Vorratskammer / Pantry

In the summer of 2011 the Kulturstiftung des Bundes in cooperation with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures) in Berlin hosted Über Lebenskunst, a festival of culture and sustainability. Über Lebenskunst, aims to identify several different approaches to the issues of sustainable living in the 21st century and of sustainability as a cultural tool that can be developed and integrated through practice. The food and drink for the 8,000 festival-goers was provided by the Vorratskammer / Pantry, an art project from myvillages.org.

myvillages.org filled the Vorratskammer / Pantry over a year long period. In July 2010, myvillages.org, began creating the larder together with organizations, initiatives and individual producers who are passionate about farming and food production. The food of the Pantry was produced within wider Berlin; grown, exchanged, preserved, bartered, foraged and bought from and with 80 co-producers. The larder filled up along various questions, themes, collaborations and discoveries encountered by the project team. Who produces what kind of food in and around Berlin? What does it mean to be local in a multicultural and cosmopolitan context? Where do animals live and where are they killed? Should they have something from everything or just serve potatoes? Can a wild boar be organic? What if there was a wet summer and the harvest drowns in rain? Where do the rural and the urban meet? In August 2011 everything that had been collected and prepared so far entered one large physical pantry at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

The concept of the Vorratskammer / Pantry goes far beyond the simple act of eating: it has to do with how food is collected, its origins, the way it is traded and exchanged and its history. All of these elements are part of this project. Producing and eating food is considered a cultural and social activity that is closely intermingled with farming and processing traditions as well as land use, but also with living in modern cities and topics as sustainability, environment, food processing and (over-)consumption. This publication gives an overview of this interesting art project by myvillages.org.

myvillages.org is an international artist initiative, founded in 2003 by Kathrin Böhm (D/UK), Wapke Feenstra (NL) and Antje Schiffers (D). The interest of this international foundation is the rural as a space for and of cultural production. The collective aims of myvillages.org are informed by the contextual nature of the individual practices of Böhm, Feenstra and Schiffers and the autobiographical fact that they all come from small villages.
myvillages.org

Argobooks, 2012