'Making Time' exhibition by Makeshift in Perth

Dear friends,

We’ve just begun a new project in Perth called ‘Making Time’, as part of the P4 (pilot) initiative from Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts & Performance Space. It’s happening at PICA, where we’ll be pickling, preserving, making jam and having conversations about our practice with participants this weekend only (11am – 6pm Saturday/Sunday) in the Westend Gallery. After Sunday, our improvised test kitchen can still be viewed (without us) until December 19, as part of the Now! Right! Now! live art program.

If you know anyone west side who would be willing to share their pickling skills or recipes with us, has an overburdened olive, fig or lemon tree (or any other surplus backyard produce, native or otherwise), knows where some good public fruit can be found, or who might be interested in visiting us to hear more about what we do … or for any other reason, please send them down quicksticks. We only have a very short time here, so any personal connections would be very much appreciated.

We’re taking appointments for mini preservation workshops by phone (0411 873 322) and email (makingtime@makeshift.com.au). Preservable foodstuffs can be brought in anytime, and recipes can most certainly be emailed to us if you’re too far away to attend in person. We promise to try our hand at anything you send in...

The project can also be followed online here: www.making-time.net
 
Best regards,
Tessa & Karl

makeshift
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www.makeshift.com.au
& www.makeshift.com.au/journal
0411 873 322 / 9357 1528
mailbox@makeshift.com.au
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Face your Food

Watch bigger and slower version here, i really like watching people eating backwards.
You can make and upload your own video of you eating too...
Read more about Fair Food

World Food Day is tomorrow

WORLD FOOD DAY
16 October 2010

World Food Day was proclaimed in 1979 by the Conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It marks the date of the founding of FAO in 1945. The aim of the Day is to heighten public awareness of the world food problem and strengthen solidarity in the struggle against hunger, malnutrition and poverty. In 1980, the General Assembly endorsed observance of the Day in consideration of the fact that "food is a requisite for human survival and well-being and a fundamental human necessity" (resolution 35/70 of 5 December 1980). Source

Play with your food

Want to feed your stomach and mind? Come to collaboratively concoct, consume and clean up a free vegetarian meal. Sometimes live music, sometimes movies, always great company and stimulating conversation.

Play With Your Food

Date Monday 18 October 10  and  Monday 25 October 10
Time 5:30PM
At North Court, Union House, Melbourne University

Heburn Relocalisation Network

The Hepburn Relocalisation Network is a community group based in Hepburn and Daylesford in Central Victoria, Australia. We recognise the urgent realities of peak oil and climate change and are responding by raising awareness about how these issues affect our community, and how we can respond to these realities with a plan for the future.

for more on HRN and details of projects and upcoming events

Why they do what they do

From the Artist as Family blog

2. No matter how a person tries to frame or revise our culture there's no getting away from it – wealth delivers pollution.

3. Researchers tell us that the level of happiness peaks just above the poverty line, but we already knew this. Any accumulation of wealth after this point disables the adequate distribution of resources in order for local populations and ecologies to self-renew.

4. 32,000 people were treated last year in Australian hospitals for self-harming. The mental health of the country is flailing. An increasingly toxic food supply system is in part responsible. For a culture whose dominant ideology is based on a growth profit-pollution paradigm, figures like this will only increase.

read the full post Why we do what we do

garden notes for relocalisation

Patrick Jones is is a writer, artist and permaculturalist currently undertaking doctoral studies in the areas of poetics and ecology at UWS in the Writing and Society Research Group.
He lives With his family in the Hepburn/Daylesford area and.
Together, as the Artist as Family, we are making the transition to food, water and energy sustainability as part of the Hepburn Relocalisation Network (HRN).

Garden notes for relocalisation
The development of a Family Food Garden

Artist as Family and Permapoesis

The starting line

30 second countdown to the start of the half marathon. I was astounded by the rubbish. The drink stations during the race were worse, thousands of plastic cups littering the street. How is it possible to be this level of enviro un-conscious?

