Climavore: Seasons Made to Drift, an exhibition and public program at SALT Beyoğlu by Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe), attempts to understand how our bodies circulate through “new matter” as unprecedented substances disrupt all living metabolisms, while anticipating what comes next when seasons drift.
New cycles of drought, disrupted rainfall patterns, or alterations of the littoral, are discontinuous, disjointed, disconnected, non-sequential yet repetitive, and underpin contemporary food infrastructure and eating habits. Different from carnivore, omnivore, locavore, vegetarian, or vegan diets, what defines Climavore is not the ingredients but the infrastructural responses to climatic events, as well as unprecedented seasons of food production and consumption. Studying and demonstrating instances that help identify new seasons in action, Climavore: Seasons Made to Drift proposes a journey into the seasons that once were, the regions that no longer are, and the shores that may be.
One of five commissioned works, “Weathered” (2021) turns the entrance of SALT Beyoğlu into a “prosthetic” forest of material records of historic droughts and famines in Anatolia. “Unicum” (2021) delves into the phenomenon of the Mediterraneanization of the Black Sea, where changes in water temperature and salinity cause migration of species and the emergence of new habitats. “The Lasting Pond” (2021) digs into the shrinking of wetlands on the periphery of Istanbul by tracking water buffalos along their wallowing routes. “Traces of Escapees” (2021) dives into the sea to diagnose the pollution caused by fish farms and the subsequent genetic erosion of local types. “Exhausted” (2021) undoes the tales of soil and human fertility from the Neolithic age in the so-called Fertile Crescent, to explore the crisis of infertility and the subsequent expansion of IVF facilities and treatments in contemporary Istanbul.
Climavore: Seasons Made to Drift is programmed by Meriç Öner and Onur Yıldız within the framework of Our Many Europes program by L’Internationale, with additional support from the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development and the Goethe-Institut.
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