Sophie Gerber (Technisches Museum Wien) and Sophie Kühnlenz (scholar in residence, Cologne/Vienna)

Time: 02.-03.12.2021
Venue: Vienna
Proposals by: 15.07.2021

The study of human nutrition, its foundations and practices has established itself as an interdisciplinary field and is related to sociology, history, cultural and social anthropology, and philosophy, among others. Food is explored as a cultural and social phenomenon that carries symbolic and material dimensions (e.g., from a gender perspective: Tanja Paulitz) and raises questions of identity (e.g., from an intersectional perspective: Psyche Williams-Forson). Food and its production – from the field to the plate – are topics of consumer, economic, social and technological history (e.g., Uwe Spiekermann). When the history of the body is addressed, nutrition and gender finally come into view from a mostly critical, (queer) feminist perspective, e.g., in the field of fat studies. Food shapes and produces corporeal bodies and social subjects.

In recent years, museum exhibitions have increasingly dealt with the history and future of food, including a focus on the industrialisation of food production (e.g. Geschmackssache [Matter of Taste], Technisches Museum Wien 2008/09; Unser täglich Brot [Our Daily Bread], Technoseum Mannheim 2011/12) and the sustainability of contemporary and future consumption (e.g. Food Revolution 5.0, Museum Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg 2017 etc.; Bigger than the Plate, Victoria & Albert Museum London 2019; Future Food, Deutsches Hygiene Museum Dresden 2020/21; Ablaufdatum [Expiry Date], Naturhistorisches Museum Wien 2020/21).

Food and Gender are the focus of the 2nd Vienna Workshop on STEM Museums, Gender and Sexuality. As a part of the museum’s “Focus Gender” and on the occasion of a special exhibition on food at the TMW (opening 11/2021), this workshop will critically address constructions of gendered and/or heteronormative technology and science and emphasise the role of the object and material culture in queer and feminist approaches to science and technology studies with a focus on food. Read more and source … (Web).