Four people in the CIAS network will discuss efforts to reach the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal #2 — zero hunger by 2030: ‘End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture’. What are the prospects for achieving this goal? What are the efforts to achieve this?

Performance Studies international is hosting the Hunger 2022 online conference. The keynote session “Global Action to End Hunger: Prospects for 2030 is chaired by Professor Laurie Beth Clark (CIAS faculty associate). It is sponsored by De La Salle University and co-organized with the South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainability Studies (SARAS) based in Uruguay (https://saras-institute.org), and with Spatula&Barcode, where participants make art projects in which the performance of place and of hospitality are central. This is a creation of Michael Peterson and Laurie Beth Clark, CIAS faculty associates (https://spatulaandbarcode.wordpress.com).

Other speakers affiliated with CIAS are Mpumelelo Ncwadi, graduate student in the CALS Department of Community and Environmental Sociology and student of faculty associate and former CIAS director Michael Bell. Newadi will comment on food sovereignty and security on the African continent. Michelle Miller (CIAS Associate Director) will discuss food distribution and supply chain issues in the US.

Matilda Baraibar (Stockholm University), will offer an overall global context for hunger. Br. Armin Luistro, of the De La Salle Brothers from the Philippines will emphasize relief efforts in the Philippines. Ollas Populares, a grassroots group that runs communal kitchens in Uruguay, will be represented by a video created by Alvaro Adib and Mariana Meerhoff. Gaston Ares will join us for the discussion to represent the work of the Ollas and Merendero groups more broadly. 

This is the opening keynote on the first full day of the conference. The panel is at 6 AM Manila time on Friday 8 July. In Wisconsin, this is Thursday 5pm central time on July7. If you wish to watch this session without registering for the full conference you may livestream using this FaceBook link:

https://www.facebook.com/PerformanceStudiesinternational/

Other events that will be livestreamed (central time) are:

• Thursday, 7 July, 7:15 to 8:30am, Hunger Kills: Memory and Justice After Famines, Camilla Orjuela, Swati Parahsar, Adrian Kear
• Thursday, 7 July, 8:00 to 9:30am, Hunger and the Response-ability of Performance, Adrian Kear, Sruti Bala, Patrick Anderson, Marian Roces
• Thursday, 7 July, 19:00 to 20:30pm, Foodways Philippines, Jazmin Llana, Laurie Beth Clark, Michael Peterson, Fritzie Ian De Vera, Neil Penullar, Reigner Sanchez, Jian Tan, Leo Tadena, Norby Salonga
• Friday, 8 July, 3:00 to 4:30am, Water, War, Drought: North and East Syria, Nilufer Gros, Engin Sustam, Xezne Ibrahim, Hevi Musa, Sermin Guven, Celil Kaya
• Friday, 8 July, 7:00 to 8:30am, Points of Contact: Hunger, Food, and Performance, Richard Gough, Laurie Beth Clark, Michael Peterson

For more information and to register for this online conference, visit the Hunger 2022 conference website. https://www.psi-web.org/about-hunger-2022/

Performance Studies international is a professional association founded in 1997 to promote communication and exchange among artists, thinkers, activists and academics working in the field of performance. In many ways, PSi embodies this dynamic and interdisciplinary field and its conferences have been avenues for how the field has grown and expanded in diverse and multiple configurations. For 2022, PSi chose to focus on hunger, which is the embodied and lived consequence of deeply entrenched structural inequalities in the world today, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic but existing prior to the current global health crisis. How can the conference as production of discourse galvanize action and thought as a form of ethical response to the current situation that has already killed millions of human lives?