foodculture days is a platform sharing knowledge and know-how about food. The initiative proposes artistic and multidisciplinary projects that address the intrinsic link between food and ecology with the wish to promote social and environmental justice.
Founded in 2017 in Vevey, Switzerland, foodculture days’ platform conducts field research and organizes a series of events culminating in a biennale. Its vision is to (re)discover the multiple meanings and functions of food in daily life, as well as the tangible or imperceptible impact of our choices on the global environment. At a time when ecological and social issues affect an ever-increasing number of living organisms, foodculture days brings together artists, scientists, farmers, cooks, winemakers, anthropologists, philosophers, activists, gardeners, local experts, elders and other types of intelligences (vegetal, mineral, animal, fungal, bacterial). As cultural producers, they all engage with food as a research subject, a medium, a tool for convivial interaction or symbiotic encounters.
Following this ethos, foodculture days apprehends global topics rooted in a local context through welcoming and mostly free-of-cost formats, such as exhibitions, performances, interventions in public spaces, radio shows, street newspaper publishing, screenings, and meals.
Every two years, foodculture days re-emerges in the town of Vevey to organize an art biennale, which represents its main project and the momentum of two years of reflection, gathering and dialogue with its community of practice.
During ten days, the biennale allows the public to rediscover the urban space and everyday locations (markets, streets, cafes, shops, ..) from an audacious and poetical perspective. As a fundamental ritual of life, the act of eating is approached through the specificities of each field of expertise, without hierarchizing knowledge.
The biennale’s program is based on boldness, critical thinking, and openness, to which foodculture days is committed, accordingly applying the values of diversity, sustainability, and accessibility for and towards all.
By practicing radical hospitality, foodculture days invites a transgenerational audience to connect and engage in urgent issues, such as our relationship with nature, soil's narratives, seeds and access to resources (water, land, air), cultural identity and the notion of the terroir, the narratives stemming from migration; collective memory and the production of knowledge, as well as questions concerning the value of traditions or technology within experiments of more holistic futures.