[artinfo] Cooking Sections receives IHME Helsinki Commission 2024

[e-flux]

The artist duo Cooking Sections-Daniel Fernández 
Pascual and Alon Schwabe-will be making IHME 
Helsinki Commission 2024. Cooking Sections 
started in London in 2013 and since their 
inception they have been examining the systems 
that organise the world through food. They will 
carry out their IHME Helsinki Commission as part 
of their 
<https://email.e-flux-systems.com/campaigns/vx4971c0t6b37/track-url/rl482sqxhp5a5/3573658d7d07010321d4d9a91dc277e8ac31adba>CLIMAVORE 
project.

"CLIMAVORE is a term, a research platform, and a 
movement that we developed in 2015, in which we 
ask: How to eat as humans change climates? As a 
result of human activity, the boundaries of the 
traditional seasons are being blurred, and 
instead, polluted seas, soil impoverishment and 
the runoff of fertilizers into waterways are 
having a much greater impact on what and how we 
eat. We must rethink our food system, and 
CLIMAVORE offers the space and opportunity for 
that," is how Cooking Sections describe their 
project.

IHME Helsinki Commission 2024 focuses on the 
well-being of the soil, and thus also on the 
health of our bodies. In Finland, because of the 
monoculture farming of oats, barley, wheat and 
rye, agricultural chemicals that seep into the 
ground, and eventually into the Baltic Sea, are 
impoverishing the soil and contributing to 
eutrophication of water bodies in both inland 
lakes and open seas. Cooking Sections' IHME 
Helsinki Commission 2024 will promote soil and 
water health by announcing a national challenge 
that is open to everyone. It challenges bakers, 
home cooks, bakeries, grassroots organisations 
and restaurants to develop future bread recipes 
so as to increase understanding of the 
connections between soil, nutrition and gut 
health.

"IHME Helsinki promotes critical art and the 
sustainability transformation, that is why we 
invite artist collaborators who think without 
bias about what art can be in a time of 
polycrisis. Cooking Sections carry out projects 
whose goal is not only a change in thinking and 
action, but also a change in the system. IHME 
Helsinki Commission 2024 shows how everyday 
things such as bread can be at the heart of 
social change," says IHME Helsinki Executive 
Director and curator Paula Toppila.

The goal of the challenge is to raise awareness 
of the importance of plants in human nutrition 
and thus in tackling climate emergency. The bread 
recipes developed in the commission will be 
freely available to everyone and will be 
distributed to restaurants and bakeries. The 
recipes will be celebrated in the fall of 2024.

The CLIMAVORE project has bases in London, Skye, 
Palermo, Istanbul, and Madrid. Based on the 
project, Cooking Sections was nominated for the 
Turner Prize in 2021.

<https://email.e-flux-systems.com/campaigns/vx4971c0t6b37/track-url/rl482sqxhp5a5/cca0beb9550817f11ec02bd326fcdb6b87215d43>More 
about Cooking Sections.

<https://email.e-flux-systems.com/campaigns/vx4971c0t6b37/track-url/rl482sqxhp5a5/31daea9da81949dcc14fc8c344e49d4a88abf4aa>IHME 
Helsinki commissions works of contemporary art 
that unite the worlds of art, science and climate 
work. IHME's core activity is the annual staging 
of a new artwork, together with an artist and 
Finnish and foreign partners, in public space in 
Finland and abroad. We combine the worlds of art 
and science to create a vision of our planet's 
crisis of sustainability while increasing hope.

IHME Helsinki's operations are developed, and the 
selection of artists made by its Advisory Board 
under the leadership of Paula Toppila. The 
Advisory Board includes: Ute Meta Bauer, 
Professor at Nanyang Technological University 
Singapore; Hanna Guttorm, Senior Researcher of 
indigenous studies at the University of Helsinki; 
Antti Majava, artist and researcher at BIOS 
Research Unit; and Jussi Parikka, Professor at 
Aarhus University.

IHME Helsinki's work is made possible in the 
years 2023-2025 by the Saastamoinen Foundation, 
Kone Foundation and Abakanowicz Arts and Culture 
Charitable Foundation.