EVENT
FLATBREAD SOCIETY

TINDERS:

With a shared interest in humans relationship to fire, Futurefarmers and Erik Sjödin assembles as Flatbread Society to host a program of short films, baking, music and workshops. A boat-oven will be docked for the evening for all to make flatbread, share recipes and contemplate flatbread.

More about Flatbread Society:
www.flatbreadsociety.net

From May 20 – June 23, 2013, Flatbread Society will take the form of a program of events, a mobile oven tour and hands-on workshops. The program will be geared towards co-defining the function, form and community of a public Bakehouse to be built in Bjørvika*. Flatbread Society will circulate through Oslo and surrounding areas linking existing programming, projects and institutions with a common curiosity in the three mysteries of life; cosmos, human and soil. Flatbread will be baked and shared as means of exchange and invitation to convene on June 23 on the waterfront at Bjørvika to celebrate midsummer, fire the bread ovens built and inaugurate the location of the future Bakehouse Bjørvika.

*Bakehouse Bjørvika is part of the Slow Spaces public art program initiated by Claire Doherty of Situations, Bristol. This program is funded by Bjørvika Infrastructure.

“Far from being simply an object, the bread oven reflects a technique, a physical environment, a standard of living, a spatial organization, indeed a whole a way of life. It reveals a great deal about the perceptual and conceptual schemes of the people using it. The oven may therefore be considered a total cultural fact.
-Jean-Francois Blanchette

About the artists:

Futurefarmers, US/Belgium

Futurefarmers is a group of diverse practitioners aligned through an open practice of making work that is relevant to the time and place surrounding them. Founded in 1995, their design studio serves as a platform to support art projects, an artist in residence program and their research interests. Futurefarmers create frameworks for exchange and tactile forms of inquiry that provide playful entry points and tools for participants to gain insight into deeper fields of inquiry – not only to imagine, but to participate in and initiate change in the places we live.

Futurefarmers use various media to deconstruct systems as a means to understand their intrinsic logics; food systems, public transportation, education. Through this disassembly they find new narratives and reconfigurations that form alternatives to the principles that once dominated these systems. They have created temporary schools, bus tours, urban agriculture policy and large-scale exhibitions internationally.

Collectively, they teach in the visual arts graduate programs at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, Mills College in Oakland, and the University of California at Berkeley. Their work has been exhibited at the Walker Art Center, Whitney Museum, NY Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York and the New York Hall of Sciences. They have received grants from the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation, Creative Work Fund and the Graham Foundation.

Erik Sjödin, Stockholm, Sweden

Erik is an artist and researcher based in Stockholm and Bergen. His practice explores interdependencies and interrelationships between humans and non-humans as well as questions of being and becoming.

Erik’s work is primarily constituted of transdisciplinary research, production of situations, interventions in the public realm and exhibitions. The projects he pursues are often of an exploratory nature and take shape over several years.

He frequently collaborates with and consults experts such as scientists, farmers, chefs and craftspeople.