The article is from A&B issue 03|23
In the sterilely quiet hall of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lodz, on one of the exhibition walls hang the remains of a dinner party fixed in the form of an assemblage. Pale pink floral tableware pokes through the preserved remains of the sauce, a ladle in a deep vase was still vigorously circulating between friends gathered at the table of the mysterious Catherine a moment ago, a scarlet wine tonic swayed in the filigree glass of the glasses. Daniel Spoerri's realistic still life hits the most sensitive point of human existence - the need for multidimensional contact with another human being. We discuss what links urban design and feasting with Carolyn Steel, author of "Sitopia. How food can save the world".
Carolyn Steel - Architect, lecturer, author of "Hungry City. How Food Shapes Our Lives" (2008) and "Sitopia. How Food Can Save the World" (2020). She studied at Cambridge University; named one of the most important minds of the 21st century by The Ecologist magazine.
Edyta Skiba:Sitopia is an idealistic vision of the world, difficult to realize ["sitopia is a naturally zero-carbon society, because all food comes from nature, and good agricultural practices take care of and mimic natural ecological cycles." - excerpt from the book]. But isn't the pursuit of it necessary in times of crisis - especially at the individual level?
Carolyn Steel:While an ideal sitopia is a utopia, one should strive to improve reality, and this is what became the main reason for me to create the concept of sitopia. The degradation of the world is associated with the devaluation of food and the gradual disappearance of the memory of its true power. To counteract this, we need changes at every level, starting with the individual one. Individual decisions add up to a snowball effect - we start at the individual level, then move through groups, communities, in order to affect all of humanity. It is equally important to require politicians to start thinking about food in terms of a powerful tool for transforming the world, rather than as just another object whose value is regulated by the free market. People are increasingly recognizing that industrialized capitalism has created an unsustainable vision of the good life that does not produce true happiness. The search for an alternative, a plan B, is inevitable, and now is the time to start it. Food, in my opinion, is the perfect starting point. It is a very carrying and at the same time universal medium that has the power to connect people to nature and people to each other. Food contains the core of human existence, so the more we focus around it, the more we understand the geopolitical processes associated with it, the greater will be its importance in changing the world. The main goal of sitopia is to begin a gradual change in the socio-political-economic shape of the world as we have known it so far. We need evolution, not revolution.
drawing by Michal Kolodziej
Edyta:The aforementioned industrialized capitalism and its vision of the world reminds me of German philosopher Erich Fromm's reflections on two modes of existence: living through having and being. According to him, through the modus of being, understood as experiencing, empathy and openness, we are able to achieve a valuable life. Do similar assumptions characterize the Sitopian definition?
Carolyn:In my analysis, I refer to Epicurus, who emphasized the importance of human beings deriving pleasure from even the most minute and mundane aspects of life. The way he viewed the world makes me sometimes call him an ancient Buddhist, and from what you say, he could also be Fromm's ancient counterpart. For Epicurus, food was crucial on the way to achieving the good life. The way the body rewards a person for eating food, especially if it's something nutritious and delicious, is absolutely amazing. Everything works as if we are programmed to get a dose of endorphins every time we do so. So why are we building a way of life that consistently disrupts the enjoyment of this chemical code to the fullest? Why have we led to a situation where food becomes another thing to cross off the daily task list? Why has time for food preparation and consumption been minimized to gain time for other things? In the book, I mainly try to point out how important it is for an individual to define what a good life is and how it translates into the world. I believe that the greatest tragedy of industrialized capitalism is the necessity to spend most of our time on things that we de facto don't want to or don't like to do, but which we have decided are necessary to do in order to live. Most of us wouldn't dream of spending our days at work, but it's a condition of earning money, which we use to confirm quality and status. We have become hostage to a crazy and absurd model in which we try to catch up with the ever-receding finish line in the race for the good life. Little room remains for its true essence, such as eating gourmet meals among the people we love. Lockdown, in a pandemic, has proven that cutting off the source of ready-to-eat take-out meals and reducing the time it takes to commute allows us to return to cooking at home and eating family meals. The system in which we operate has made us forget how valuable the time we have is, and we are gradually forgetting how valuable food is to us. I am convinced that we can live in the city and grow our own food in the city, thus achieving life balance. That's why I'm in favor of changing the aphorism borrowed from Benjamin Franklin's "Advice to a Young Merchant" from "Time is money" to "Time is life." It is up to us to decide around which values or economic system we want to function. I think we need, as never before, an alternative economic system built around socially valued activities that provide space to share time with another person close to us, to be close to nature. I believe that a new kind of economy can be achieved precisely by changing the way we think about food.
