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--- public_diet [2008-07-08 09:09] – katerich
+++ public_diet [2008-07-12 13:54] – katerich
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-=== feasability study for sustained sustenance: feral trade cafe at http ===
+**feasability study for sustained sustenance: installing a Feral Trade Cafe at HTTP gallery, london uk, autumn/winter 2008. A platform for presentation for feral trade goods and protocols; and an exploration of food service as alternate communications system, this research involves testing the regulatory limits and political conceptions of food provision and service, and the resources, human and otherwise, required to run it. **
-===== HTTP structure, business plan, financial model =====
+Feral Trade [[http://feraltrade.org]]
+HTTP [[http://www.http.uk.net]]
-Umbrella company is Catlow & Garrett (unincorporated partnership). Tax entity, overheads & PAYE.
-    HTTP and Furtherfield are not for profits with written constitutions.
+===== CAFE motives, structure and infrastructure =====
-    Furtherfield has an advisory board and is funded by ACE.
-    HTTP is a furtherfield.org project.
+  * Motives for opening a cafe as an art project.
+Practical
-===== CAFE MOTIVES, STRUCTURE & INFRASTRCTURE =====
+. HTTP is located in the back of beyond - a business park in the residential London borough of Harringay [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harringay]] - from the point of view of its public.
+A cafe would give exhibition visitors something more to chew on than the art, such as
-Motives for opening a cafe as an art project.
+sustenance and conviviality; enriched space for contemplation, information and reading.
+Elongate visit.
-    HTTP is located in the back of beyond from the point of view of its visitors.
+. A service for local residents and studio occupants. A way of connecting with the local community that's more fluid and open, a softer and more everyday interface than the gallery. The neighbourhood is changing - cafe would be an interface to that.
-    Would like to give visitors to the exhibitions something more to chew on.
-    Sustenance and conviviality, space for contemplation and reading.
-    Elongate visit.
-    Useful service for local residents and studio occupants The neighbourhood is changing,
+Conceptual
-    it's a way of connecting with the local community that's more fluid and open, a softer
-    interface than the gallery. More everyday.
-    Promoting an alternate economy and ecology. So many shops deal with just money.
+    Demonstrate an alternate economy and ecology.
     Promote free processes and experiences other than those governed by hegemonic global
-    capitalism. An economy based on other peoples' activities and how you get from A to B.
+    capitalism. So many shops deal with just money. Feral Trade is an economy based on
+    other peoples' activities and how you get from A to B.
     Even at this small scale it has a polemic value.
+[[feral_trade_economy]]
-  * income scenarios
+Financial
-The cafe would be designed as financially self sufficient, although application for seed funding from ACE London agreed as ok. A feral trade project: kate to put in the application, Marc & Ruth to support.
+Profit is not a motive for the cafe, which opens up the territory considerably.
-   Feral Trade runs at a fabulous loss.
+  * income scenario
+All transactions logged and accounted for.
+The cafe would be designed as financially self sufficient, although seed funding agreed as probable.
+   Feral Trade runs at a fabulous loss, in business terms.
+   It operates in an absence of the principle of least effort,
+   excluding it from basic capitalist forms of success.
+   The investment is in the network.
-  * hrs of operation, winter plan
+  * hours of operation, visitor patterns, winter plan
-    Gallery hours are currently 12-5PM fri-sun, possibly extending to thurs.
+Gallery hours are currently 12-5PM Fri-Sun, possibly extending to Thurs.
-    The cafe would not necessarily be linked to shows.
+Current average 15-20 visitors per weekend, mainly arriving via Manor House tube.
-    The gallery has an exhibit approximately 3/4 of the year.
+There is no cafe between the tube and HTTP although it is possible to take a
-    There are gaps between shows. In winter and gaps, the distributed library and feral
+detour to Costa Coffee, a commercial chain in the business mall on Green Lanes.
-    trade cafe could occupy the gallery space. People would visit for the libary, or for meetings.
+(Portuguese cafe in the other direction has cheap and good espresso and a largely Portuguese clientele).
-    Library visitor numbers are low but it's the intensity of the experience that counts.
-    It would be a coup to overcome geography and keep the gallery open in winter.
+The cafe would not necessarily be linked to shows.
