Hyphen Article and Interview

San Francisco artist and writer Weston Teruya writes about Gaye Chan's work in a Hyphen article entitled The Language of Seeds and Tents. Also for the same journal, Weston interviews Chan about art, politics and community.

Eating in Public at Flux Factory

An Eating in Public Seed-Sharing Station will be included in an exhibition entitled Bionic Garden at Flux Factory (Queens, New York) this June. The show invites viewers to "re-imagine urban spaces both private and public in an effort to bring resourcefulness and ingenuity to urban communities".

After the exhibition the station will be permanently adopted by FF as a working station. We hope that seeing how well the station works will entice others in the neighborhood to adopt one of their own. Since using fuel to send a station made of repurposed material all the way from Honolulu to Queens seems absurd, Jean Barberis, one of Flux Factory's founders and the exhibition's co-curator, will be building it with scrap wood at Flux Factory, based on plans drawn up by EIP (think Draw Winky).

These same plans are available for download from EIP's website. Download one and build your own Winky. Decals for signage, rubber stamps and other peripheries are available upon request from [info@nomoola.com].

Launching Seed-Sharing Stations

Eating in Public has launched a new initiative.
We have set up SEED-SHARING STATIONS at several O'ahu locations so far and a non-working model will be included in the exhibition Hawaii Art Now at the Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly Honolulu Academy of Art).

Why?

Seed-sharing is an ancient practice throughout the world. It is currently under threat by big industrial seed corporations (e.g. Monsanto). They want to patent seeds and prevent us from sharing them so we will always be forced to buy from them. Seed saving and sharing is crucial to our freedom, autonomy from capitalism and crucial for our collective survival.

And?

Eating in Public continues to seek prospective organizations/entities to adopt seed-sharing-stations, particularly locations with lots of traffic and used by people of diverse populations - e.g. community centers, libraries, churches, coffee shops, senior service centers, etc.

We will provide a seed-sharing-station without charge. They are built individually to fit the specificity of each context and entirely from scrap and/or repurposed wood. Each comes with a stapler, rubber stamp/pad, pencils, a starter kit of recycled envelops and approximately 50 seed packets.

The station needs no monitoring and is self-explanatory. Anyone is welcome to take seeds and provides a place for planters and foragers to share seeds. Ideally, adoption is forever or at least a year. Adoptive organizations also agree to periodically ink the stamp pad, sharpen the pencils, restock the stapler and recycled envelops, and send EIP photos of the stations in action.