LIVE DINING by Nicole McDonald-Fournier

Images from Artivistic2007 on October 26th & Harvest Fest on September 20th

LIVE DINING at Artivistic2007, Montreal, QC, Canada
photo Nicole Fournier

Planting action by Nicole Fournier - LIVE DINING at Artivistic2007
photo Karen Spencer

Foraging action by Karen Spencer - LIVE DINING at Artivistic2007
photo Nicole Fournier

Observer-Visitor & Planting action by Nicole Fournier - LIVE DINING at Artivistic2007
photo Karen Spencer

LIVE DINING at Artivistic2007, Montreal, QC, Canada
photo Nicole Fournier

LIVE DINING at Artivistic2007
photo Alfonso Arzapalo

Foraged Burdock root prepared for meal (burdock plant grows on site) LIVE DINING at Artivistic2007, Montreal, QC, Canada
photo Nicole Fournier

LIVE DINING at Artivistic2007, Montreal, QC, Canada
photo Nicole Fournier

LIVE DINING at Artivistic2007
photo Alfonso Arzapalo

perennial plants & planting tools, LIVE DINING at Artivistic2007, Montreal, QC, Canada
photo Nicole Fournier

LIVE DINING at Artivistic, lived its collective spirit at night, with preparing, cooking and dining. Participants desired to be mainly observers, some joined in, in the preperation, and many enjoyed eating, with foraged burdock in the soup and stir-fry, and red clover in the salad, and simply being together dining in the outdoor context. Foraging or guerilla foraging and planting or guerilla gardening happened all in the same location, just before and near dusk, before most people arrived in the night.

Similar but still different to the Visualeyez contexts, where there was guerilla foraging in a parking lot and guerilla gardening on an unused for sale green space, for LIVE DINING, at Artivistic, the site is an undesignated wild plant, non-edible and edible plant growing site, where no one could say if it was public or private property. When I scouted out the location to do LIVE DINING for Artivistic, I met people walking their dogs, and saw people who use it as a shortcut or just where people pass by going from one place to another. Because of not knowing the level of contamination of the site, being right next to industry and close enough to train tracks, we only used a bit of foraged food, for symbolic purposes. Burdock does grow quite abunduntly on the site, but the particular root I used was foraged from a site I knew is not contaminated. The rest of the veggies did come from store, and from the perrennials I planted, that came from my own backyard edible garden, or as I like to call it "polyculture agriculture" space.

HARVEST FEST images (see below): LIVE DINING at the roof top garden Harvest Festival, at McGill University's downtown campus in Montreal (Quebec, Canada). McGill was the main Roof Top Garden site this year for the Roof Top Garden Project (a partnership between Alternatives and Santropol Roulant) that provides the veggies, herbs and flowers for Santropol Roulant's kitchen, which is the place where the wonderful volunteers and staff make meals for people who have lost autonomy in society.

all photos below by Nicole Fournier

LIVE DINING began at about 6pm... where the public were at first not sure how to participate, and were also wonderfully surprised when they were invited to harvest and cook and eat for free. And then.....

...by dusk and nightfall, around 8pm to 9:30pm, LIVE DINING took on a life of its own, as small groups came around to harvest and cook themselves up a meal. See images below

The Harvest Fest garden seen in the pictures above is all in growers or containers, the special roof top garden containers designed for the roof top garden project* LIVE DINING took place amidst the growers containing all the food. The care and maintenance that went into the growing of the edible garden, from May to October 2007, goes to all the volunteers and those responsible for the Roof Top Garden Project, who work for Alternatives and Santropol Roulant.

LIVE DINING at the Harvest Fest, was a way to help connect the public to urban agriculture, through the Roof Top Garden Project and their method of soil-less grower designs, as a method for people to grow their own food and contribute to their own food security and greening of cities (critical for helping cool down the planet). People were invited to harvest, prepare and cook the harvests from the growers. In the context of the Harvest Fest, this opening up to the public to share in the harvests, to share in the work (care) that all Roof Top Gardeners put into the Project of growing food, shows this collective giving and sharing for free (no monetary cost) to all who came to the Harvest Festival. This involvement, through the LIVE DINING project, to participate in harvesting, cooking and dining for free, became a wonderful collaboration connected to the work of the Roof Top Garden Team, who planted and cared for the garden, and reflects key elements to the LIVE DINING site specific, adaptable concept of non-monetary exchange, creating a sense of community, small scale food production and a new element that i see fitting in the LIVE DINING concept of self-organization.

