Manchester Art Gallery is Becoming CLIMAVORE as part of a collaboration with Turner Prize 2021 nominated Cooking Sections. This long-term project is changing the food offering across cultural institutions with dishes using ingredients that address the climate emergency.
Launching 29th October 2021, the collaboration is part of Cooking Sections’ Turner Prize 2021 exhibition in Coventry.
Manchester Art Gallery is embarking on a new partnership with Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual & Alon Schwabe) as part of the duo’s Turner Prize exhibition. The collective will support a long-term process to help transform the food offered at cultural institutions across the UK into a menu that addresses the climate emergency.
Becoming CLIMAVORE enables us to catalyse and transform people’s desires and habits, engaging society in a collective long-term process which will re-imagine existing food justice models and create new ones in face of the climate emergency. In this way, the Turner Prize exhibition can be experienced at the Manchester Art Gallery by people across the UK as well as in Coventry itself, where the exhibition is being held.
The first step in Becoming CLIMAVORE is to remove farmed salmon from menus. The second step sees Cooking Sectionswork to create new CLIMAVORE dishes in collaboration with Manchester Art Gallery using regenerative coastal ingredients that have a positive effect on marine ecology and proactively respond to the ecological challenges along the UK shore.
The site of the restaurant is at the core of Cooking Sections 2021 Turner Prize exhibition new installation. The word ‘restaurant’ originates from Bouillon Restaurant, an establishment in nineteenth-century France whose name literally translates as ‘restorative soup’, where this single-dish menu was intended to warm and nourish people’s bodies. In the climate emergency, the restaurant can grow to become a place not only to restore the human body, but also to care for the planet’s ecology. CLIMAVORE promotes systems that grow regenerative foods while cultivating habitats.
The new food items will be available to purchase at 21 prestigious cultural institutions across the UK from 29th October. Head Chef, Adam Leavy has prepared a special dish for our menu, celebrating vegetarian ingredients.
“We are delighted to be working with cultural institutions across the UK and Manchester Art Gallery on Becoming CLIMAVORE, a project that questions how we eat as humans are changing the climate. CLIMAVORE works to reimagine and transform food systems in response to the climate emergency by addressing ocean pollution from open-net salmon farms. In participating restaurants, farmed salmon has been removed from the menu and replaced with ingredients such as seaweeds, sea vegetables and bivalves, which improve water quality and cultivate marine habitats.”
Daniel&Alon, Founders of Cooking Sections
Becoming CLIMAVORE postcards will be shared with the cafes and restaurants at all participating institutions across the UK; when put together, the 12 individual postcards make a poster edition of part of the Cooking Sections’ Turner Prize installation. They have been distributed across participating institutions, where visitors can experience a CLIMAVOREdish and collect part of the project. To view the full list where CLIMAVORE can be tasted visit: becoming.climavore.org
ABOUT TURNER PRIZE
One of the world’s best-known prizes for the visual arts, the Turner Prize aims to promote public debate around new developments in contemporary British art. Established in 1984, the prize is named after the radical British painter JMW Turner (1775-1851). Originating at Tate Britain, the Turner Prize regularly travels to other venues in the UK. It has previously been shown in Liverpool in 2007, Gateshead in 2011, Derry in 2013, Glasgow in 2015, Hull in 2017, and Margate in 2019. In 2022 it will be held at Tate Liverpool.
The Turner Prize 2021 exhibition is a highlight of the Coventry’s UK City of Culture 2021 celebrations. Herbert Art Gallery and Museum champions Coventry’s culture, city and arts and is one of the UK’s leading regional museums.
ABOUT CLIMAVORE
CLIMAVORE asks how do we eat as humans change the climate? Initiated by Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual & Alon Schwabe), this long-term project collaborates with cross-sections of society – from experts in ecology, marine biology, agronomy, nutrition, and engineering, to local farmers, fisherfolk and schoolchildren – to propose adaptive forms of eating that respond to the climate crisis.
The project originated and is based in the Isle of Skye, where in collaboration with ATLAS Arts it began exploring the side-effects of open-net salmon farms, their global footprint and local impact. The extended practice of battery-farming salmon has significant environmental, social and economic repercussions, ranging from artificial colour pigments added to the fish to supplement dietary deficiencies, and excessive use of antibiotics to kill sea lice. In response, CLIMAVOREinitiated a programme of activities, working with local communities to explore forms of eating that go beyond ideas of sustainability. Instead, its aim is to think about environmental regeneration by promoting filter-feeder ingredients that proactively respond to the ecological challenges in the waters around the island.
The project began with an installation in the form of an oyster table, which served as a water filter for non-humans at high tide, and as a dining table for human discussions at low tide. It went on to develop three strands of activity. Learning, via a multi-year education programme delivered in partnership with the island’s high school, to offer Hospitality and Professional Cookery students an introduction to regenerative aquaculture, which continued into apprenticeships with local restaurants. Growing, which is working towards the development of an innovative intertidal system for cultivating seaweeds and bivalves as a form of habitat. Building, which will follow the development of new materials from regenerative aquaculture waste.
ABOUT COOKING SECTIONS
Cooking Sections examines the systems that organise the world through food. Using site-responsive installation, performance and video, they explore the overlapping boundaries between art, architecture, ecology and geopolitics. Established in London in 2013 by Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe, their practice uses food as a lens and tool to observe landscapes in transformation. They have worked on multiple iterations of the long-term site-responsive CLIMAVORE project since 2015, exploring how to eat as humans change climates. Their work has been exhibited at Tate Britain; Serpentine Galleries; SALT Beyoglu, Istanbul; 12th Taipei Biennial; 58th Venice Biennale; the U.S. Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale amongst others. They lead a studio unit at the Royal College of Art, London. Cooking Sections are nominated for the 2021 Turner Prize.
