Artist Spotlight: Publick Knowledge

We’re sat in a kitchen. It’s features are plain but the atmosphere is undeniably hearty. A large, rustic, unvarnished wooden table sits between us—a feature that will become particularly conspicuous when I learn that, for Fatima and Maya, the table might be imaginary. The walls are painted grey, but they’re not bleak. Peaking through narrow gaps, the paint forms ramparts between posters, bringing them to life; to dimensionality. This is much unlike the room where the workshops happen—expansive, spacious, white, but most of all bare. Here, there is no table. It is a blank splashback to be decorated each session, and wiped clean before the next pot brews.

 

INTERVIEWER

Would you like to introduce yourselves? 

 

FATIMA

I’m Fatima Butt. I’m from Pakistan and I’m currently doing my MFA at Ruskin. I like to say that I’m an interdisciplinary artist. I do a bunch of different things, but right now my research is focused on the colonisation of the subcontinent soil, so I’m looking at how colonial rule had an impact on agriculture and produce and consumption. 

 

MAYA 

I’m Maya Campbell-Todd. I’m originally from Belfast in the north of Ireland and I’m an artist that works primarily with textiles—mainly textile waste from the linen industry in Ireland. As part of this work, I then began to work with food in relation to waste and started thinking about byproducts. 

 

INTERVIEWER

Was it working with waste that led to Publick Knowledge?

 

MAYA

Well we were actually put in touch because we both had the same dissertation, and when we were having our meetings together, we realised that there was a lot of overlap when thinking about food systems and soil systems. 

 

FATIMA

I think visually, you wouldn’t think that we’re working with similar themes. But I think at the root there’s a lot of overlap. I was working with soil and thinking about food from the aspect of bringing people together, as well as looking at it as another medium of knowledge, which isn’t necessarily respected in the academic setting; so looking at recipes, looking at making your own material. 

 

INTERVIEWER

Could you spell out your name for me a bit more—Publick Knowledge? 

 

MAYA 

I think it was kind of a joke suggestion, because we knew that it was going to be food related, but we were also unsure and wanted to keep the name really open so that the project can change. The idea of working with the community is kind of where public came in, but obviously pub-lick as in licking.

 

FATIMA

We were just writing a bunch of stuff down and kept coming back to food as a knowledge medium and the community and the public. And weirdly enough, we both love wordplay: looking, licking; cooking, kicking. So I think Publick Knowledge kind of came through that. We also thought it was kind of sexual. We enjoyed this exchange of consumption and licking and intimacy. So I think it’s on the nose, which I really like. 

 

INTERVIEWER

Do you see what you two are doing together with Publick Knowledge as more of a political or artistic movement? Or even both?

 

FATIMA

I think surely a mix of both. I guess food comes off as a gentle medium, because it’s something that you consume. But through Publick Knowledge, we’re focusing more on not just consuming, but on cooking. We initially started thinking about what heat can do to food—how it softens it and melts it then simmers to create this product that we then consume. So I think maybe on a surface level, it kind of seems more artistic, but both of our interests are, I think, quite political, and so it has a bigger connection. 

 

MAYA

Also I think with working with waste, we’re all so complacent when it comes to just throwing things out and discarding them. So to actually try and engage and work with those things is in itself, I think, a kind of a political statement. I’m always interested in labour, and labour mobility, and thinking about what happens to the people that are left behind when work disappears. I’ve recently been visiting one of the biggest employers near where I live, which is a crisp factory, and I couldn’t believe the amount of potatoes that are seen as being not good enough to eat that then go to landfill and go to waste. And at the same time that I was in talks with this company, they had just laid off around half of their staff and I saw this relationship between the food that they were discarding and the staff that were no longer important or relevant to them.

 

INTERVIEWER

Would you say the main aim of the project is to bring people together through food, or is it to bring people together in a sort of difference?

 

FATIMA

I think we’re not super rigid with the outcome. We’re more interested in what this can lead to. It started from this aspect of bringing different people from all kinds of different disciplines and different walks of life together. But in terms of hopes and goals, I think, even with our workshops, they’re structured around us asking people to come together, maybe bring an ingredient. We share a pot, water, heat. And then we kind of see where it goes from the material, from the ingredients that are brought in and from the tasting; like how your senses are activated. What do you see? What do you taste? What do you hear? I think we see that food becomes the medium to get to these conversations.

 

MAYA

Yeah. I think, for me anyway, if people leave with a sense of nourishment, then this is successful. 

 

INTERVIEWER

I like the idea of food being a medium, because I think it sounds like it’s really active… What sort of nourishment do you see coming from the project? Is it more mental, or is it more physical, from the food itself? 

 

MAYA

I mean, obviously I would like people to leave feeling like they’ve eaten something that is physically good for them, and also to leave feeling like their glass has been topped up a little bit, and like they’ve had this opportunity to be together. But mainly to feel like you have purpose, and to know that you have contributed to something that’s bigger than just you. 

 

INTERVIEWER

Could you talk me through the process of your workshops? 

 

FATIMA

So for the Breath Broth workshop, we’re asking people to bring in just a handful of an ingredient. It can be something from their country, something that they’ve grown, something that they’ve been gifted, or something from the corner of their garden. And then we get together all the participants and put all of those ingredients into a big pot with water.

 

MAYA 

I think also when you talk about food and often we kind of associate that primarily with taste, but we really want people to engage with things in other ways. I guess something that we’ve been joking about is this idea that public knowledge is kind of about looking and licking and so we kind of really want people to engage with all of their senses. I think to have that kind of olfactory element is going to bring back other memories or remind people of other things—the same with touch, the same with feeling the texture on your tongue, or with your fingers.

 

INTERVIEWER

It sounds like what you’re doing is very embodied. Is it always around a table that you eat during the workshops?

 

MAYA 

No, it’s not necessarily around the table. When we talk about gathering around the table, we’re not necessarily meaning a physical table. It can be sitting on the floor in a circle, or lounging on the sofa. Consuming can take any format.

 

FATIMA

Yeah, it’s not actually a tangible table. It’s more just people gathering in a way where it forms this invisible table. People will bring blankets or cushions, or even just use their jackets to sit on. Whatever makes everyone comfortable. 

 

INTERVIEWER

From what you described about the workshops it seems like accessibility is quite a big concern and in the way of affording that food and having proximity to that food as well?

 

MAYA 

For sure. We don’t want people to be going out to, like, specifically buy something to bring. It can be something that’s from your fridge that you haven’t got around to using or something that you’ve grown in your garden. Or if you are going to purchase something, for it to be from the reduced section that’s going to go to waste anyway. We don’t want there to be any barrier to participation. 

 

FATIMA

We’ve also talked about what we’d do if someone brought a difficult ingredient. Like, if someone brings in flour, what do we do? So a lot of it comes spontaneously and we leave a lot of things to figure out together. 

 

INTERVIEWER

The difficult ingredients seem to pose a sort of friendly challenge. Do you see that as something quite productive for what you want to do? 

 

MAYA 

I think so. I think when someone brings a particularly difficult ingredient to have in a broth, it’s interesting and fun for us to all kind of come up with solutions ad hoc. I mean [Fatima and I] were talking about what if someone actually does bring a bag of flour,  and we were saying that we can make a sort of roux. So I think there’s problem solving, and even if there’s a more obscure ingredient, someone will have some knowledge of how we can add it so that it enhances the flavour of the ‘problem.’

 

INTERVIEWER

Yeah, it must be nice to participate in your own project. I think that’s all my questions. Thank you both so much; I’ve really enjoyed speaking with you.

Words by Maddy Wilson