Cuch, Laura. 2018. 'Spiritual Flavours: using visual arts practice to explore food and faith in West London'. In: 'Food Geographies: Culture, Media, Politics', American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting 2018. New Orleans, United States 10-15 April 2018. [Conference or Workshop Item]

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Abstract or Description

In this paper, I present the project Spiritual Flavours (practice element of my PhD) to reflect on my experience of using visual arts that draw on food media genres, such as cooking programs and cookbooks, to investigate the relationship between food and faith. This is a collaborative arts project with members of different faith communities in the suburbs of West London, who contribute recipes that they relate to their spirituality and religious practices. These communities include a Synagogue, a Sri Lankan Hindu Temple, a mosque, a Sikh Gurdwara, an Anglican church, a multicultural Roman Catholic church and an ethnically diverse Pentecostal church. Through interviews and cooking sessions, the project pays attention to affective relationships with food, as a vehicle to explore ideas about home, gender, inheritance, tradition, difference and belief. These sessions are the basis of a 'multi-faith' short film and a cookbook. On the one hand, the book visually explores a wide range of relationships between food and spirituality across home and the worship spaces. On the other hand, through the use of a three-split screen, the film focuses on three people from three of the faith communities to create visual and sonic synchronies and asynchronies between home cooking, religious practices and biographical narratives.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Keywords:	food, media, cookbook, film, community, faith, cooking, participatory
Related URLs:	Organisation
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Sociology
Dates:	Date Event 15 April 2018 Completed
Event Location:	New Orleans, United States
Date range:	10-15 April 2018
Item ID:	34422
Date Deposited:	01 Dec 2023 10:54
Last Modified:	01 Dec 2023 10:54
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/34422

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