BLACK ALMANAC / ЧЁРНЫЙ АЛЬМАНАХ
https://almanac.black/
Philip Maughan (UK) | Nikolai Medvedenko (RU) | Andrea Provenzano (IT)
In 2050 there will be 9.7 billion people on earth. In order to feed them, the global food system will need to produce 70 per cent more calories than it currently does and must do so in a way that is equitable, nutritious, ecologically sustainable and carbon negative. Yet agriculture is already responsible for a third of total greenhouse gas emissions.
Agriculture has always terraformed but it is not only landscapes and food that are produced. Crop rotation, annual harvests and cattle domestication gave the world writing, taxation and urban settlement but it also gave us a semiotics of agrarian simplicity and limitless nature that is the veil behind which planetary meltdown is obscured.
Born from the tradition of farmer’s almanacs reaching back as far as ancient Mesopotamia, Black Almanac embraces artificiality and the chemical-material potential of food as a locus for planetary transformation. From the dark, fertile soil of the Nile River Delta – for which the words “alchemy” and “chemistry” descend – Black Almanac is a plan for 2050 that outlines 31 fundamental shifts – from infrastructure to institutions, one per growing season – that will construct a viable food system by the autumn of that year.
By eating we translate the world and the world in turn translates us. Black Almanac’s goal is not only the piecemeal replacement of outmoded tools, malfunctioning chemopolitics and a reactionary food culture. It is the production of a new earth.
Credits:
The project was developed during The Terraforming 2020 at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow, Russia
https://theterraforming.strelka.com/
Project by: Andrea Provenzano, Philip Maughan, Nikolai Medvedenko
Program Director: Benjamin H. Bratton
Program Tutors: Nicolay Boyadjiev, Lisa Dorrer
Website Development: Sergey Barushev
Illustration: Gulia Mehtieva (Menu), Sofia Shaykhudinova (C Is For Climate Collapse)
Book + Human rendering: Lefler
Font “Druk” provided by Type.Today
Additional Footage: Daria Klimasheva (Wing Contest), Geminitay (Minecraft), Dan Matthews (Food Styling)
Theme by: Terekke
Faculty: Angelina Davydova, Robert Pietrusko
Special thanks to Lucy Chinen and Sean Raspet at Nonfood, Sousi Kalaiji at Ingredion
TTF 2020 – Black Almanac