Comparisons

I've been a long time absent from this blog. In that time I've well and truly fallen off the wagon. If you are new to the blog or having trouble remembering way back when. I set off to try and resist  things I didn't need to eat and give the money saved to charity.  Over the course of the project I dropped 3 dress sizes and gave over £300 to the charity Practical Action.

Since then the weight has crept back on and the convictions dropped off. A spell in hospital saw me loose lots of weight in a very unhealthy style and then put it all back with some extra. I still try not to buy Nestle products but my discernment about other sweet treats has got a little stretched. I don't always shop local anymore. Instead I shop in what a I've convinced myself is the ethically best of  the supermarkets. I still ride my bike as a commuter but not so much for pleasure or challenge.

The main reason I  stopped, what was a pretty good way of life was probably boredom. The idea no longer sparked my intellect and as my focus on it slipped so did the life changes I'd made.

I've joined a new group Transition Northwich and we are hoping to change the world starting with our back yards. For me this has to come with a review of how I live now and how I could do a bit better.

My preoccupation today has been on local shopping and particularly food. Our Veg buying is covered with a veg box from a local farm. About 50% of the time I  buy meat from the town Butchers, normally a place called Birtwistles. The other time meat gets picked up in a main Lidl shop. I have arguments with others and myself where I say things like,
"Meat and Veg are 30% cheaper from local shops" and yet I sometimes don't make it to the butchers. Perhaps its because I don't really know if that fact is true anymore. So today with a bit more time on my hands I decided to compare the prices.

Its complicated for me because I ask the butcher for a pound of mince but the supermarket stuff comes in grams. I'm not that great at maths.

So the butcher (Birtwistles, Witton Street Northwich) told me that 500 grams is just over 1LB, which helps my addled brain a bit.  I bought from the butcher 3lb (1.5kg) of mince for £6.40 about £2.13 for 500g.
I also got some frying steak at £3.40 for 496 g

Off I toddled to Lidl to buy the things I can't get locally like coffee and tuna. Whilst there I compared the prices of the meat I'd bought.

Lidl Mince was £2.99/lb compared to the butcher price of £2.13/lb saving of 86p

Frying steak was in a small pack and of course unlike at the butchers I can only buy the amount they offer. If I'd been looking for an exact amount I'd have to have bought two packs and risk wasting some. But like for like it was:

Lidl price  was £2.99 compared to the butchers price of  £2.44 saving of 55p

Even I was surprised to find that at the supermarket I like the most, because its cheap and seems the most upfront, the local butcher was not only competing but winning. Tricks like smaller amounts in supermarket packs are well known within consumers minds but it's really hard to work out what it actually means. On the surface the supermarket pack looks cheaper but if we're back there next week because the cupboard is bare its not too good a deal. There is a pervasive mythology put about by big business that because they deal in bulk they are cheaper. That makes logical sense. They can afford to be cheaper and they do a good job of convincing us that this is the case. Each documentary which comes out telling how some supermarkets don't pay suppliers, buy at rock bottom prices or work on vast economies of scale confirms our belief that surely they must be cheaper then.

Even if we put all ethical things to one side and just focus on the bottom line my quick and very fallible look around the shops today seems to show that local is often still cheaper. I am still lucky to have a choice of 3 butchers and 2 veg shops in my town center. I enjoy the little chats I have in the shops and walking along a high street. This isn't nostalgia its here for us lucky Northwich residents now.

 I don't yet know how each compares on flavor you'll have to watch this space for that.


  

WOW to the WOW women

Women of the World (WOW) is a group of refugees, asylum seekers and those who have been granted citizenship who live in Salford. 2 days ago I asked them about wages and costs in different countries and they got together and developed this great list of facts from their wide experiences. Big thankyou and what a great speedy response. If you want to know more about the WOW group look here:
wowwomensgroup.wordpress.com/

1 pound is 100 shillings.
Rent monthly 9000sh
Elec 2000sh
Water 800sh
Food 10000sh
Education 20000sh
Health care 15000sh
Travel bills 2000sh by bus.
Total income for both two working parents is 70,000sh .

Same parents living in the remote village in kenya.
Rent is free as they built there own house
No elec they use lamps
Water free( united nations provided)
Education 4000sh
Healthcare 5000sh
Travel bills 1000sh they walk a lot.
No wages as they sale goods from the firm and manage to pay for the bills and most times the house is full with orphans and they manage somehow.





