Headlands Center for the Arts

Artist Statement

We started Cooking Sections in 2013 to look into the systems that organize the WORLD through FOOD. Using installation, performance, mapping, and video, our research-based practice explores the overlapping boundaries between visual arts, architecture, geopolitics, and the man-made environment. Our work deals with the invention of the “exotic”; subjective definitions of “natural”, “native”, and “alien”; sun-oriented migrations; speculation, creation of value; and bankruptcy. We eat according to climatic events; and sometimes we do cook.

While at Headlands

Under a growing demand for governments and institutions to respond to climate change, economic transactions between nature and the built environment are increasingly negotiated. Our residency will be dedicated to investigating the ways in which speculation on the disappearance of natural spaces and species is entangled with global financial flows, mitigation of environmental damage, and the making of speculative urban forms. While at Headlands we will explore the financial bubble that is emerging around the protection and conservation of landscapes, animals, and plants in California, with over 70 species being currently banked in the State. Conserved by an increasing number of rating agencies and mitigation investment banks, these institutions are reworking how to protect nature while trading the speculative value of Californian wildlife and landscapes. During our residency we will conduct research that expands our previous work on the notion of Climavore and Speculation on Disappearance.