IMBISS: A Working Group - Episode 6: Beans

The sixth “IMBISS: A Working Group” session, led by Luiza Prado, follows the trajectory of the common bean, Phaseolus vulgaris. Originating in the territories of Turtle Island and Abya Yala, and transported through colonial trade routes, the species made its first documented appearance in Europe in 1508. It has, since then, spread to every landmass on Earth, becoming a crop of major economic significance, selected and bred into hundreds of distinct varieties. During the workshop we will taste and examine three bean dishes to uncover how these seeds and their circulation encapsulate and materialise affects that cut across time and space, proposing new conceptions of planetary, multi-species intimacies, and challenging conceptions of territorial and cultural purity.

Episode 6: Beans builds on “The World is a Mill”, a collaboration with Dani Admiss

and a partnership with Radar, Loughborough University.

Monday 11th of November at 6pm

IMBISS: A Working Group

“IMBISS: a working group” is a series of study groups, workshops and performances around the kitchen table that think food as that which is simultaneously life sustenance, a cultural ecosystem and a political product. Its curriculum looks at the intersections between eating practices, culinary histories, food production and trade, and global politics.

Each of the series’ sessions will focus on a different food item or practice and open up its political history. They will be looking at how these intersect with colonial histories, global capitalist trade routes, processes of racialisation, gender politics, economic uneven development, histories of revolutionary organising, and others.

This project is being developed with the support of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.