World population

6,873,512,880
07:41 UTC (EST+5) Oct 07, 2010

United against hunger

WORLD FOOD DAY
16 October 2010

The theme of this year’s observance is United against hunger, chosen to recognize the efforts made in the fight against world hunger at national, regional and international levels.

Uniting against hunger becomes real when state and civil society organizations and the private sector work in partnership at all levels to defeat hunger, extreme poverty and malnutrition.

In 2009, the critical threshold of one billion hungry people in the world was reached in part due to soaring food prices and the financial crisis, a “tragic achievement in these modern days", according to FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf. On the eve of the hunger summit, Dr Diouf launched an online petition to reflect the moral outrage of the situation. The “1 billion hungry project” reaches out to people through online social media to invite them to sign the anti-hunger petition at www.1billionhungry.org.

What do you buy with your last eleven dollars?

My answer to this question is always changing, and I seem to approach it differently each time the proposal arises. I have learnt that it is important to stay grounded and calm, and to consider whether you really need to spend the last of your money or just keep it in your wallet and see how long it is possible to let it radiate in their, as special golden money. Something I developed a few months ago, is whenever I have no money at all, I imagine that I have a thousand dollars in my bank account, im just keeping it there for a special purpose and so I choose not to use it. Its amazing how much lighter it makes me feel when I simply imagine this. Manifesting is obviously easier if you are already in harmony with accepting abundance.

This morning I had seventeen dollars left for the rest of the week. Im out of fresh produce but have some buckwheat and chia in the cupboard and the flowers, weeds and green bits growing in my garden. I bought a 2 kilo bag of orchard fresh apples from the farm a kilometre and a half from my mums for six dollars, and when I got back into the city I considered what to do with my last eleven.
I missed the morning markets at Ceres, and you dont get much organic produce for that amount of money anywhere else (Organic Gertrude - A piece of fruit?).
Coconut oil? Its $10.50 at Naturally on High and sometimes up to $13 anywhere else. Can I be bothered travelling, is it worth it? Is coconut oil food? I decided on organic unhulled tahini and a really big conventional yellow paw paw. Done, fifteen cents to spare. Happy. Thats three days of really good smoothies.
I realised as I parted with the last of my coins that really money is mostly used in obtaining foods that you cant or dont grow. Things that come from somewhere else, and that your neighbours dont have either.
I walked into the library and the first book I noticed was "Microgreens - A guide to growing Nutrient-packed greens" (by Eric Franks and Jasmine Richardson) and I couldnt help similing at the ways that abundance continually pops up and surprises you. It is a really beautiful book and I was just thinking about growing microgreens last week...

David Suzuki

Today David Suzuki popped into my head and I thought about finding one of his books I have somewhere and trying to read it again... then I discovered that he is in australia at the moment and I can go and hear him speak! Its super exciting and I hope I can get a ticket. For full list of australian tour dates 

THE LEGACY
David Suzuki

A distillation of the wisdom and experience of David Suzuki’s long and passionate love affair with Planet Earth and his legacy for generations to come.

If David Suzuki had to sum up all that he has learned in a life packed with scientific and environmental research and activism, what would he say? Here in a classic of its kind, one of the planet’s preeminent elders explains how we arrived where we are today, and presents his vision for a better future. The Legacy is a gift of his accumulated wisdom, a snapshot of the most important messages formulated throughout his life.

Monday 18 October – Melbourne 6 – 7.30pm
The Wheeler Centre with the Melbourne International Arts Festival event. Tickets available through the Wheeler Centre
***Note, this is already sold out. Im disappointed I didnt know about it earlier... if only I had more funds and leisure time I would go to another city, maybe you can and tell me about it.

Raw permaculture

Bi-Lingual Spanish-English
Permaculture Design Course

December 6 – 19, 2010
at Buena Fortuna Botanical Gardens, La Ribera, Baja Sur, Mexico

All-Star Instructors:
Penny Livingston-Stark, Andrew Jones, Daniel Jaramillio, Bruce Horowitz, Seeds of Change Co-Founder Gabriel Howearth and guest instructors.
Hosted at Buena Fortuna Gardens, a dry tropical plant paradise with over 3000 species!

