What Did You Eat and When Did You Know It?
Presented by Claire Pentecost

Claire Pentecost invites students to consider who gains what from the calories it consumes. How do economies of scale in food production inflate the scale of the super-size customer, and how is the fat distributed in regard to class and ethnicity? What are you permitted to know about your food and how do you take your knowledge? When the knowledge base of food production moves from farmer to corporate patent office, how can you get a balanced diet? When your'e eating proprietary data how can you tell if it's been cooked properly?

Suggested Reading

We will consider the French fries of the field and how a culinary aesthetic determined by Fordist strategies of production takes advantage of human cravings and squanders eco-cultural diversity. We will make stock of the ways food as a source of profit ceases to be a source of health. Genetically modified organisms will be served.

Claire is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she teaches photography, drawing, critical theory, and interdisciplinary seminars. Her background is in painting, but she engages a variety of media in her artwork to interrogate the imaginative and institutional structures that mediate our relations with the natural world. She was an Exhibits Specialist for the Bronx Zoo and, for three years, was co-organizer/curator of Four Walls, a non-profit forum for artist-initiated projects in Brooklyn. She has also published fiction, art criticism, and produced interviews and reviews for radio.