FILM SCREENINGS, PANEL AND FOOD
COMMUNE: THE QUICKENING

An evening on food and sustainability

Screening and panel discussion at 6pm, with video works screening on a loop throughout the evening.

The climate crisis is the most pressing challenge of our times, but it is also hard to grasp; omnipresent but far away and incomprehensibly vast. So, let’s start small: on our dinner plates. The food we buy, grow and eat is perhaps what brings us closest to the climate emergency. What can our food tell us about the complications of living sustainably?

Departing from Deirdre O’Mahony’s musical video work The Quickening, UKS has invited artists, experts and activists from the fields of food and sustainability to discuss the politics of food and the relationship between farming, food production, value chains and biodiversity – and what we actually mean when we talk about sustainability. Together we will try to understand what sustainability might actually mean, in our lives and on our plates.

Please join us for COMMUNE – the event series moulding the new UKS spaces in Keysers gate 1 into an artistic, theoretical and social meeting place. This evening will bring together films by Iselin Linstad Hauge and Deirdre O’Mahony, a panel moderated by Andreas Liebe Delsett with medical doctor and activist Mina Adampour, researcher Runar Døving and food and sustainability expert Ingrid Kleiva Møller. For your gustatory enjoyment, simple, seasonal and local food will be served by Cantina.

ABOUT

Iselin Linstad Hauge is an artist who in recent years has visited organic and industrial farms around Norway and made work based on experiences and documentation from these visits. She approaches issues related to the animal body in industry and livestock production, and its alienation in today’s society.

Deirdre O’Mahony is an artist interested in the politics of landscape, rural sustainability and food security. Her work The Quickening reflects the relationship between agriculture, food production and the social and economic impact of agricultural policy on land, biodiversity and climate change.

Andreas Liebe Delsett is an author and food writer. His most recent book is Leve havet. Olja, fisken og framtida i Lofoten, Vesterålen og Senja (2023) and he previously wrote Den vanskelige maten – hvordan det vi spiser ble et problem og hva vi kan gjøre med det (2022).

Ingrid Kleiva Møller is a specialist on sustainable food with the NGO Future In Our Hands and is a lifelong supporter of food, soil and the environment.

Mina Adampour is a medical doctor, commentator and columnist. She has been a leading voice in Norway’s anti-racist youth work as well as actively working with the environmental crisis. Among her books are the poetry collection Naturen(2023) and she is currently working on a non-fiction book on the same topic.

Runar Døving is a professor of social anthropology at Høyskolen Kristiania. He has done extensive research on consumption, economics, power and food, and written for many Norwegian newspapers.

Cantina is an artist-run experimental community kitchen by Nikhil Vettukattil. They are researching what kind of practices, recipes and systems make ecologically viable food in the Nordic region available for everyone on a regular basis. They make meals based on simple, seasonal and locally sourced ingredients.

Kindly supported by Sparebankstiftelsen and Fritt Ord.

ACCESS

The panel discussion will be spoken in Norwegian and English. Film works are in English with subtitles.

The event will be streamed here.

Please contact Miriam Wistreich at m.wistreich@uks.no if you require sign language interpretation and we will do our best to accommodate your needs.

All food served at UKS is vegetarian. Read more about dietary requirements and general access here.

Image above: View of Deirdre O’Mahony: The Quickening at Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2024. Photo: Louis Haughe