drawing by Michal Kolodziej
Edyta:But isn't there a risk that the idea of an edible city will be distorted by developers eager to resort to eco-marketing, and that growing your own carrots or strawberries will prove too monotonous compared to following others on Instagram or Tiktok?
Carolyn:Two points should be noted here. First, we are spending more and more time in front of screens, and perhaps even more and more "living on the screen," making it seem to those of Mark Zuckerberg's ilk that we will be doing everything virtually in the future, creating a whole new augmented reality community. VR glasses will guarantee a sense of reality of the new world. In my opinion, this contradicts the idea of being social, as the pandemic and lockdown period proved again. What we have longed for most is contact with another human being, real, taking place in the same place and time. We need social interaction in real time and place, in order to thrive. Originally, in hunter-gathering communities, where a single group consisted of twenty-three individuals, children were able to form a psychological bond with almost every member of the group. As a recent study proved, this was the reason why their brains developed faster and were automatically programmed as the brains of social beings. A similar relationship has persisted until modern times. Nowadays, with children in contact with a much smaller group of adults, and with free time increasingly spent in front of computer or smartphone screens, there is a growing risk that from one generation to the next we will begin to lack the synaptic connections responsible for the ability to function in a group, making us even more individualistic. As architects, we need to emphasize, whenever possible, the importance of shared spaces in the city. In addition to beautiful public spaces, decorated like a formal living room, we also need informal public spaces in the city, where one can, for example, casually sit and chat - socialize in an informal and casual way while allowing children to interact freely with adults. We need a city like the one described in his memoirs by Samuel Pepys, a resident of 17th century London. According to his account, acquaintances were perpetually bumping into each other while running everyday errands. In a great many cases, such random encounters ended with a trip to a nearby pub or tavern, for example, to make soup from a fish caught or bought by one of them. Of course, seventeenth-century London was much smaller than today, but the stories Pepys describes lead to another question - how big should cities be for us to experience this kind of community and neighborhood? At this point, we need wider sidewalks, more market halls or just markets, green gardens and spaces - even if they should be small. Designing a public space is like designing a garden: you have to anticipate what "species" are going to inhabit the space and plan the right habitats for them. I believe that well-designed public spaces can provide an important counterbalance to life in the virtual realm. I believe that if people are given the chance to be in a friendly common space, while experiencing the joy of being around other people and nature, they will be eager to return to it.
drawing by Michal Kolodziej
Edyta:This would mean that the growing popularity of urban agriculture heralds change, and we are trying to gradually log off to reality.
Carolyn:I hope so! A good example of this is the Sitopia Farm in London, which I support and visit regularly. It is a unique place. People love to come there and spend time there, weeding the beds, talking with friends or just being among people and nature. In the creation of the farm, a key role was played by the local community, which protected the former farm from destruction and development. The farm is extremely productive - it produces fruits and vegetables for nearly one hundred and fifty fruit and vegetable subscribers. There is an ever-increasing number of volunteers who show up at the farm just to work from time to time and eat fresh fruit on occasion. Its popularity makes it possible to effectively promote activities that encourage people to return to nature, grow plants and cook. I think that agriculture has great power to draw us away from TVs, computers or smartphones, opening up an invaluable treasure trove of knowledge and experience to encourage people to exchange observations. Perhaps in the future, farms like Sitopia will pop up in other cities and countries, and their numbers will make urban farming an important counterweight to the operations of the big food players.
