The Contestable Food Systems Symposium

This one-day curated in-person symposium will explore and contest some of the fantasies surrounding tech based future food systems. It will focus on the attempts optimise and standardise food production by removing uncontrollable variables such has sunlight (shorthand for seasonality and weather) and soil (or more generally, what we used to call nature…).

The idea of decontextualising biological outputs from ecological systems in the name of sustainability will be unpacked by a range of epistemologies by speakers from different disciplines.

In AgTech’s narrative, the means of production are growing ever distant from nature, in which we can achieve “abundance without consequences”. But more likely, AgTech calls for a metabolic rift; a state when a broken nature can no longer be able to provide us with means of existence. Can we imagine different food futures?

Speakers include: Tarsh Bates, Ionat Zurr, Heather Bray, Svenja Kratz, Oron Catts, Bede Mickan, Catie Gressier, Julia Powles, Dale Tilbrook, Sarah Collins, Steve Bull & kelli mccluskey.

The final session of the symposium is the Automated Cultures Digestion panel (both online and in-person). This 1hr discussion will be beamed live via the Community Garden Festival Website (to register head to thecommunity.garden).

Host or Publisher SymbioticA