Dinner for Future

With the project Dinner for Future, ARNA participates as one of seven organizations in Europe in the program The European Pavilion with the aim of discussing the future of Europe through culture. Dinner for Future creates an arena for creative round table discussions in the future UNESCO biosphere reserve Storkriket. In the talks, farmers, researchers, artists, hobby growers and food creators meet to exchange perspectives on the food of the future in a world characterized by increasing concern. During the Biosphere Festival in September 2022, the project's three accompanying artists interpret their experiences from Dinner for Future in the cultural event Cum Pane.

The Art Event Cum Pane

Dinner for Future's three accompanying artists, Elin Maria Johansson, Ylva Gislén and Johan Widén, created the art event Cum Pane for the Biosphere Festival in September 2022. 

In Cum Pane, the mostly fictional woman Ingeborg was put in the center. Through her eyes, the three artists explored Ingeborg's reflections on past, present, and future problems in food production and the environment, which were then embodied through paintings, a sound tour and video and art installations. Through the various artistic expressions, Ingeborg's thoughts and musings were given different dimensions, both visual and verbal, which created a broad and complex picture. 

Cum Pane took place at three different locations in village Hammarlunda, which enhanced the experience of different kinds of movement between time and space. In the Hammarlunda parish home, visitors could view photographs, video works and paintings, notes that Ingeborg could have made. Up at the old mill, a sound walk began, where the story of Ingeborg was linked with the cultural heritage of and the 10,000-year history of the area, but also with The Eleusinian mysteries. The audio tour guided listeners on a walk out into the fields behind the mill and towards two houses, a larger brick-built house, that was once a starch factory, and an adjacent small pump house. A small bridge leads over a steep ravine to the pump house, where paintings and video works invite the audience to a moment of quiet reflections. Inside the large house are big paintings showcased, here are also visitors offered a piece of bread with oil and salt!


Meaning of Cum Pane:
Kumpan: From Old Swedish kompan, kumpan, kompon, from Medieval Middle Low German kumpân, from Old French compaing, from Late Latin compâniô ("one who shares his bread with"), from com- + pânis (with + bread).
(Wiktionary)

Cum Pane - videos

Cum Pane

Co-created work by Elin Maria Johansson, Ylva Gislén and Johan Widén.

The enigmatic works of Ingeborg

Video with art works and text by Johan Widén.

Brochure with excerpts from interviews

The future Unesco biosphere reserve ‘Storkriket’ is an agriculturally intensive landscape where food production is becoming increasingly vulnerable to external disturbances. This has become painfully obvious in recent years with climate change, the Covid19-pandemic, and the war in Ukraine. With short excerpts from interviews conducted within Dinner for Future, the project's brochure showcases how present global challenges in a local context and where food issues tie Europe together.

Dinner for Future at the European Pavilion event in Rome 17-19 November 2022

During the event art works from Dinner for Future created by Johan Widén, Ylva Gislén and Elin Maria Johansson were displayed at the Goethe-Institut. ARNA also held two Open Table Talks. First on the theme ”European farming practicies and seed routes” at Académie de France à Rome Villa Médicis and the second at the Goethe-Institut on the theme ”Food sovereignty and interdependance as exacerbated by the war in Ukraine”. 

Open Table Talk

Different kinds of experiences met, and all the senses were used, in the round table conversation in the artist Johan Widén's studio on 5 May. At the center of the conversation was the question of how we can find strategies to deal with an increasingly uncertain future regarding food on the table. With reflections starting in Greek myths, over to grain's path through Europe from ancient times to the present day and over to intuition as a guide for choosing seeds, the conversation opened up many new perspectives. The starting point was today's crisis, showing how interconnected all countries are, but the conversation trailed over to the importance of new stories, as in science fiction, as enabler of alternatives for the future. And even if we did not come to a solution for the starting question, we went home with new hope.

Scenario planning

March 10-11, 2022, Dinner for Future arranged a scenario planning about the food in Vombsjösänkan 2037. The workshop led to exciting conversations about the food on our plates as the point where local and international development meet and how the Ukraine War now makes these complex connections clearer.
Filmmaker: Nille Leander

Dinner for Future's companion artists

The project's three coompanion artists will help to capture and, through literary and artistic work, shape and complicate the issues that arise during the project. Primarily, they will present their material during the Biosphere Festival in September 2022, but also during the project's workshops and meetings that will bring together farmers and other food producers, researchers, students and other stakeholders.

