Routines. Habits. Spaces. Society. Relationships. Amidst all the changes, Pages is convening a gathering space for us to think, talk, and imagine around food.
We are accepting rolling submissions – final submission date on 31 December 2020. Send in your entries to us at foodscapepages@gmail.com, or join our community conversation on Instagram by tagging your thoughts/posts #FoodCovidTimeChallenge.
We are about to enter the new year. How can we make the best out of the rest of 2020? Stories on food, baked goods and new recipes have already started to make their rounds on Whatsapp and social media. What’s sizzling on the stove? What’s marinating for the afternoon? What beans have you managed to hustle off the shelf?
We want to hear your stories. Personal encounters, witnessed emotions, or spacing out imaginations, of what your relationship with food and being at home might reveal and inspire.
Beyond the kitchen, food is also an expression of the home. An act of love. It serves up concern amidst anxiety, in a drizzle of lemon sauce to cheer someone up. It walks us through our encounters of new relationships with one another. The excitement and wonder of playing with new ingredients. A walk to the market in the morning sunshine. For those who have gotten used to eating out most of the time, could this be a chance to come back to the kitchen as the heart of a household, igniting its flame to rekindle the warmth at home? Has long hours in the same space been fermenting tension that is seeking creative release?
Our relationships with food can also be deeply turbulent. Desired and loathed, or sought after and then repelled. Our relationships with food implicate our relationships with other bodies: humans and non-humans in our life.
Is the lockdown asking us to confront dynamics we have been trying to get away from, including the daily care work of cooking, cleaning, preparing food, making choices about meals? Is it requiring us to find ways to communicate changing value systems and dietary choices? What choices are we making in the quality of the food we eat, and our communication streams at home? What are the untold stories that are revealing themselves?
What does holding still, pausing for long enough, show us? What might be brewing in our world behind closed doors? What changes in our relationships with food, with our bodies, with our needs for nurture, with the neglected carer, are we witnessing at home in these weeks of the circuit breaker, and phasing out from it?
And how is our relationship with the earth that sustains our essential workers, supply chains, and food eco-systems changing?
Please send us your stories in whatever format you feel inspired to express them. In the meantime, stay sane and keeping breathing. 🙂
Submissions from previous open call below:
