have successfully exchanged all of our wool products thanks to the overwhelmingly eager response from participants from all over the US. Jake apprenticed at Fleishers Meats for three months learning the craft of whole animal butchery from some master butchers. Now he and Sourced Material are ready to explore the whole animal! And now it is almost a new year.

Here are some of our thoughts, plans, and resolutions for the new year. We are definitely going to do some whole animal butchery demos/feasts this year! We are going to have a small show of all the objects made through the Wool exchange program. We want to explore making paper. KNIVES! We want to start looking into the possibilities of pop-up stores. We are always looking for new people to participate and explore with. We are interested in the idea of Sourced Material exploring a region rather than  a specific material- maybe the Southern Berkshire Hills. We are excited to see what surprises 2011 brings for us!
Mostly we want to wish you a happy New Years and thank everyone for supporting us!!!

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.

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.

Last Night's Dinner

Last night was the Sourced Material: Wool Artist's Fete at flatbreadaffair. The dinner was amazing. All of the food was prepared by flatbreadaffair's chef Leah Rinaldi (except for the lamb's neck which was braised for 10 hrs by Sourced Material chef Jake Levin). Leah combined raw food techniques, traditional North-east American recipes, and haute cuisine, to turn all locally sourced food products into a gorgeous and delicious 8-course meal.

The conversation was rich and exciting- touching on topics like: farming, urban gardening, the relationship between curator and artist, the local artist community and of course food. It was a wonderful salon atmosphere and we can't imagine it having gone any better. We were particularly excited to have the artist Anne Lise Jensen there. We instantly hit it off. She told us about her practice and the difficulties she has experience doing social intervention art here in NYC (as opposed to the West Coast or Europe). Again we want to thank flatbreadaffair for an amazing job and for all of there support and of course we want to thank all of you who came to eat and talk with us!

Bread!

We don't know if we have ever had as much and many different kinds of bread as we have in Sweden. The organic farmer we are staying with, Frans Brozén, grows dinkel (old wheat or spelt). Dinkel (seen above) is used for various things here- from ground flour for cakes and bread, to whole grains for hearty dishes made with ground-meat and cabbage. They use rye flour for knäckebrod, buckwheat for gallete, and on and on. Right now Silka is getting a demonstration in traditional Swedish baking from Gunilla, Frans' wife.

Jake's parents always joke that when they first moved up to New Marlborough, you could only get sliced white bread. Now, because the Bekrhsires is such a local-food rich place, there are an amazing variety of breads to chose from, like Richard Bourdon's (who you can see pouring flour above) Berkshire Mountain Bakery. But in most places there no such choices. This morning in the NYTimes there was another exciting local-food article- this one about bread baking and grains- titled Their Daily Bread Is a Local Call Away

In the News

There have been quite a few exciting articles in the NYTimes recently that we wanted to share with you. One article is about Jake Levin's home community, the Berkshires, and the array of local food producers there. Many of his friends and colleagues are mentioned, like our good friend Susan Selew, seen below!


On another food note, we enjoy all of the great food trucks that exist in NYC and often fantasize about what our food truck would be like. There was an article the other day about a new and exciting food truck that made us excited and jealous, but mostly just hungry.

A little over a month ago there was an article about the designer Peter Buchanan-Smith and his company Best Made Company that caught my attention. While we think the idea behind the product is wonderful (hand crafted and locally sourced), it raised a lot of interesting questions. The price and marketing of the product ruled out most people who would every really use an axe on a regular basis. We also couldn't help but wonder, who are the people making the axe heads- it was all very vague in the article.

Related to both issues of food and pricing issues was an article about 'artisanal' ice cream.

Finally, there is an article about design, crafts, and the rural. It mentions some really interesting artists and designers, raises some great questions, and describes a book, "The Craftsman" by Richard Sennet, which has been important to our thinking.