A typical family in india.
Two parents and two kids living in town.
I pound is 83 rupees
Rent 40,000 rs
Elec 10,000 rs
Water 8000 rs
Food 20,000 education 30,000 rs
Healthcare 15000 rs
Travel bill 6000 rs they use bikes a lot so its cheaper
Total salary from the working parents 145,000 rs


Pakistan family same of two
I pound is 153 rupees
Rent 50000
Elec 8000
Water 9000
Food 25000
Education 30000
Healthcare 20000
Travel bill 8000 use bikes a lot too
Total salary is 160,000 rupees.

The many hours of labour which go into an embroidered top

Original Starvation Diet T Shirt

This T shirt took me about 24 hours to embroider. I sat at home on a sofa and watched TV. I had regular breaks to go to the toilet etc and the temperature of the room was comfortable. I chose to make it as an artistic statement and I don't need to sell it to survive. Nobody watches over me and if I decided to do something else for a while I could. I wouldn't be in fear of being sacked or provoking somebodies anger if I worked too slow, fell ill or made a mistake.

2013 fashion item from well known store

This top is a 2013 fashion item from a well know store. The store where it is sold have been found to underpay their workers,(Even by that countries standards) employ children and have people working in unfair or unsafe conditions. Clothes hand finished by the companies workers have retailed for as little as at £4.00. If It took me 24 hours to hand finish my item how do they do it and make a profit?

My new idea is to do a series of performances. During each performance I will embroider a pre printed copy of the original Starvation Diet T shirt I made. I will do this, as much as possible,  under the conditions of an exploited woman from a particular country. I will ask the people commissioning the performance to pay me the wage I would get for my time if I was that woman.  Alongside each performance will be a break down of the my own income and costs of living compared with this other woman.   The performance would end when the T shirt is finished. Each performance would be titled with the name of the country it had depicted. Unlike the person finishing garments for companies I would have the luxury of taking the completed T shirts home with me. I would look to exhibit the T shirts as a series once a number of performances have been concluded.

At the moment I'm looking for galleries, charities or other organisations who would like to commission a performance and people who know those in other countries or the UK who work in the textile finishing trade and would be happy to share info on their lives with me.

Art Of Protest Exhibition at the Peoples History Museum, Manchester

Was very lucky to get selected to be part of the Art of Protest ran by Noise Festival. Showed a few of the products produced as a result of Starvation Diet Project. Good to see all the other work and meet the Noise team and Mark Thomas. www.noisefestival.com

Spoof web pages for Starvation Diet T Shirt

The idea to create an attractive spin around a product which is in many ways distasteful. It happens every day. Can you tell which websites each of them is a parody of?

Starvation Diet T Shirt Photo Shoot

Created a Starvation Diet T Shirt. It is created using a stich called rice stich on a mass produced T shirt from Bangladesh. It shows the outline of a starving woman aged 37. The signs of starvation/malnutrition being the extended belly, ribs, reduced height and general decreased body mass. I took the T shirt on a photo shoot.

Looks interesting, May have to take a trip over there one day this summer., Manchester City Art Gallery, not West Africa.
http://www.creativetourist.com/featured/dont-look-now-west-african-photography-in-manchester

Practical Action

Have a look at this:
http://practicalaction.org/

Starvation Diet Book

I've now completed the Starvation Diet Book. It tells the story of the project and focuses on some of the key topics which came up throughout it. You can see a preview of it and order a book here.

Art Novel or not?

If an art project fails to alter and just replicates an original rule does it become stunted or more insightful.  Should we as artists always strive to present novelty in an effort to turn life on its head?

Slow Art and Novelty

There may be a reason why most art projects come to an end.  Even if if your life's work is to make furniture you need to feel that at some point you sand off the last bit of wood on an individual chair and stand it there as finished.  If your work is as a conceptual artist you go through your prescribed process, you document it, maybe you present that documentation and then you stop. Maybe themes recur, maybe the work gets recreated  but you move on.  Starvation Diet was set as a life project. The end would be when I died.   The measure of its success or failure my weight on death and the amount of money donated.  But as I've gone along I've found it increasingly difficult to sustain.  I think the reason art projects  and other things we do have an end is because we intrinsically look for novelty. We would love to be wonderfully persistence people with sustained interest but in things we do we long to find the ability to conclude one thing and move onto another. 

This is not to say that we shouldn't strive for life long endeavours.  Maybe we do this through making the project an underlying structure from which other things originate from, sit alongside or inform. Maybe we have to step away from it for a while and then return refreshed.  Maybe we segment it and mark the end of each phase.