+The gallery has an exhibit approximately 3/4 of the year.
+There are gaps between shows. In winter and gaps, the distributed library [[http://www.http.uk.net/docs/exhib6/summer_of_folk.shtml]] and Feral
+Trade cafe could occupy the gallery space. People would visit for the library, or for meetings.
+Library visitor numbers are low but it's the intensity of the experience that counts.
+    It would be a coup to overcome geography and keep the cafe open in winter.
     Without affecting global warming.
-    Patio bonfires worth looking into.
+    Patio bonfires are worth looking into.
-    In winter it could be a kiosk, menu devised for creating heat or utilising refrigeration.
-  * visitors: gallery visitors/locals. publicity/not
-  * visitor profile: current average numbers, travel and rival refreshments, duration of stay, seated or takeaway, reading opportunities
-  * physical setup: service and storage spaces, equipment investment, utensil choices
   * caretaking: human resources as they currently stand
-  * preparation, stock management, service, washing up, cash-taking
-  * automation options
-  * vending options
-  * regulatory scenarios: use existing premises regulations as a template/mould for evasion. (plus alternate fully compliant design). produce an actionable Exceptions reading menu as research result.
-  * landlord relations, liability
+When the gallery is open, there is someone always available to respond to visitors.
+Saturday and Sunday have dedicated invigilation, Fridays can be more hectic.
+Currently Ale (Furtherfiled administration and coordination) does Fri-Sat; Sunday there is a paid invigilator.
-**MENU**
+Hazards: At what scale would the cafe interfere with the basic running of other office activity?
+    * roles for cafe.
+**Service:** preparation, waiting, cash-taking.
+Cafe service role would be rotated amongst present core personnel.
+This kind of distributed culture is integral to the way Furtherfield works as a group.
+[[http://www.furtherfield.org/about.php]]
+Cafe service should be continuous with / accessory to natural office life and disinvest food service of any lowered status. Instead advance tea and coffee service as a communications medium or active interpretation of aristotlean ideas of [[householding]], which can be defined as production for use as opposed to production for gain.
+**Management:** Feral Trade would remain involved in the politics and practicalities of supply.
+Weekly stock management would be 1 person's responsibility,
+probably Ale who deals with this kind of thing anyway.
+  * physical setup: service and storage spaces, equipment investment, utensil choices
+Initial investment would be an advantage (equipment, utensils, presentation media).
+Stock would be expected to cover itself.
+Decking that runs along the side of HTTP building would be prime seating area. Sound the landlord out on this between rent payments.
+Landlord relations are distantly friendly. There is a janitor who keeps a close eye
+on the compound. If landlord rejects decking plans, the parking spaces in front are
+formally HTTP's, included in rent. Cafe could serve from here with guests seating themselves informally.
+Is the back garden an alt possibility?
+    Liability would need to be thought through or ignored.
+  * publicity
+Cafe would have its own publicity strand as a HTTP project.
+Also promoted as background for exhibitions.
+  * operating models (positive and negative)
+    Cafe Kino [[http://www.cafe-kino.com/about/index.htm]], Bristol.
+    Run by a collective of artists etc who also run the Here Shop/Gallery over the road.
+    High proportion of customers are from their extended social networks & probably live
+    within a few blocks. People go there for the sociability, decor, wifi,
+    good products, cultural contagion plus pleasure of investing in own social
+    networks.
+    Leila's Shop, Shoreditch. Review covers the for & againsts pretty effectively:
+    http://londonreviewofbreakfasts.blogspot.com/2008/04/leilas-shop-shoreditch.html
+=====  REGULATION =====
+Use existing [[uk_premises_regulations]] as a template/ jelly mould for evasion or compliance.
+    Produce a Regulatory reading menu as research project.
+===== HTTP structure  =====
+  * Current conditions
+Umbrella company is Catlow & Garrett, a partnership and tax entity, deals with rent and overheads, PAYE etc.
+HTTP is a [[http://furtherfield.org]] project.
+HTTP & Furtherfield are not for profits, with written constitutions.
+Furtherfield has an advisory board and is funded by Arts Council England.
+HTTP is located in a business arena zoned as mixed / live-work.
