Food is Culture: Multimedia Artwork will Share Stories and Traditions Behind European Food Heritage

17 Sep 2018 | English

The artwork will circulate through cultural spaces in European countries to celebrate the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018

Within the Food is Culture project, Slow Food—together with the Kinookus association (Croatia), Nova Iskra Creative Hub (Serbia), Transpond AB (Sweden), and Europa Nostra (the leading European heritage network)—will create a multimedia work of art dedicated to European food culture. This exhibition will travel to cultural venues around Europe to spread the stories and traditions that make up our food heritage. The official launch of the project will take place during Terra Madre Salone del Gusto in Turin, Italy. On September 23 at 6:30 p.m. a video-clip promoting the European Year of Cultural Heritage and its message connected to food heritage will be presented to the public at PAV – Experimental centre of contemporary art (Via Giordano Bruno 31, Turin).

The Food is Culture project aims to make European citizens aware that food heritage is a way to express their belonging to Europe and to better understand the richness and uniqueness of Europe’s cultural diversity. Attention needs to be paid to safeguarding and promoting our shared food heritage. Slow Food has been working on this theme for years, by cataloguing the disappearing local food heritage of Europe and of the entire world in the Ark of Taste, which will serve as a source of inspiration for the artwork.

The project’s main activities include a multimedia art installation, a call to action aimed at chefs and school students, the creation of a human library with migrant stories, and a call to EU and national institutions to highlight the importance of making the defense of European gastronomic and cultural heritage a policy priority.

MULTIMEDIA ARTWORK

The multimedia artwork, to which several artists will contribute, will start its journey early 2019 and will be exhibited in cultural spaces in Sweden, Serbia, Croatia, and Italy. The artwork will be brought to Brussels to raise awareness among EU policy makers about the importance and value of gastronomic heritage. In June 2020 a final version of the artwork featuring the best results of the project’s activities will be presented at the Migranti Film Festival in Pollenzo, Italy.

The intangible cultural heritage of food in Europe is an enormous yet underestimated resource. It is often used to promote tourism but hardly ever treated as a resource that can reinforce social integration and a sense of belonging to a common European space. Gastronomic heritage is now fully recognized by UNESCO as representative of cultural identity, and yet it’s in danger: Industrial agriculture and the standardization of taste put many foods and traditions at risk. Understanding the origins and histories of traditional foods, processing and farming techniques, religious rites, and festivals is key for fully understanding and appreciating our common European roots as well as the influences of centuries of migration.

The Food is Culture project is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, with the contribution of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Cuneo.

For more information, please contact:

Slow Food International

[email protected], +39 0172 419 645

Twitter: @SlowFoodPress

Slow Food is a global grassroots organization that envisions a world in which all people can access and enjoy food that is good for them, good for those who grow it, and good for the planet. Slow Food involves over a million activists, chefs, experts, youth, farmers, fishers, and academics in over 160 countries. 

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