Course Syllabus:
 > Ecological Design < > Bio-Remediation < > Organic Gardening < > Natural Building < > Appropriate Technology < > Sustainable Community < > Water Conservation < > Renewable Energy < > Seed Saving < > Food Preservation < > Resource Efficiency < > Local Economics < > Disaster Preparedness < > and Much More! < At the end of the class, students engage in a group design project. Link to RawPermaculture

Sustainable Cuisine

Positively impact your health and the health of the planet by eating minimally processed, vegan cuisine. Support local economies: purchase seasonal, & organic farmer direct. Grow it yourself, forage, compost!!
Check out rawpermaculture.org

Read more about Bruce Horowitz, raw food chef and permaculture designer and teacher. This whole thing keeps getting more and more interesting, everything really is interconnected.

Local Food Tour

Saturday 9th of October
9:45am-2:15pm
Come on a tour of local food sites, taking in community gardens, productive backyards, Preston Market and a talk from the Preston Historical Society on Preston's rich food producing history!
Meet at Sprout at 9:45 for a 10am start - or join us at one of our stops. Please be aware that timing is only approximate - it's a good idea to take down Serenity's phone number if you plan to join us part of the way through. RSVP to Serenity - 0411 878 063
Read more about this event on the Transition Darebin website

My-friend--pa-paya-

I just bought a whole yellow paw paw, it was conventional and came at least 16,000 kilometres from Queensland, and cost me $2.66. It was amazing and delicious and exciting and so wonderful. I love papaya, it is one of my greatest friends. I am much happier now, I ate almost all of it in one go.

Buy nothing new in October

A proposal:
Salvos Stores is laying down the challenge to not buy anything new for the whole month October to show your support for your hip pocket and the environment.
Buying nothing new doesn’t mean going without. Make a Buy Nothing New Month pledge and you can beg, buy, barter and swap for whatever you need, as long as it is pre-loved, but with the exceptions of necessities (including food, drink, medications and hygiene products) you can’t buy anything new.
An inititive of the Salvos, of course there is always a vested interest, buy nothing new just buy from the Salvo's? It seems to be one of the most overpriced op-shops around, and are they still a charity? They don't seem to give discounts if you don't have enough money to buy a jumper and you are cold, like on the good old op-shop days. And funnily enough if you participate you go into the draw to win $5,000, to buy new things? Read more and find out about taking the challenge. I think it's definately a great idea with a lot of merit. But perhaps buy nothing at all would be a more interesting challenge, find ways of reusing everything you already have and having free garage sales and swap meets to find new homes for things you aren't using. Props to anything that makes me think and re-engage with these ideas.

I suggest investigating in The Sharehood, Transition Towns, bartering, local garden produce swaps. And making your own pledges and experiments that are relevant to you. Turn off all electricity in your house for one month?

There's a whole world of positive momentum out there

Transition Towns Darebin

Transition Network

Earthdance Peace Watch

In Transition

FILM & DISCUSSION: "IN TRANSITION: FROM OIL DEPENDENCE TO LOCAL RESILIENCE"
Thur 30 Sept, 6.45pm How do we reduce our dependence on oil? Find out! This is the first ever movie all about the Transition Towns movement.
Guest speaker Adam Grubb from Permablitz!
Preston Council Chambers, 350 High Street, Preston.
RSVP to Tony 0419 853 686 or email verseandvoice@gmail.com

Find out more about the movie and see the preview here.

Food not Bombs

Sunday night free street dinner
organic and vegan
I really enjoyed this dinner of strangely wonderful flavours and ideals. Sharing dinner with strangers and friends is a very nice thing to do. It would be great to do something like food not bombs with sprouts, kraut and freshly harvested weeds, a free dinner of raw living foods that allowed one feel full of love and bursting with positive momentum. Something to think about, and definately much respect and joy to the FNB's crew. Thankyou.
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6pm Loophole, 690 High St Thornbury