We got Fish Stories Community Cookbook back from the printer and it looks great. We have been sending copies out to contributors and gave a bunch a way for free at the Pier 42 Fall Celebration on Oct. 25. Email us if you would like a copy. Many thanks to Andy and G&P Expert Printing on Center Street; if you are looking for a terrific printer with good prices in Lower Manhattan look no further then G&P.
In mid June I led a three day workshop at the Two Bridges after-school in East Chinatown. I created a curriculum that invited the students to imagine and design their own seafood restaurant for their neighborhood. We looked at menus from a selection of the many existing seafood restaurants already in Chinatown and admired photos of their interior spaces. We learned about the kinds of seafood (and other ingredients) available wholesale, and studied costs in order to properly set prices on our menus. We also talked about the aquatic life living in the NY Harbor (upper and lower). I showed the students maps of the harbor and gave them information, provided from the New York State Health Department, about the kinds of fish (and quantities) that are safe for children to eat. I emphasized that fish for eating should only be caught in the lower harbor.
Fish Stories Community Cookbook is a seafood cookbook, in progress, created by artists Meredith Drum and Rachel Stevens in collaboration with residents of the Lower East Side: neighbors, non-profit organizers, commercial business people and others. The project is supported by a grant and studio space on Wall Street from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and will be a part of LMCC’s Paths to Pier 42 summer programming 2015. Visual information and documentation forthcoming.
Inspired by spiral bound cookbooks produced by local Grange chapters, the Provincetown Cookbook, and the Slingshot Organizer (collectively designed Anarchist calendar), Fish Stories will include not only recipes for cooking seafood solicited from residents, but also stories, historical recipes, drawings, maps and health and ecology information. The name Fish Stories is designed to encourage imaginative and playful contributions. It is also an homage to Allan Sekula, an artist and theorist whose work interrogates the the politics of labor and the flow of global capital in the maritime industry. We envision the cookbook as a catalyst for community engagement and an opportunity to capture the lives and cultures of people who live in the LES. The Fish Stories Community Cookbook seeks to tie everyday lives to the ecology of the rivers, harbor and estuaries of New York City.
I am pleased to report that an article I wrote was published in AR(t) Magazine, Issue #4 (Dec. 2013). AR(t) is a publication out of the AR Lab at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. The long and ambitious title is: “Place-based, Somatic Augmented Reality as Critical Practice.” Link: http://arlab.nl/content/downloads
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