Ylva Gislén is a poet / author. Among other things, he was the director of the national Art Graduate School 2010-2015. www.ylvagislen.se

Johan Widén has been an artist, nationally and internationally active since 1988. Was 2000-2010 professor of free art (painting) at Kungl. Stockholm Academy of the Arts. www.johanwiden.studio

Elin Maria Johansson is an artist, educated at Kungl. The Academy of Fine Arts. Works with video, performance and installation. www.elinmariajohansson.com

ARNA, Skåne, Sweden

Producer: Vidinge AB. Name of the salad: Pear and blue cheese salad

Ingredients in the salad: 16% pear, 16% mold cheese (milk, salt, strong culture, rennet, mold culture), 14% grapes, spinach, 11% raspberry vinaigrette (rapeseed oil, of which 23% raspberry puree, sugar, water, red wine vinegar, salt, balsamic vinegar ( vinegar, concentrated grape juice, dye (E150d))), thickener (E415), pepper, turnip, 8% celery stalk, rose salad, 5% roasted almonds (93% almonds, smoked spice (salt, dextrose, chili powder, yeast extract, onions, onions , paprika extract)), 3% machésallat)

The European Lunch Salad

"Europe meets in the lunch salad, the world meets at the dinner table" 

The European Lunch Salad is a simple way to describe how interconnected the countries in Europe are in every day food products. We asked our fellow European Pavilion’s to send photos of a popular lunch salad in their home town. It turned out that salads from Wienna, Madrid, Turin, Amsterdam and here in the south of Sweden are very similar.

From ARNA's side, we also wanted to find out from which countries the ingredients in the salads could come on a normal winter day. However, as there is no obligation to provide such information, we received no response. Which in a way is interesting.

Price and availability are the key elements in filling up the salad bowl. But whatever the ingredients are it takes a maximum of six days from a vegetable field at one end of Europe to a consumer lunch table at the other end. Including all the many steps of handling on the road.

Many of us eat a simple meal for lunch, like a salad, and a dinner with more expensive ingredients. It also means that our lunches have more ingredients that are produced locally, or in Europe, and that our dinners have more products that are transported globally, such as fish and meat.

"Europe meets in the lunch salad, the world meets at the dinner table"

Brunnenpassage, Vienna

Producer: Spar. Salad name: Fitness - Salad with chicken breast

Ingredients in the salad: Salad mixture (35%) with egg slices (20%) and fried chicken breast pieces, water, salt iodized salt (salt, potassium iodide), rapeseed oil, yoghurt powder, paprika powder, herbs, pepper, tomatoes, endive salad, carrots, zuckerhut (?) , fries salad, radishes, salt without iodine, citric acid. Traces of wheat, soy, mustard and peel fruits may occur.

OGR, Turin

Producer: Lalineaverde.it. Salad name: Greek bowl

Ingredients in the salad: Curly endive, red radish, cherry tomatoes, corn, pitted olives.

Ingredients in a bag: Olive oil extrea vergine, balsamic vinegar di Modena IGP, salt.

Democracy Pavilion, Madrid

Producer: Rodilla.es Name of the salad: ENSALADA MEDITERRÁNEA

Ingredients in the salad: Vegetable mixture (35%). Tuna (28%) (tuna, sunflower oil and salt). Boiled eggs (14%), chicken eggs, salt water (water, salt, acidity regulator (citric acid, acetic acid)). Cherry tomatoes (15%), black olives (8%) (black olives, water, salt, stabilizer (iron guconate)).

May contain: gluten, soy, lactose, nuts, peanuts and sesame.

ECF, Amsterdam

Producer: Albert Hein. Salad name: QUINOA NUTS

Ingredients in the salad: Wheat metabolic: 13% spinach, 13% cucumber, 13% carrot, 7.8% radish, 6.3% soybeans, 4.7% arugula, water, vegetable oil (sunflower), 0.06% sesame, olives 3.8% quiona, 3.8% pistachios, 3.7% roasted almonds, 2.5% sunflower seeds, vinegar, natural flavoring extracts (ginger, onion), salt, lime concentrate, gluten-free wheat, paprika puree concentrate, garlic, 0.1 % ginger, preservative (E202, E211), 0.04% sesame seeds, stabilizer (E415, E412) lemon juice, citric acid (E330). Of which added sugar 1.1 g per 100 g and of which added salt 0.27 g per 100 g.


About the ARNA-project Dinner for Future

How does the food of the future taste is the question ARNA asks in Dinner for Future. The basis of the work is an understanding of food as a complex network of connections. Not only between landscapes, plants, animals and people but also between producers and consumers in a global market.

The project takes place in Vombsjösänkan, an area which is a candidate for becoming a UNESCO biosphere reserve. Here are some of the Sweden's best arable lands that have the longest known history of agriculture in the country, lean lands, historically extensively cultivated land, several nature reserves and a large military training field. The issues raised by the project are highly relevant in a broader context: Sweden's domestic food production has been halved in thirty years and is today very vulnerable to external disturbances. These are becoming increasingly apparent, from the global pandemic to climate change and the war in Ukraine.


Introductory film

The goal of ARNA's work is to explore the gaps in the Vombsjö Basin, between the area's history and future, and to support sustainable development through projects and activities that highlight new ideas and build bridges between citizens, organizations and the public sector.
Filmmaker: Nille Leander


The European Pavilion program

Dinner for Future is part of the European Pavilion program, a space that encourages experimentation and reflection on Europe. In collaboration with partners, we set out to support a European network of arts and cultural organisations that, through artistic and educational projects, offers the opportunity to explore ideas for a future Europe. Together we want to question and visualize what Europe is and, above all, what it can become tomorrow. We want to tell stories, imagine, speculate. We want to question and debate. And what better place than a pavilion for such a venture? The pavilion, which has taken on many functions and forms throughout history, has the quality to remain open to new definitions and meanings – much like Europe itself.

European Cultural Foundation