*To note: The growers are "innovative soil-less grower designs. The Rooftop Garden Project has developed many beautiful growers that are simple to use and build, and can be constructed entirely from recycled materials! Soil-less gardening is an exciting new way to green small urban spaces such as rooftops, balconies and terraces. The gardens are extremely efficient, requiring much less water used by conventional gardens, and can be significantly more productive in the same space. Soil-less gardening is not new; it is based on hydroponics, which refers to systems where plants are fed only by nutrients dissolved in water. Our methods combine hydroponics with organic gardening and permaculture principals to create simple to use and affordable gardens which rely solely on human energy."
This quoted information is taken directly from the Roof Top Garden Project website

LIVE DINING at Artivistic2007 (Montreal, QC. Canada)

Tomorrow evening, on a full moon,
Friday, October 26th, starting between 5:30-6pm to 7:30pm or so
In the field in back of the buildings on DeGaspé, just right of where St-Viateur meets DeGaspé street,
near, in back of the Headquarters of Artivistic2007, at 5455 deGaspé, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

fall 2007 events

photo by Esme Terry
see more pictures of the last LIVE DINING @ articule on august 26th, 2007, on the post "the Last LIVE DINING at articule"

July plushness revisited

photo Nicole Fournier

photo by Nicole Fournier
The plushness of the urban agricultural space in July (even on a cloudy day the 2nd photo)

The Roof Top Garden's Harvest Festival

LIVE DINING on the Roof top Garden, September 20th, 2007

The rooftopgarden project is a partnership of Alternatives and Santropol Roulant. Every year, there is a Harvest Festival to celebrate the fruits and labour of the season. This years Harvest Festival will include LIVE DINING as part of the celebrations.

Identification of who harvested what on august 26th 2007

Nicole Fournier brings harvest to Santropol Roulant Kitchen, on tuesday 9am, August 28th, 2007

Nicole Fournier giving harvest to Armel Névo- Kitchen Manager and Chef at Santropol Roulant

photos taken by Elana Ludman

photos Nicole Fournier

Transformations- but still more harvest to come...

photo Nicole Fournier, august 28th, 2007
On august 26th, the last day of LIVE DINING at articule, another chair was added, to allow for a 6th person to sink in the earth, and be next to the one corn plant and one corn that Michelle harvested that day. We see that added chair in the pictures of the last Post, of the harvesting of the one corn on august 26th. Here below, are some pictures that includes that chair, and shows the plants of the LIVE DINING space, dying down.

photo Nicole Fournier, august 28th, 2007

photo Nicole Fournier, august 28th, 2007
There are invisible transformations, such as transformations that occur so slowly that we don't see the change going on. Then there is visible evidence of transformation, such as noticing the growth of green plants, flowers, from seedling and earth, to a green space. Other transformations are in the form of rust - the rusting of the chair, or, now after the growth and green, the mold - the mold (powdery mildew) on the squash leaves.

The squash plants, in the LIVE DINING space, have many leaves that have fungus disease called powdery mildew, some have yellowed and dryed, some are on their way to that phase of decomposition. This fungi could have been prevented, earlier on in the season, with a camomille tea spray, but now that the squash plants have grown and been harvested, and the season is coming to an end, the fungi will live its course and the squash plants will die down. So the beautiful big green squash leaves that were overflowing in early and mid august, are in the process of going back to becoming soil, as they are transformed by fungi micro-organisms. They are now beautiful, dryed, mold infested and shrunken leaves, needing to be picked off and or put in the soil for completing this transformation, to be the food of other organisms. The fungus disease called powdery mildew apparently persists in the soil, so this is just good to know for when you let it compost right there in your soil, (as it is doing in the LIVE DINING agricultural space).

There are still other plants in the agricultural space (garden), making babies: the tomato and bean plants, and herbs too. So still some more harvest to come, which i will go pick and bring to the Santropol Roulant kitchen, when the veggies and fruit rippen, within the next coming weeks. So, the giving ("donating" ) of the remaining LIVE DINING harvests to Santopol Roulant kitchen and caring for the LIVE DINING "garden" is what I will be doing in september.

The Last LIVE DINING at articule

August 25th The big squash was picked. Here below is a picture of the exhibition of the big squash and other harvests from the LIVE DINING agricultural space, in the storefront window of articule