Different forms of Starvation

Kwashiorkor

Ideas for a starvation diet t shirt photoshoot

A few years ago I received my People Tree catalogue through the post. I'm not sure which year it was and after about an hour of internet searching can find no evidence of it. The reason it came to mind of late is that it seemed to me to be misguided. The models were placed in their expensive clothes in front of those who had made them, Indian sowers and African Weavers perhaps. The clothes had to be the focus, as that is what were being asked to purchase, but whilst showing the garments the company tried to make the link between the makers of the clothes and its ethical origins and the finished product. It was probably a great idea sat around a marketing table but when seen it created a feeling of unease and I felt undermined what the company try to do. I am a supporter of ethical trade and interested in where my products originate from but placing the people as an attractive backdrop to the clothes created images too full of contrast. It underlined the richness of our lives compared to others and put me off buying the clothes in the catalogue. I note from the current catalogue (top picture from here) that they haven't gone down this route again. I found this site on my search for the catalogue images http://eng.feministblogs.org/tag/nation-india/page/2/
( from where the second image hails). There is an interesting article on the use of cultures, their architecture, nature and people as backdrops to Western beauty. It makes the point that by choosing this backdrop the companies give the buyer a feeling that they are buying into the exotic. By People Tree choosing developing country backdrops are they at once indicating the exotic and reminding the buyer to feel smugly good at no real cost to themselves. If this is the feeling I got from these images does it underline something which is intrinsicly strange about fair trade. Of course fair trade is a better option than just trade but should it have the title fairer trade, indicating at its place as a process rather than a conclusion. A stepping stone on the path to truly fair trade which, in an infinite resource planet is two pronged. The first prong being a raising of the living standers of those living in abject poverty and the second the sacrifice of some of our unsustainable luxuries to bring our lives to a less decadent place. Does buying another top, no matter how nobly sourced forward the aim for equality or does nurturing my greed for more clothes, more novelty, more stuff ultimately lead to more inequality both geographically and generationally.

This is not an attack on People Tree, us as its customers or fair trade in general.It was just an observation and maybe a cautionary note that we must carry on thinking, challenging our perceptions and behaviours, moving ever forward. The world is an every changing story. Current droughts in Africa may lead to instability in countries we had ticked off our list as solved. The troubles of countries we have seen as nice holiday destinations such as Greece, may throw the economies of the world into turmoil. We are living in a time where each individual must be adaptable in their views and perceptions. Nothing is set in stone, everything should be up for debate. As artists we can use our role as agitators, observers and re-presenters to tackle things of worth.

All this thought and research came about as I have finished the first version of my starvation diet T-Shirt. The stitching indicates the body of a starving woman ( after much research the only vital statistics I found near to this were those relating to a size 0) . When worn by me it will show up the contrast between my body and that of a person suffering from the symptoms of starvation. I want to do a parody of a fashion shoot so was pondering on replicating the ones I saw in that People Tree Catalogue. I will probably approach it in a few different ways and see what resonates best.

A few Facts on Stravation

One way of measuring malnutrition in children:
•Mid Upper Arm Circumference (MUAC) :
•MUAC <125mm >110mm
•MUAC < 110 mm OR the presence of bipedal oedema

Taken from World Health Organisation web site

Is everybody actually getting fatter?

I've been trying to research vital statistics for a starving woman. The reason for this may seem a little shocking. I want to create a T shirt as a reminder of the extremes of weight which exists between me and somebody who has been deprived of food to the point of starving. I am struggling because as with most subjects things are not as simple as they first appear.
I keep finding a lot of research on the growing obesity epidemic in Developing countries. Its shown in this chart and the quote below from;
here

"The number of obese people in many countries is fast overtaking the number who are underweight — even in the poorest rural regions (see Figure 2). In Mexico, for example, nearly 60 per cent of people are overweight, compared with less than ten per cent underweight."

I have also ended up going down the route of looking at size 0 and what this means. Its easier to find the vital statistics for this, its 31.5" Bust 23" Waist and 34" Hips. There are lots of articles about starving models and the two sisters models who died of cardiovascular arrest and stomach leaks due to starving themselves. I think this is misleading though as its a very different issue to deprive yourself in a land of plenty than to be the victim of famine. If anybody out there can think of a place to go and look for the info I need it would be a great help. Its the vital statistics of a starving 37 year oldish woman in say Chad, India or Ethiopia.

