What I mean is to address what is INVISIBLE. What is invisible is what we don't SEE, because we are not aware of it's existence; we have no time to SEE it; we are busy with other realities (same I guess as not having time to SEE it); we don't have the knowledge to know about it; we might have the knowledge but we have not been touched by it through our own experience;....and please, there might be other reasons for WHY WE DO NOT "SEE" the INVISIBLE.
What is the INVISIBLE, for me:
invisible systems
invisible knowledge
invisible ways
invisible experience
invisible interrelationships
invisible work
invisible people
invisible cultures
(please add to list)
I think what is invisible is subjective. For some what is invisible is highly visible, for the person connected to that invisibility.
A person who is homeless can become invisible and forgotten to people who live in places (house or apartment) and who are connected to other people who live in similar places, forming community through friends, work, family, etc. For the homeless person, other homeless persons are highly visible, because they are part of those who don't live inside a building with a permanent address, paying rent or mortgage or bills, etc. Their community is other homeless people
(see Homeless Nation)
A dream, dreamt when one is asleep, is highly visible to the person who dreamt the dream. It can be made visible through words, written or expressed to another, when there is another to express them to. Ones dreams, are INVISIBLE until expressed to someone, but to most, maybe even the rest of the world that dream is invisible. Dreams are realities that are not publicly expressed or are not part of public life. I am connected to my dream and its invisibility until I share it with others, but it still usually remains in the private realm, unless you are witness to seeing Karen Spencer doing her dream listener project, somewhere in Montreal
(See Dream listener)
"Live Dining" a project by Nicole Fournier (me writing this blog) is trying to Make VISIBLE, a system of agriculture, or ways of getting our food, that are pretty much INVISIBLE to many or most people. I say this hoping someone will disaggree with me. But do people think of the system in which our food comes from. We know that veggies and plant food is grown on land, on farms, and if we eat meat, some of us know that that meat comes from cows, pigs, chickens, mainly, that live on farms. But do most of us know that cows, pigs and chickens are raised in factory farms, not happy farms where people are enjoying farm life. No these are factory farms, where people are there to make profit, and they are concerned and motivated by supply and demand for being competitive on the global market economy. That is being competitive to produce enough meat to export it to Japan, Europe, or wherever, from wherever. So, are we always thinking about where our meat comes from, do we know and how do we find out, if we suddenly care. Or do we care? Is there another system that we might want to see happen?
"Live Dining" is about experiencing a context of another system.
As for plant food, most plant food comes from big big farms who practice monoculture. Monoculture is more efficient, where one specie, one crop, one plant is grown (lets say all corn, all potato, all green peppers) in a big big field, with lots of inputs (synthetic fertilizers and pesticides), which are introduced to guarantee lots of food that does not get destroyed by insects and boosting up the land with synthetic chemical to make those veggies fat and pretty. And do they need to be artificially fat and pretty? Can we have the choice? If we knew the effects fat and pretty veggies have on killing the soil and life in the soil, and the pollution those extra inputs are doing to the planet (oceans, gulfs, rivers, land and atmosphere), then what would be our choice?
Is this system VISIBLE OR INVISIBLE TO MOST?
"Live Dining" addresses a system of agriculture that is different. It is polyculture, it is about diversity, it is about small areas of agriculture that just might be less efficient. But then this system is not about the market economy. It is about the intimacy of being connected to an agricultural space, right around the corner, in your backyard, in your neighbour's backyard, in a "close by space" that is collectively shared. Does food growing (what has objectively and coldly come to be called "food production") does it have to be part of the market economy? Does growing our food, food that is so intimately connected to us, our health, our survival, our basic needs, does it make sense for it to be a business? Food is so intrinsically linked to health, with good food, there is no disease. Business today on a global scale is completely disconnected from humanity basic needs, and what is so necessary to human survival, such as soil and plants, which are where our food comes from. Soil and plants should stay intimately connected to human beings, in terms of where they are and grow and for whom. More smaller scale agricultural spaces, particularly in cities, would almost be a paradise on earth.
