I've been thinking a lot lately about the idea of generosity and conviviality whilst writing a big essay on Nicolas Bourriaud's theoretical text 'Relational Aesthetics'. It's about art, but in relation to a society that has arguably obstructed human communications with a commerce and has prompted artists since the 90s to create works which find their meaning in the 'relations' they create within a wide audience. I'm particularly interested in the way some artists (Rirkrit Tiravanja to name one) have used food as a medium for this.
Perhaps I'm just noticing it more, but since I've been writing the essay, acts of generosity and food events have come my way which prove that what these artists were/are aiming at highlighting is being done to a small extent in real life. I wrote the other day about the apples that were left on our doorknob, and this became inspiration for a short piece for Eat Me magazine on this theme. The next day as I was walking through the University square with C we were intrigued to see a small crowd around some sort of wooden contraption.
It was a home-made cider press, and the group were trying to get through the mounds apples that surrounded them. We were handed some thick, cloudy brown juice - it was delicious - literally just an apple liquidized. I was told by the friendly girl who seemed to be in charge that this was 'Abundance', and the group had managed to source fruit from apple-growers around the city . As was obvious, there are a lot of people in Edinburgh who happen to host an apple tree in their garden but will never eat the whole harvest. Behind the ethos of the collective lies a generosity of spirit, essentially something which I think should be inherent in the production of food in general - this month further events include Bread Baking and Jam & Chutney. We put the dates in our diary and left with as many apples our bags could fill, then the next night C made the best crumble we've ever had.
