Food Art Research (FAR) Network is a wide international network of established artists that engage with the politics and aesthetics of food. We have met three to four times per year since 2020 and as a group we insist on working slowly. We value peer learning and exchange and the network fosters lasting connections between members, across trans-local creative contexts. We are committed to slow processes that might be considered akin to composting, in which we are mapping and unmapping our shared interests across diverse conditions. We are attentive to the connections across places between ancient and ancestral food practices and we believe that connection to food, land and waterways is allied with practices of culture. We want to find ways to understand and share these connections without collapsing the differences and struggles that also exist. Over our two years of collective engagement, we have created artwork, conversations, texts, recipes, and public encounters in collaboration with local and international partners. Since establishing we have held several peer exchanges events (FAR Network 2020-2022), participated in international symposia; Cocinas Abiertas, Autonomous University of Mexico, 2021, Festival of Publicness, Design Week, Melbourne University 2022, Artistic Courage, RMIT 2022, Towards Perma-Cultural Institutions: Exercises in Collective Thinking, Stiftung Künstlerdorf, Schöpinggen, Germany, 2022 and presented public programmes; including Disorganising Metabolisms, Liquid Architecture, Bus, West Space, Melbourne 2021, The Sound of Justice is Music to my Mouth, CAST & Liquid Architecture, 2021, Pedagogies of Transition, (upcoming) Monash University and Goldsmiths College 2022. Along with the network of networks that the FAR Network collectively represent we have long term relationships with School of Instituting Otherwise, (India), What Could Should Curating Do (Serbia), Hawapi (Peru), and State of Concept (Greece).
The Food Art Research Network (FAR) was established as part of the research platform led by Madeleine Collie while Co-Director of Custom Food Lab (Folkestone), with funding from Arts Council England in 2020.
We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land and waters on which convenors of the FAR Network are situated, the people of the Woi Wurrung and Boon Wurrung language groups of the Kulin Nations. We extend our respect to the Ancestors and Elders of all First Peoples past and present.