food-dietrick

Having just moved to the South, I am occasionally reminded of my Southern relatives and the foods that I encountered in their homes. Before I go on, please realize that my relatives were not from the Deep South—although based on their accents, you might think they were more Southern that they were. They lived around Harrisonburg, Virginia, in the parts of Virginia where they still talk about the War of Northern Aggression. It always amazed me that those same relatives, although only three hours south of my father's hometown in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, believed that my mother had married a Yankee. It's that damn Mason Dixon line that although close to both sets of relatives, once divided that part of the nation.

But back to the food, my aunt in Virginia made a certain type of green beans, a flat green bean often stewed with ham and potatoes, that remind me my childhood weekends in the south. I recently randomly reencountered this green bean in Tallahassee, FL.

Contacts Near Barcelona?

I proposed to do a project for Indensitat in Spain (http://www.idensitat.org/a_index.htm) since this year's theme, HOME / AWAY, connects so well with my overall body of work. The piece will be similar to the one that I did in Beijing (http://joelledietrick.com/2006/artwork.php?m=china), but this time, it will involve a group that is rooted in the place (local Spanish people who are interested in seeing Catalonia recognized as a nation) and one that is unrooted (the expat community). I'm hoping that the event will take place in an alternative space in Mataro called Can Xalant (http://www.canxalant.org/).

Does anybody have any contacts for me in Spain? Thanks!!!!

Food and Embodied Memories

Please contribute stories to Kelly Pendergrast's story about food and memory. See description below. You can email her at kjpender@ucsd.edu.

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I have a request!

I am collecting anecdotes to do with food and embodied memory for a short film project. Maybe that sounds a little theory-ific...

Essentially, I am looking for stories about an occasion that was significant to you in some way and involved (or was accompanied by) the eating of a meal/food. Does that make sense at all?

Can you tell me a story?

-Describe the event/scenario
-What did you eat?
-Why was it significant to you? ( the event, or the food, or both).

(eg you were ate your grandmother's wake with your awkward extended family, eating cucumber sandwiches because they were grandmother's favorite (true story). OR you ate dried apricots and drank cheap wine with your ex-girlfriend in a park in paris while backpacking in france and then puked all over her in the train later on (not a true story)....)

Just a short paragraph worth of story is great...

I would be delighted to have your contribution. Touching, weird, awkward, disgusting - anything!

If you'd like to email me an anecdote, that'd be great. If you are willing to tell your story and be (audio)recorded, that would be even better.

switched servers

Sorry if the blog has been strange recently. I just switched servers...

Stay tuned.