This short film attempts to explore the relationship between the body, the city and proximity. The process of food shaping urban space is embodied by specific identities. The body that travels between urban space is ultimately trapped in time.
ENJOY YOUR MEAL
Food has been reshaping cities since ancient times, and the 17th-century grain market was located in south London because grain was often brought into the city via the Thames. Modern scholars agree, stating that Friday Street was probably the market where medieval fishmongers sold their wares on Fridays, when meat was for sale. fishmongers sold their wares on Fridays, when meat was forbidden to Catholic England.
Food has been reshaping cities since ancient times, and the 17th-century grain market was located in south London because grain was often brought into the city via the Thames. Modern scholars agree, stating that Friday Street was probably the market where medieval fishmongers sold their wares on Fridays, when meat was for sale. fishmongers sold their wares on Fridays, when meat was forbidden to Catholic England.
Does a meal start with chopping vegetables? Or does it start with the farmer sowing the seeds? Does it start with buying? Or does it start with the logistics driver bringing the ingredients into the city? Does it start with ordering take-out? Or does it begin with the delivery of food to the table by the delivery person? Each step of food's participation in urban life is concretized by different identities of the body. Food is constantly generating new definitions for our bodies. Bodies work as agents of proximity in the city as they traverse distances at speed to bring two disparate locations together. This project attempts to reflect on a situation in which food, bodies, and the city are fraught with dynamic equilibrium and a dialectical relationship that shapes each other.
Living in a city that is dominated by efficiency, like Beijing, the internet-based courier industry emerged 10 years ago. Couriers work as agents of proximity in the city as they traverse distances at speed to bring two disparate locations together. However, what do we gain from it? Do we free ourselves from time when time is saved ? Do we create new social relationships through it?
Theaster Gates “provided multiple media archives as a resource to the public, which created new social relations, formed new knowledge” and “showed the power of proximal thinking.”1 In contrast, by bringing meals into the hands of consumers, the proximal labour divorces consumers from urban space as we stop visiting physical market - a place where social relationships and communities could’ve been created - and stop engaging in certain daily practises which could’ve generated embodied knowledge, such as cooking and caring. The project attempts to question this specific proximal labour by analysing tangible and intangible borders revealed by couriers in the city.
GPS, as the most representative of courier’s production tools, plans the route for couriers once an order is received. However, these routes often include physical boundaries in the city, such as residential areas entrances and gates, as well as high-end offices that are not accessible to couriers. These are mostly visible borders that indicate constructed social hierarchy , which requires an authorised permission to enter the compound.Couriers are not allowed to choose the paths individually; they should notcontribute in intellectual labour. The meaning of their physical labour is completely dissolved, trapped day after day in uninterrupted time and the unchanging driving point of view. The notion of the map is a product of a colonial context, and as such, it is hard not to regard the body as a metaphor for colonised possessions. This repetitive work indicates the second border.Yet the courier business expanded with the increasing capitalization and the alienation of people. Orders are made for the purpose of saving time, yet they fall into the circulation of thepursuit of efficiency. The temporal border is embodied. It therefore seems reasonable to assume that as the couriers get in proximity of the tangible or intangible borders of the city again and again, both couriers and consumers are divorced from space and objects more and more. Obstacles, repetition and time become keywords to explore.
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