Kate Rich
Feral Trade Coffee
Shipment 4, 2005
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Kate Rich (NZ / UK) |
Kate Rich
Feral Trade Coffee
Shipment 4, 2005
Kate Rich is a radioengineer with the Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT), a transnational information agency operating over the past decade in critical information and device deployment. Public experiments engineered by the Bureau include BANGBANG, a network of webcams tuned to automatically register gunfire or explosion; and BIT Radio, a sensor-activated FM radio transmitter which interrupts normal broadcast services to overcast events of local interest.
Kate is also bar manager at the Cube Microplex, an independent cinema/art space in Bristol where she is implementing a number of projects in collective & speculative economics. In 2003 she established the Feral Trade project for trafficking goods along social & data networks. The use of the word 'feral' denotes a process which is wilfully wild, as in pigeon, as opposed to romantically or nature-wild (wolf). The passage of goods can open up wormholes between diverse social settings, routes along which other information, individuals or other materials can potentially travel. In trading goods directly, Feral Trade intervenes in a system - international trade - which while not explicitly forbidden is tacitly closed to the end-user.
The first Feral Trade took place in 2003 with the direct import of 30kg of coffee from Sociedad Cooperative de Cafecultores Nonualcos R.L. coffee co-operative in El Salvador to the Cube Microplex bar. The coffee is now traded on through the UK, Europe and USA over social, cultural and occupational networks. Distribution methods are various and have included air cargo, handbaggage, Royal Mail, diplomatic pouch, and Unattended Bag (virgin trains Bristol to Newcastle September 2004: nineteen 1 pound coffee bags were lost in experimental freight transaction using the surplus motion of private trains).
The RISK exhibition provided the opportunity to import Feral Trade to Glasgow - a new trade route. Information abou the particularities of the route from El Salvador to Glasgow, was included on product packaging, and data displayed in the gallery and website. Development of a generative, database-run product-packaging is central to the feral trade process, with a view to rendering diverse currents in global shipping, international relations & network mobility from the point of view of the product; while installing documentary evidence into the ubiquitous medium of food-packaging.
The coffee booth in the RISK exhibition was designed as part of the reading area next to Variant magazine, computer based works and the exhibition reading area with reference books and catalogues about artists in the exhibition.