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Part of the series Farm
City: Where Are You Growing?
Festivities engage all the senses: hear live music performed
by local Bang on a Can marching band Asphalt
Orchestra; taste delicacies prepared by local chefs inspired
by ingredients from Brooklyn farms; view specially commissioned
work exploring the culture of agriculture by local artists;
get a feel for materials needed to produce your own food
in workshops by Brooklyn
Food Coalition; participate in a Blue Ribbon Competition
hosted by GreenThumb;
and browse a marketplace with some of Brooklyn’s small-batch
artisanal food purveyors curated by Greenpoint
Food Market. Cap it off with The
Food Experiments’ live cooking competition—Brooklyn
Roots—featuring savory samples and refreshing drinks
from Brooklyn Brewery, Six Points Brewery, Brooklyn Oenology,
and others.
Participants include:
Asphalt Orchestra, Brooklyn-based 12-piece next-generation
avant-garde marching band, will open the event in Bergen
Street, and the neighborhood between 11am and noon. asphaltorchestra.com
Banda de los Muertos, Djarara, and Slavic Soul Party,
will perform live music at the fair as special guests of
Club Barbes.
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- Banda Sinaloense de Los Muertos
In the Mexican state of Sinaloa, brass bands (bandas)
are part of every public celebration. In the '40s,
the pioneering Banda El Recodo started mixing up
traditional brass band tunes with contemporary Mexican
music, mostly ranchera, and soon created a powerful
new popular genre. In the '90s, banda music experienced
a renewal, especially among young Californian Mexicans
many of whom have family roots in Sinaloa. Banda
music's popularity exploded in Mexico as well and
has become the new urban music of choice. Banda de
Los Muertos, the only banda in the Eastern United
States, has more power than Metallica, more sousaphone
than a second line parade and more tequila than Malcom
Lowry. With Oscar Noriega, Chris Speed, Mike McGuiness
- clarinets; Jakob Garchick - Sousaphone; Ben Holmes,
- trumpet, Jim Black, - Drums; Brian Drye - trombone
and more tba.
Djarara
Djarara has been in existence for about twenty years
and is one of the only Rara groups in the US. Rara
is a kind of festival music usually performed by marching
bands and played on drums and homemade bamboo horns
(now often replaced by PVC pipes). It is associated
with certain aspects of Voodoo rituals and is also
a purely celebratory music which can have political
overtones.
Djarara is made up of Haitian immigrants and Haitian-Americans,
and in addition to playing regularly in Prospect Park
(weather allowing), seems to be part of every Haitian
public event. They have re-invented their role to serve
the diaspora and in addition to the ritualistic aspects
of the music, take on such topics as Haitian politics
and local issues such as police brutality. While their
main role is to function as a voice for the community,
they also convey pure musical jubilation to outsiders.
Slavic Soul Party
The band’s name says it all. Brash and strong, these
nine musicians have formed a new brass band music
in the heart of New York City that melds Eastern European
sounds from the Balkans with all the funk of American
musical traditions like second-line, gospel, and jazz. One
of the hardest working bands in New York, SSP! plays
nearly 100 times a year in the US, Europe, and beyond. They
have performed at Babylon (Istanbul) with the Karandila
Orkestar, at Irving Plaza (New York City) with Gogol
Bordello, on the Warped Tour (US), in Carnegie Hall,
and in virtually every major New York club. The band's
latest cd "Taketron" is available on Barbes
Records.
Andrew Casner, compost painter, demonstrates his
acclaimed, agrarian work–the community process of developing
a viable compost with an acid-etched canvas underneath created
as a natural by-product. Watch
compost painting demonstration.
Christina Kelly, Brooklyn-based artist meditates
on loss and possibility growing blue corn in monumental
street planters in a public art project called, Maize Field,
located where Lenape Indians planted in the 1600s.
Mathilde Roussel-Giraudy, a Brooklyn-based artist,
presents Ça pousse ! (It’s growing!),
human form sculptures made from material such as wheatgrass
that change as they grow.