-  * curatorial guidelines
-  * food sources: search existing http networks for producers
-  * new networks: city farm, green roof, guerilla garden and allotment relations
-  * considerations: legal perimeters, shelf life, network relations
-  * integrate feral trade core aims
-  * source and transport via organisational networks, use current affiliations and transits plus promote new ones (grocery callouts to allied orgs)
-  * standard form for visiting artists/residents
-  * limits of biscuit
-  * commissioning foods, seasonality
-  * writeability: visitors can supply menu items?
-  * staples: coffee, tea, milk, sugar, cola, 'biscuits' incl. computer-biscuits, condiments incl. apple mush
-  * emergency sale items
-  * cultivation
-  * under the counter other
+=====  MENU =====
+   * Curatorial guidelines
+   Coincide with HTTP core curatorial principles
+   Promote Feral Trade experimental trader aims.
+   Food goods will be informationalised (onboard or on menu)
+   Selection will involve a biodiversity of criteria, none of which should be
+   primary or exclusionary. Stock considerations include:
+   - compliance with or skirting the regulatory perimeters [[uk_premises_regulations]]
+   - shelf life / perishability
+   - the facility of the food item to host information
+   - information on source, relations with land
+     embodied by the transport of its produce
+   - information on carriage, netowrk relations, trade relations of delivery
+     embodied by courier.
+   - seasonality
+   - locality.
+   Expand understanding of localness beyond the territorially bounded, inland model of
+   the village, to a shared set of connections with known transit routes,
+   like the scale-free hubs of the internet.
+[[common_products]]
+   The commodity (as object produced for sale on the market) conceals its relationships
+   except for the money relation; conversely the product of the commons is filled with
+   human relations, although including possibly unpleasant ones: Peter Linebaugh.)
+   Ingredients and products with questionable ethics can be included, along with their
+   source information. The priority is to expanding the product monologue to articulate a
+   larger picture of the world it moves through.
+[[tea_from_bangladesh]]
+[[breakdown_of_expenses]]
+[[fair_trade_relations]]
+   Feral Trade opens up food-labelling as a platform for discussion and adaptation, as VS
+   righteous boasting and promotion of purity fetishes.
+   Undercut profit-motivated product constructions of elevated origins and destinies,
+   the type of truth claim propagated by fresh 'n' wild.
+   Read-write menu. Open to intervention from random vendors eg. customers can contribute
+   menu items via sell/trade/gifting stock.
+   Economy of miniaturisation / small-scale. Enables hosting small batches/single items
+   ultra short seasons.
+   Menu should be easily adaptable and transmissable, perhaps database-driven,
+   and include a section for items not in stock eg. in negotiation or pending.
+   Courier process. Use moving social networks including known and funded travel to HTTP
+   to deliver goods from afar, including store-bought ones. Documenting these journeys and
+   relationships expands attention on food provenance beyond a gourmet-style fetishisation
+   of origin or source, to a broader ecology of supply.
+   Promote inter-organisational trade with artistic peers, local and foreign.
+   Challenge fresh+wild to a duel.
+   Source producers or recipes from HTTP social networks
+   including city farm and allotment, home cultivation (cake, jams, herbs, sprouts) .
+   Commission or collect artists' food projects.
+   Regulatory limits: Define and serve emergency food products; outer limits of biscuit.
+   Cream tea variations.
+   Feral Trade staples start menu.
+  -    Coffee from El Salvador
+  -    Tea from Bangladesh (TBC)
+  -    Cola from Bristol.
+  -    Salt from Gujarat
+  Other organisational contenders
+  -    Fo.am Brussels. Grappa, Latvian cured meats, computer chocolate biscuits.
+  -    Mejor Vida Corporation, Mexico City. Hot chocolate
+  -    Irational.org, Bristol. Food for Free apple mush
+===== OUTPUTS =====
+   proposed start time mid-september ( for jeremey bailey show)
-**OUTPUTS**
+   local: table menu of contents / protocols / products; launch/event
-  * local: table menu of contents / protocols / products; launch/event
+   external: present at fo.am open sauces in brussels in november as part of public diet
-  * external: present at fo.am open sauces event in brussels in november as part of public diet strand; optional network/franchise
+   disucssion