Famine
An interactive performance by Paolo Bertocchi and Vanessa Chimera conceived as a scavenger hunt, aims to bring to life the historical migrations embedded winthin the market and link them to glogal economic and political patterns.
The Essex Street Market is located in the historic Lower East Side. One of the oldest neighborhoods in the city, the Lower East Side (LES) has long been known as a lower-class worker neighborhood, and an ethnically diverse part of New York whose history is linked to varying migration waves that changed the shape of the area over time.
Following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, Russia's five million Jews faced a fierce campaign of government sponsored anti-Semitism. Pogroms, mandatory army service, famine, cholera epidemics, and general economic stagnation of the countryside drove Jewish people from small villages and into the growing towns and cities of Germany, Russia, and Poland (then under the control of Russia). From there many left Europe completely. Approximately one-third of Eastern European Jews immigrated between 1881 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914 - ninety percent of whom came to America. Of those that immigrated to America, 80% came to the Lower East Side.
In Italy at the beginning of the 1870s, artisans faced fierce competition from imported manufactured goods. In the 1880s, cheap imported grains reduced the profitability of local farming. High taxes, land exhausted from centuries of use, and government repression of peasant organizations all contributed to the trans-Atlantic movement. Between 1815 and 1845, well over 1 million Irish men, women, and children left Ireland, with a considerable number landing in New York’s LES. The Ireland immigrants left behind was characterized by a rapidly expanding population, land scarcity, economic crisis, and widespread poverty. All these ethnic groups working, eating, and living together gave birth to a lively area in which the Essex Street Market played a primary role.
FEED is intended to be an examination of the history of food that came to the LES as a result of migrating people's traditions. We, at FEED, found it fascinating to study the history of an area so culturally rich. Immigrants fled their native countries in an attempt to escape famine and death, and yet, arrived to the LES to immensely difficult living conditions, hard work, and new kinds of diseases.
The aim of the scavenger hunt is to let people ‘build’ their own meal by following the clues. You will be provided with a loaf of bread (the food base for every people) and clues to follow. By following the clues, you will discover dishes that were imported into the LES due to the migrating process. The dishes you will find are now established food items in and around the city.
Clues:
There are many variants to this product, and although the ingredient is only one and always the same, the taste can be greatly different. Italians are not the best known for this product, but they are linked with one of the variations of this food that they were the first ones (and only ones) to prepare. It’s a food linked with the most popular Italian dish in foreign countries.
You can find it at a shop in the market who’s name is the same as the well known wrestler who is also called Leviathan. (Mozzarella and Batista Grocery)
This dish is made by an ingredient that is easy to find everywhere and considered a meal in itself. It’s a dish that follows a complete meal or can be eaten alone. New Yorkers seems to be the elected people who have the connaissance related to this food. This dish is believed to have its roots in Greece, but it was imported by the Jewish, which first settled in the LES. It can be broadly categorized into two basic types - baked and unbaked - and each comes in a variety of styles determined by region. A common difficulty with baking this food is its tendency to "crack" when cooled.
You can find it at a vendor name that loves France and saxophones. (Saxelby Cheesemongers)
This dish was born in the Middle Ages as a poor dish. There are many different recipes - as many as the now-independent countries (which used to form only one) in which it’s a staple dish. It can be made by adding a variety of vegetables; beans, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, or mushrooms. However, its first ingredient is a plant in the Chenopodiaceae family. It’s a poor vegetable, with a charming color. The dish can be consumed hot or cold. You can find it at a vendor called JIMMY minus the Hawaii (JMM- Jeffrey’s Meat Market. Hawaii is the pronunciation of I and Y that has to be taken off from the name to get the real vendor’s initials)
This dish is made by cooking its two main ingredients for a long time. The first one is sold at JIMMY. The second is a poor vegetable that is easily cultivated on most terrains, and under difficult weather conditions. The people that cook this food (and lend the dish its name) used the second ingredient so much that it became a staple of their diet. Great famines that killed off this vegetable (one due to extreme cold weather, and one due to a disease called 'murrain') led to massive immigration.You can find it and taste it at a vendor who named his shop in language that comes from a boot walking on the street. (Irish Stew at Formaggio Essex)