A Meal - Encounter #5 - HERE

In an intimate setting, a small group of attendees share in a communal journey traced by food. Part art installation, part ritual, part laboratory, part meal, and part conversation, this poem for the senses creates space for friends and strangers to eat together, while reflecting on our post-industrial relationship with food. With the state of divisiveness and partisanship that’s rampant in the US at the moment, “A Meal” opens a space to create new relationships while questioning through art the structures and environmental challenges of food in the anthropocene.

This year’s encounter took place on HERE’s main stage and is dedicated to NYC Street Vendors. The performances catalyzed two different conversations: On 7/22 we talked about Food Autonomy: Reflections on Production, Distribution, Preparation, Consumption, and Power, and on 7/23 we discussed Policy and NYC Street Food Vendors: Criminalization of Labor of Historically Excluded Workers.