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- Mathilde Roussel-Giraudy
Mathilde Roussel-Giraudy is a French artist based in
New York. Her artwork combines drawing, printmaking,
sculpting, book art, and photography to explore the
interconnected values of identity and memory. Her
multi-media approach to art reflects the unique way
she experienced the world growing up in an old farmhouse
in the French countryside. The values of preservation,
of attachment to roots, and of a relationship with
land and time, emphasized in her childhood, continue
to inspire her work. By exploring and juxtaposing
subtle links between anatomy, psychology, ecology
and cosmology, Roussel-Giraudy tries to understand
the mysteries of our inner and outer selves. Likewise,
in seeking to reveal the world's invisible energies,
knots and folds, fragments and marks, she strives
to raise awareness of the key role that nature plays
in our lives.
Miwa Koizumi, Brooklyn-based ice cream maker of “NY
Flavors,” will create a geographically inspired new
ice cream flavor based on Bergen Street and the festival.
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- Miwa Koizumi
Born and raised in Japan, Miwa Koizumi studied in France
for 5 years and in Bali, Indonesia with a group of
Ethnographic Researchers before moving to New York
in 2001. Her interests are varied, and so are her
materials. Koizumi uses sound, image, smell and taste
to explore her main themes of memory and disappearance.
Koizumi received an MFA from Tama Art-University
in Japan, and a DNSAP from the École des Beaux-Arts
in Paris, where she was honored with the Multimedia
Prize upon graduation. She has exhibited internationally
in Japan, France, and the USA, including at the Japan
Society, Socrates Sculpture Park, Price Tower Arts
Center, 3rdward, Peekskill Project 08, George Adams
Gallery, Artist space, ISE foundation, Redux Contemporary
Art Center, Flux Factory, Hungarian Cultural Center,
Gallerie Caisse des Depots, Chateau d'Oiron, ENSBA,
Parco Gallery and many more. Recently she has been
studying the pidgin cultures resulting from the clash
between the innumerable small tribes present in New
York City.
Tattfoo Tan, the vibrant urban farming visionary
artist, launches his new bike-based S.O.S mobile Classroom, as
the next installment in his two-year long public art project
entitled S.O.S–Sustainable Organic Stewardship.
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- Tattfoo Tan
Tattfoo Tan seeks to collapse ‘art’ and ‘life’ into
one. He uses art in order to find an immediate, direct,
and effective way of exploring issues related to the
individual in society. Through the employment of multiple
forms of media and various platforms of presentation,
Tattfoo promotes group participation between himself
and his audience. Within this collaborative practice,
Tattfoo encourages viewers to engage both their minds
and bodies in actions that transform the making of
art into a ritualized and shared experience. In keeping
with the spirit of this transformative act, Tattfoo
prefers to develop projects that are ephemeral and
conceptual in nature. Tattfoo’s work has been shown
in various venues and institutions including: Queens
Museum of Art, Lower East Side Tenement Museum, Time
Square Alliances, The Fashion Center, The City of New
York Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for the
Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Eugene Lang
College New School for Liberal Arts, Fashion Institute
of Technology, Pratt Institute, The Center for Book
Arts, Bronx River Art Center, Jamaica Center of Arts
and Learning, Aljira’s Emerge Six, DUMBO Improvement
District, Department of Cultural Affairs, City of New
York, School Construction Authority and The Laundromat
Project. He has been recognized for his efforts, services
and artistic contributions to the community by The
City of New York with an award for Excellence in Design.
Wylie Dufresne, renowned chef of wd-50, creates
a new downloadable recipe based on re-imagining local ingredients,
to be sampled at the Fair.
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- Wylie Dufresne and wd~50
A graduate of the French Culinary Institute, Wylie
Dufresne has had as vast and rich a culinary experience
as his own cuisine. He has worked for Jo Jo’s, Jean
Georges, The Bellagio, Las Vegas, 71 Clinton Fresh
Good, and opened wd~50 in April 2003. Named after
the chef’s initials and the street address, wd~50
is a 70-seat restaurant with a state of the art kitchen,
located on Clinton Street on Manhattan’s Lower East
Side. It offers fine dining in a casual atmosphere
and serves modern American cuisine renowned for its
flavor, sophistication, and innovation. Dufresne's
cuisine continues to evolve in terms of technique,
utilizing ingredients and equipment that have created
a menu notable for its innovation as well as for
its flavor. The restaurant prides itself on its cooks’ collaborative
efforts, continually experimenting and sharing ideas
with each other. wd~50 was awarded one Michelin star
in 2006, which it retained through 2010. Restaurant
Magazine, UK, included wd~50 in their annual award:
2010 San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
Events and Activities throughout
the Day:
Farmstands from Brooklyn farms such as Added Value,
Rooftop Farms, and Bk Farmyards will sell their produce and explain
its provenance.
