Local Origins Propaganda Persistence, 2023
«Local Origins Propaganda Persistence» begins with an appetizer of dried apricots and stewed sparrows. Across spice and silk routes, imperial sea lanes and time, archaeobotanist Hala N. Barakat cooks a recipe for the tomato’s international breakthrough as exotic trophy, feared crop and industrial hybrid. Franceso Buscemi’s closer look into food propaganda on Italian TV cooking shows reveals the tomato as an ingredient with nationalist flavor. On the kitchen board, the Pomodoro Pachino is thoroughly naturalized, declared as a gift from God to the nation, and celebrated as a Sicilian tradition. Why local food is popular in Switzerland as well, outshining exotic dishes like sea fish, Toast Hawaii, and Riz Casimir, investigates Laila Gutknecht at the Zurich farmers market: Taking an empirical approach to the “local,” a phenomenon of perceived closeness to very different things becomes visible. Finally, Ismail Fayed understands the creation of closeness as a resistant practice within a centralized, modernized, and commercialized Egypt. In the cracks of efficiency driven economies, a fruit and vegetable seller steps up to the street corner, farmers begin to roam, and the vibrancy of informal microeconomies reawakens.
Graphic design: Vera Kaspar
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