Eating In Public at Creative Time Summit

Gaye Chan and Nandita Sharma, founders of Hawaii's Eating in Public, have been invited to present at The Creative Time Summit: Revolutions in Public Practice in New York City on October 9-10.

The Creative Time Summit is a two-day conference that brings more than forty cultural producers together to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. Their international projects bring to the table a vast array of practices and methodologies that engage with the canvas of everyday life. The participants range from art world luminaries to those purposefully obscure, providing a glimpse into an evolving community concerned with the political implications of socially engaged art. The Creative Time Summit is meant to be an opportunity to not only uncover the tensions that such a global form of working presents, but also to provide opportunities for new coalitions and sympathetic affinities. Accompanying the Summit will be the bestowal of the second annual Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change. This year, the recipient is Rick Lowe, who is being recognized for his groundbreaking Project Row Houses in Houston—a non-profit founded in 1993 and comprised of artist residencies, low-income housing, a gallery, park, and more—which has become a model for the integration of the arts into a neighborhood infrastructure.

Eating In Public was founded in 2003 to grow and share food on private/public land. It is setting up a growing ‘chain’ of free stores where anyone and everyone can leave or take goods, and it is implementing a recycling bin system on the island of Oahu. Permission was never sought for any of these acts. The purpose is to make fun of, and make trouble with, the State. Eating In Public aims to show that there are still spaces outside of capitalism right in the middle of capitalist society, that the Commons can still exist. They are continuing the work of the 17th century Diggers.