RETASTE Conference – Rethink Food Resources, Losses, and Waste (5th International Conference, Harokopio University of Athens, Greece, September 24-27, 2025)

CfP / Panel: Food as Art Material

The RETASTE Conference is an international platform focused on reducing food waste, reusing resources, and promoting sustainable food systems.
It brings together researchers, entrepreneurs, and stakeholders from all areas of food production, distribution, and consumption. The conference aims to present and discuss innovative approaches, technologies, and policies that reduce food losses across the entire food lifecycle.

The panel Food as Art Material is dedicated to food and the politics attached to it from an art and cultural studies perspective. Between theory and practice, the panel will focus on art and cultural-historical perspectives on motivic representations of food in connection with its waste, as well as material-specific readings, uses, and techniques of food as an artistic material. Examples of this may include different foods as artistic materials, future-oriented perspectives for food production, global food policies (social and ecological), and others. Case studies from antiquity to the present day are welcome.

The interdisciplinary linking of the lectures will offer space for the development of a collaborative, dialogical, inter- and transdisciplinary discourse with the participants of the symposium, many of whom have a technical, social and nutritional science orientation. Connecting lines will be emphasized from formal to iconographic analysis via sociological and historical methods, technological and art-theoretical approaches as well as their connecting lines.
Existing ideas, terms, and concepts of sustainability in the respective disciplines are a key interface. They serve as a social link between the panel and the overarching RETASTE Conference (September 24-27, 2025 in Athens).

Scientists from art-related disciplines and artists are invited to submit their abstracts for lectures or artistic works with the respective focus on food in art and artistic material in 450 characters plus three to five key words by May 31, 2025.

Please submit your application by May 31 at the latest: https://retaste.gr/food-as-art-material-session/
Applications will be returned on June 15, 2025.

Organisation:
Dr. Ina Jessen (Dieter Roth Foundation, Hamburg)
Dr. Felicitas Schneider (Thünen Institut, Braunschweig)