Growing worlds at the scale of the dinner table; hospitality as a critical survival skill

Taking the table as a common thread or motif (dinner table, games table, discussion table, workbench), the ‘terracotta’ route makes the case for hospitality as a critical survival skill. Essays and other contributions speak to the roles of host and guest, while sharing tactics to craft shared, convivial spaces; both in-person and, increasingly, at a distance. The route looks at the household, studio, and kitchen as spaces of engagement and creative production, while reflecting on what the practicalities of food and shelter can tell us about different understandings of home and community, across different settings. Zooming out, we stress the importance of fostering translocal kinship networks in times of turbulence and interrupted mobility. Contemplating the (many) challenges in linking people and spaces scattered across states and time zones, we look for lessons from FoAM’s own project history, evaluating the possibilities and limits of artist residencies, food and cooking, slow travel, pilgrimage, and historical systems of trade and exchange.

• How can an emphasis on hosting skills help push back against individualism? What lessons do past and present cultures of hospitality have for an age of forced migration, climate crises, and pandemic disease? What are the best ways to cultivate our own translocal kinship networks?

• What does a greater attention to the practicalities of food and shelter tell us about different understandings of community, in different contexts? What can a shared meal do?

• What can we do to create hospitable, shared places online? What are the critical elements of a great event, party, or gathering?

• How can we foster spaces and situations for transpersonal and intergenerational exchange?

• What does it mean to be resident (or dwell) in a particular place? How can creative projects tap into the terroir or spirit of a locale?

• What does pilgrimage, travel, or tourism look like in a time of hardened borders and constrained mobility?

• How has the pandemic reworked the household and the studio as spaces of engagement, and with what implications for work and creative practice?