Delivery routes, mobile libraries, and encounters with Silesia’s food systems.
What comes after consumption? Developed during the COP24 climate conference in Katowice, Field Remediations: Salvage explored this question through food distribution, fermentation, preservation, and the recovery of waste. The project connected conference participants with local people and practices, grounding international climate discussions in the materials, labor, and infrastructures surrounding them.
Through Trasówki, local food distributors opened their daily delivery routes to conference participants. Working with food wholesaler Proban, the project invited visitors to ride alongside drivers, talk about their work, and encounter the systems supplying the region. Delivery vehicles also became mobile libraries, carrying books, recipes, and objects gathered from sites of the Polish food system.
A reader developed for the project brought together research and speculative propositions: a cookbook imagining meals organized around the energy potential of their leftovers; sourdough as a living culture maintained across generations; traditional uses of whey; and the changing conditions of Polish winemaking. Familiar ingredients became starting points for considering relationships between food, energy, microbial life, and climate.
Drawing on Anna Tsing’s concept of “salvage accumulation,” the project examined how discarded materials and living processes become resources with economic value. It asked what is preserved, who assigns value, and what happens when practices of reuse and care enter systems of extraction and exchange.
Through Trasówki, local food distributors opened their daily delivery routes to conference participants. Working with food wholesaler Proban, the project invited visitors to ride alongside drivers, talk about their work, and encounter the systems supplying the region. Delivery vehicles also became mobile libraries, carrying books, recipes, and objects gathered from sites of the Polish food system.
A reader developed for the project brought together research and speculative propositions: a cookbook imagining meals organized around the energy potential of their leftovers; sourdough as a living culture maintained across generations; traditional uses of whey; and the changing conditions of Polish winemaking. Familiar ingredients became starting points for considering relationships between food, energy, microbial life, and climate.
Drawing on Anna Tsing’s concept of “salvage accumulation,” the project examined how discarded materials and living processes become resources with economic value. It asked what is preserved, who assigns value, and what happens when practices of reuse and care enter systems of extraction and exchange.
Model: Free participation, coordinated with local catering and food transportation services and supported by volunteers.
Project credits
A collaboration with the Field Remediation Library
A project led by Karolina Sobecka in collaboration with Chris Woebken with the help of our class at NYU ITP, and Alexandra Skowronska, Ela Kowalska, Oliwia Olesiejuk and Anna Paprzycka from HAT Research Center (UAM). With the support of Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, City of Katowice, New York University ITP and Adam Mickiewicz University.
Project credits
A collaboration with the Field Remediation Library
A project led by Karolina Sobecka in collaboration with Chris Woebken with the help of our class at NYU ITP, and Alexandra Skowronska, Ela Kowalska, Oliwia Olesiejuk and Anna Paprzycka from HAT Research Center (UAM). With the support of Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, City of Katowice, New York University ITP and Adam Mickiewicz University.
Exhibitions & related material
Articles, publications & talks
- Development & Climate Days 2018 — programmeIIED, Development & Climate Days, Katowice, 8–9 December 2018. Program listing Field remediations: SALVAGE, presented by Karolina Sobecka.