Feelings and numbers: our food system in focus
At the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, the Embassy of Food kicked off its first Meet-Up of the year on 18 January. Not a randomly chosen location, as the exhibition ‘Food for Thought’ is currently on display here. In this exhibition, photographer Kadir van Lohuizen makes sense of the staggering numbers behind our food system. The exhibition, for which creative director Barbara Vos did research, is the perfect place to start the conversation about the power of data and to look ahead to the future. The Embassy’s network of thinkers and doers from all corners of the food system therefore came together to exchange views on this.
The power of data
Barbara Vos, creative lead of the Embassy of Food, talks about the complexity of food systems. She introduces the afternoon and takes attendees through the creation of this exhibition. Vos: “The more I know about food, the more abstract it becomes. Using photography as a medium, Kadir manages to string this complexity together like a chain. For this, he spent three years researching from an observational role. He asked himself the question: how did we as the Netherlands become so big as a food country? And do we really want to be?”
A ship as a symbol of our food system
Vos then invited Marleen Smit, head of Marketing & Communications at the National Maritime Museum, to the stage. She explains why an exhibition like Food for Thought fits in with the museum. Smit: “Shipping has to do with everything in the past and the future, which is why the museum’s replica of the VOC ship is not just a ship, but symbolises an entire system. Our food system and shipping are inextricably linked.”
The image and the numbers
Jeroen Kummer, Founder and Creative director of Kummer & Herrman, is responsible for the concept, design and visual translation of the Food for Thought exhibition. In an interview with Barbara Vos, he gets the space to talk about how his agency handled it for this exhibition. Kummer: “As designers, we play a role in complex stories, in this case the complexity of food production. As designers, how do you bring these stories to the public and how do you make people understand them? First we explore the possibilities and then we test them. You could think of Kadir’s work as a kind of visual testimonials. We asked ourselves the question: how do you connect these testimonies into a logical story? The exhibition is about the places, but even more about the connection between them. How do these places relate to each other and how are they intertwined? For instance, the export of food is discussed, but also the export of knowledge. The exhibition connects these flows and highlights the invisible connections. When people talk about food, numbers and quantities are often mentioned. In the exhibition, you see how the numbers need the context of the image and the image needs the numbers. There is a strong connection between these two layers and they reinforce each other.”
Table Conversations: a re-evaluation of scale?
After a visit to the exhibition, the discussion gets rolling. An important means of engaging in the conversations is the Table Conversations designed especially for the Embassy of Food. This form of dialogue challenges cross-sector collaboration by actively sharing knowledge, expertise and experience on different topics. By bringing together a mix of skills and views, it allows us to look at and act on challenges differently. During this Embassy Meet-up, attendees were invited to reflect on the question: Large-scale versus small-scale: a matter of reappraisal?
Post-its are enthusiastically pasted and the conversation at the various tables gets off to an animated start. Vos brings it back together in a plenary session and rounds up the discussion to take stock. Maarten Oonk, director of New Business for EMEA at Deloitte: “Activism is not the way to take companies into a transition. We need to move from a narrative of ‘it can’t go on like this’, to ‘we grant you a vegetarian meal’. This is how we move from a fear-based approach to an opportunity-based approach.” Jetske van Oosten, philosopher, author of Make Power and impact designer, responds with: “Our core quality is our productivity, that’s what makes things very big. A core quality of a small scale is interaction with food and each other. Can’t we start seeing this productivity as a core quality?” Annelou Griensven, designer and creative director De Vormforensen hooks up: “Can’t it also co-exist, the large-scale and small-scale? Maybe we should embrace that the small-scale is not activist but beautiful.”
The future
It turns out to be a great bridge to the Embassy’s future plans. Vos takes the audience through her vision: “In 2024 and 2025, we will take a deeper look at the Farm of Tomorrow by further exploring what happens when we take the values that were central in 2023 as a starting point to make a better connection with how our food is really produced. The research I did with Rogier Klomp showed that consumer choices are determined by price, convenience, taste, health, landscape/sustainability, climate, social, culture and well-being. How can we make these values play a greater role in the story of where our food is made, to shape better relationships between what is on your plate and where it comes from? This will require a revised view of scale and teaching ourselves to think in terms of volume. I look forward to exploring that further with you over the coming period.”
The Food for Thought exhibition can be seen at Het Scheepvaartmuseum until December 2024.