GreenThumb will host a Premium Blue Ribbon Contest
for gardeners to show off their produce and reveal the range
of possibilities for home growing in the city.
Brooklyn Food Coalition will present a day-long
series of workshops on how to make or grow food at home,
from canning to under-counter compost. Frieda Lim and
Bob Hyland, will lead a workshop on rooftop farming with
sub-irrigated planter systems, as part of a series of workshops
curated by the Brooklyn Food Coalition.
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- Frieda Lim
Frieda Lim turned her roof in Gowanus, Brooklyn into
the Slippery Slope Farm, a modern urban sub-irrigated
rooftop micro-farm. Lim and her farm will offer design
services that implement modern practices of sub-irrigation
systems and nutrient density. In addition, Lim, whose
method is inspired by urban food activist and blogger
Bob Hyland, is currently collaborating with designers
and architects in design developments of the broadest
scope of ‘greenscaping’
products and projects.
Bob Hyland
Bob has over thirty years of experience with sub-irrigated
planter systems (SIPs) going back to the days he ran
a prominent interior plantscaping company in Los Angeles.
His studies in landscape architecture and ornamental
horticulture at Cal Poly Graduate School of Environmental
Design led him into the interior plantscaping industry.
His prior career with IBM made it only natural for
him to find technology solutions to growing and maintaining
container plants in the built environment. In particular,
he discovered planter systems that employed capillary
action sub-irrigation. He was a pioneering industry
consultant, author and speaker at national trade conventions
in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. Last year he founded The Center
for Urban Greenscaping (Cu Green) whose primary mission
is education about modern methods of growing plants
in the built environment. Bob is the author of the
blog, insideurbangreen.org.
Greenpoint Food Market will curate the best of Brooklyn’s
small-batch vendors, including Anarchy in a Jar preserves
and Brooklyn Kombucha.
The Food Experiments, created by Theodore Peck and
Nick Suarez, will select competitive chefs to respond to
their Brooklyn roots, using one or more ingredients grown
or made in Brooklyn in a cook-off.
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- Nick Suarez and and The Food Experiments
Nick Suarez, 28, wears many hats. During the day he
develops his palate working in the wine industry.
By night, he attends the French Culinary Institute,
further refining his cooking techniques. Two years
ago he realized he had a thirst for competition and
started competing in local NYC amateur cook-offs.
He placed 1st in hot dog, casserole, chowder and
chili-themed cook-offs among others. Eventually,
he teamed up with his long-time rival, Theo Peck,
and created NYC's premiere cook-off competition series,
the Food Experiments. The Food Experiments are a
series of cook-off’s hosted by cook-off champions
Nick Suarez and Theo Peck. They act as a forum for
amateur/home chefs to showcase their cooking skills
and push the boundaries of competitive cooking. They
have currently hosted five sold out cook-off’s and
were recently proclaimed NYC cookoff kings by the
James Beard award winning blog, Serious Eats. Watch
video on the Food Experiments.
A Bar of Brooklyn Brews, Wines, and Cocktails will
offer Brooklyn-made libations during the Fair.
Chefs from Marlow & Sons, Ted & Honey,
Egg and others will serve up delicious eats made in
Brooklyn in collaboration with urban farms.
Brewla Bars, a new take on ice pops will be at the
fair! They are made with a wide range of brewed teas, fruit
and other all natural ingredients and offer both functional
nutrition and delicious brewed refreshment.
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- Current seasonal flavors include The Remedy: Raspberry
Green Tea (antioxidant boost); Hero: Cherry Pomegranate
Red Tea (immunity boost); The Buzz: Honey Vanilla Black
Tea (caffeine boost); and The Lullaby: Peach Ginger
White Tea (calming boost). Each pop contains 100 calories
or less.
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Free and open
to the public
Venue
The
Invisible Dog
Art Center
51 Bergen St,
Btwn Smith & Court St
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Subway
F, G to Bergen Street
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Farm
City Fair Schedule
Brand
New Recipe from chef Wylie Dufresne
Farm
City Fair