Economic Rationalism

The true evil of economic rationalism
	Vast amounts of value, of jobs and long term sustainability of communities have been destroyed across the world in the name of economic rationalism.
	It is economic rational to build "super stores" in small and medium towns to destroy local commerce, drive down prices and create greater levels of consumer debt.
	It is economic rational to sell international brands in high spending consumer markets at outrageous mark-ups, while paying children in third world countries a few cents and item to make them under slave conditions;
	It is economic rational to make naturally grown pain killer crops illegal in major regions such as Africa, the forcing governments to purchase vast quantities of out of date synthetic pain killers from US and European pharmaceutical companies that remain ineffective and too expensive for 90% of the population.
	In all cases, economists argue that these are just extreme cases and that the "free market" has produced phenomenal amounts of wealth and raised the standard of living of countless hundreds of millions.
	But is this even true? Does living in a non-de script cul de sac two hours from work with neighbours you don't even know quality of life?
	Is a large screen TV, the latest gadgets and internet porn really improving the minds of your children or the closeness of your family?
	Are we really happy with everything we buy and still find ways to purchase more? or dow e convince ourselves we are happy, to make sense of a system that seems to lose a little more morality every day?
	In the absence of morality in decisions concerning the lives of human beings and its acceptance, it is only "rational" then to conceive of a time in great disasters that governments claim it to be "economically rational" to give up on great numbers of people and let them rot.
	When these times approach, the true nature and evil of economic rationalism will reveal itself to be one of the great evil acts of history. From here:http://one-evil.org/acts/acts_economic_rationalism.htm

Failure or not a Failure?

I've sent the starvation diet idea off to a group exhibition about failed art. I'm not really sure if this is failed art but thought that it threw up some interesting ideas about when and why we judge something failed.
The text from this is here:

Starvation Diet Failure Statement

“Starvation Diet” is an art/ life project based around food inequality. The premise was that I resisted food I didn’t need and gave the money saved to charity. The process was documented through, photography, film, text and currently resides on a blog site and a half finished book. As the project developed it involved others in “Starvation Diet, the next generation”, explored an idea called “Extreme Starvation Diet” generated a shared weighing scales element and resulted in my losing 2 stone and giving £367.00 to the charity practical action.

Why do I consider it a failed work?

The true nature of it as failure or success will only be evident at the moment of my death. The aim is to raise £10,000 in my lifetime and to remain at a healthy weight. The work is currently in a state of failure as I am putting on weight, have not donated in 3 months and have stopped noting the things I have resisted. The Next generation have not carried on with the project. The work is part of an effort to create slower art with less of a discernable end. This form of art brings up all sorts of issues around success and failure. At what date do we decide on a projects success and how does this choice of date skew this? When the lines between life and art blur are there more pit falls and less artistic control. As artists do we have the tenacity to stay with long term projects and not be distracted by new ideas and works.

Looking back

Was just looking back at my starvation diet blog and realised that I haven't included anything about the Interactive scales project. The idea came about when I was considering buying a set of scales to weigh myself with. I decided that it was daft to posses something which you would use so infrequently. I also saw a way of picking up my activity levels. I set the rules for weigh in that:
I had to weigh myself on somebody else's set of scales
I had to get there under my own steam
I could only use each set of scales once.

So it began and was charted here:
http://www.bethbarlow.com/completed_pages/scales_map.html

A long time missing-the temptation to stop because its lost its novelty

This was supposed to be a life project but its turning out to be tricky to keep it in the forefront of my mind. As with lots of art projects they slip in and out of focus and so has my commitment to this. I have started filling in my sheets again and trying to resist. I can feel the inches coming back on a little and I know its perverse but the thing which makes me want to refocus is seeing others about me who have extra weight. In this country we hear common phrases like " I just don't know how I got like this." " I hate myself for being this fat." and people passify with phrases like " Your not fat your just cuddly." or " There are plenty of people bigger than you are." or say of you " You have lovely hair." which is a sure fire distraction from the issue. I haven't decided if we should hate ourselves for being overweight. Not because it looks bad and might turn others off their dinners but because of the moral obligation to eat our fair share and nothing more. This has made me think of an art experiment, possibly the opposite of the extreme Starvation diet where I ate only rice and porridge. In this new work I would have a big cheap and nasty cake, I would chop it into slices one huge and one just a slither. The tiny bit I would give to someone, maybe my son to eat. Maybe I wouldn't tell him why he was only getting a small piece and I was going to eat every other bit. The other I would plough through myself. Maybe it could be filmed with flash images of the needy, too fast that they don't register on the concious. Maybe this is just striving after novelty again though and I just need to keep on with the mundane, both for the sake of the art, life and the message. I shall ponder on the validity of this one.

Your diet with others in toe

Its hard to stick to my guns when other people pop up. I realise how far from other peoples every day reality my life is. It sticks in my gut to see food thrown away. Its hard to justify the expenditure on a meal which I can't eek out for two days. Maybe I am too stuck in my ways or maybe its just about reaching a happy food compromise.