Flatbread Society is a growing constellation of farmers, oven builders, astronomers, artists, soil scientists and bakers aligned through a common interest in the long and complex relation we have to grain. The project takes the form of the site-specific Bakehouse’s which are hands-on knowledge sharing spaces, whose heart is a multi-functional bread oven/baking facility. Futurefarmers locates each Bakehouse in a site where it serves as a counter-narrative to the surrounding situation; new urban development, peripheral neighborhoods, industrial agricultural landscapes and university campuses to name a few. In these locations, a Flatbread Society can assemble local actors with the aim of establishing many expressions of exchange, knowledge production, magic and emergent new networks.
Through the physical site of the Bakehouse, Flatbread Society connects various actors to discuss the history of our human relation to grains; farmers, economists, folklorists, historians, scientists etc. Our human relation to grains and breads is the lens of our program i.e. the beginning of civilization; granaries, accounting, writing, architecture. This historical grounding forms the basis for an arc of inquiry that regenerates traditional knowledge, wonder, confusion and intuition to contribute to new knowledge-forming processes.
A focal point for the project has been a site within a new development in Oslo, Norway. Over the next 2 years we will develop a permanent Bakehouse within this context. Due to the duration of this project Futurefarmers has focused their research in a wide sense around issues connected to this project; climate change, small scale farming, heritage grains, intellectual property in connection to seed saving and agriculture, land use, astronomy, banking, systems of exchange and traditional knowledge.
Futurefarmers is a group of diverse practitioners aligned through an open practice of making work that is relevant to the time and place surrounding us. Founded in 1995, our design studio serves as a platform to support art projects, an artist in residence program and our research interests. We are artists, researchers, designers, architects, scientists and farmers with a common interest in creating frameworks for exchange that catalyze moments of "not knowing".
While we collaborate with scientists and are interested in scientific inquiry, we want to ask questions more openly. Science asks questions to find "answers" and seeks to find a methodology to answer the next question, while we ask questions to seek more questions. Through participatory projects, we create spaces and experiences where the logic of a situation disappears - encounters occur that broaden, rather than narrow perspectives, i.e. reductionist science.
We use various media to create work that has the potential to destabilize logics of "certainty". We deconstruct systems such as food policies, public transportation and rural farming networks to visualize and understand their intrinsic logics. Often through this disassembly we find new narratives and potential reconfigurations that propose alternatives to the principles that once dominated these systems. Our work provides a playful entry point and tools for participants to gain insight into deeper fields of inquiry- not only to imagine, but to participate in and initiate change in the places we live.
Collectively, we teach in the visual arts graduate programs at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, Mills College in Oakland, California and the joint masters program of art and engineering at Stanford University.
