PAUL CHANEY

2018

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Commissioned by Hunt Kastner Gallery, Prague, for Il Faut Cultiver Notre Garden! curated by Jan Vítek & Tereza Havlovicová

At the core of this project is a computer software - FieldMachine (Chaney and Hernly 2011) - that designs alternative systems for the autonomous self-provision of food and biofuel.

FieldMachine constructs a nutritionally balanced diet from a wide selection of geolocationally specific crops in its database. FieldMachine then calculates the precise amount of land needed to maintain this diet on an annual basis according to climate and latitude using data from WHO, FDA, and the UN.

This data is then used to create a Hypothetical Reterritorialisation of a specific area.

In this Hypothetical Reterritorialisation, FieldMachine was programmed with local conditions and crops and used to design a food system necessitating the demolition of the Žižkov distric of Prague in order to create a gated community for 2720 vegetarians.

The design was hand drawn directly onto the gallery wall at a scale of 1/1000.

The Czech national average for beer consumption was maintained, and accommodation was limited to 20 square meters per capita.

Hunt Kastner was set as the administrative centre. Checkpoints and barricades were installed to segregate the area from the rest of the city.