A performative installation that explores the gap between the appearance and the reality of salmon—their inability to escape intensive farms—and a UK-wide project in which museums are Becoming CLIMAVORE by removing farmed salmon from the menus of their cafes and restaurants.
Salmon: Traces of Escapees is the second chapter of a trilogy around food production based on extractive systems that push the environment to the verge of collapse. The audio and film installation explores the environmental impact of salmon farms in Scotland, which can be traced far beyond the circumference of open-net pens. Excrement, drugs, synthetic colour, and parasites billow out, polluting the surrounding waters. But even if the nets break, farmed salmon remain captive; they can no longer escape their own modified bodies. Salmon: Traces of Escapees is a recognition that nothing can be removed without leaving traces, no divestment can be disassociated from extractivism, and no domestication comes without the colonisation of the gut.
CLIMAVORE works to reimagine and transform food systems in response to the seasons of the climate emergency: drought, exhausted soils, floods or ocean pollution from open-net salmon farms. Restaurants in 21 museums across the UK have removed salmon from their menus and replaced it with ingredients that improve soil and water quality, and cultivate marine habitats. This move continues our multi-year collaboration with restaurants in Skye and Raasay since 2017. Visitors can taste a CLIMAVORE meal and collect one of the postcards from a twelve-part mosaic at participating restaurants filled with CLIMAVORE stories and recipes.
The word ‘restaurant’ originates from Bouillon Restaurant, an establishment in 19th-century France whose name literally translates as ‘restorative soup.’ In the climate emergency, the restaurant can grow to become a place not only to restore the human body, but also to care for the planet’s ecology.
From today, you can taste CLIMAVORE dishes at:
Aberdeen Art Gallery; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead; BFI Southbank; Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry; Holburne Museum, Bath; London Transport Museum; Manchester Art Gallery; Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh; Royal Museums Greenwich; Science Museum, London; Science and Industry Museum, Manchester; Serpentine, London; Tate Britain, London; Tate Liverpool; Tate Modern, London; Tate St Ives; The Whitworth, Manchester; Turner Contemporary, Margate; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Wellcome Collection, London.
And in Skye and Raasay: Coruisk House, The Dunvegan, Edinbane Lodge, Eòlach, Isle of Skye Baking Company, Loch Bay, Raasay House, Rosedale Hotel, Scorrybreac, The Ferry Inn, Three Chimneys.
For more information, visit: becoming.climavore.org
Becoming CLIMAVORE was initiated as a Back To Earth Campaign at the Serpentine.
