It’s Food / Its Earth - RYB
Xinrui Li
Georgia’s climate and soil have contributed to the nation’s rich food culture, which has also made agriculture one of its most productive economic sectors in history. However, in the 20th century, the urbanization process and the privatization crisis of the post-soviet era has significantly changed the nation’s structure in cities as well as in rural areas. Urbanization and globalization have removed the need and ability of a community’s agency in their food production, yet it also makes the food supply system highly dependent on transportation infrastructures and trade systems. As the urban area sprawls further to take over the nearby farmland, cities are becoming food deserts. On the other hand, these infrastructures also produce leftover space in the urban fabric, as well as leftover materials. The separation of urban space and farmland should not be permanent. Food is such a basic yet crucial part of people’s life. The memory of growing food is deeply rooted in our memories. RYB (Red/Yellow/Blue) intends to use this shared memory and dependency as a medium to propose a new intersection between urban and rural lifestyle – consuming and producing. RYB takes wheat as a symbol of Georgian food culture, which easily interrelate with all Georgian people. It aims to implement the different scales of urban farming to reclaim the leftover space and material inside a city and take food production landscape as an agency to generate a series of actor-network that integrates with the urban leftover resource, social interaction and food production. Eventually, it hints at a new intersection between food production and consumption in an urban situation.
