Watch artists-cricket farmers-musicians Adam Chad Brody and Jude Tallichet as they perform alongside live crickets to explore how insects can become kin, housemates, collaborators and entertainers—in addition to being a source of nourishment.
The concert will be performed at Smack Mellon, accompanied by Jude Tallichet’s current exhibition, “Heat Map.” The evening (7:00pm EDT on Thursday, September 10th) will be broadcast live as a virtual event—on Zoom and Instagram Live (@smackmellon). The full Zoom meeting details are below.
Jude Tallichet and Adam Chad Brody’s collaborative project, Party Crickets, is a multidisciplinary cricket farm that explores entomophagy, micro-agriculture, ecological art, music, education and activism. Crickets are at the center of all of this, and since 2016 they have bred, raised, and harvested hundreds of thousands of these charming insects. They believe that artists should be involved with creating new food systems that tackle climate catastrophe through expansive creativity, interspecies solidarity, collective agency, strangeness, and bountiful generosity. Tallichet and Brody have presented their project in public lectures, workshops, cooking demos in libraries, schools, and museums. In addition to raising crickets for food, the duo performs concerts with them. In these cricket concerts they attempt to take their project into unexpectedly expressive places while maintaining the main focus on ecological direct action.
Before becoming professional artists, both Tallichet and Brody had significant experience in farming, which profoundly shaped the way that they think about animals, their containment, and our consumption of them. Tallichet worked at a cattle ranch in Montana and Brody spent two summers in Scandinavia on organic cow, sheep, and pig farms. As Party Crickets has explored different models of cricket farms, they have built environments that consider the importance of humans experiencing stewardship of the living things that they will eventually eat. As urban farming becomes increasingly technology-driven, and good food becomes increasingly expensive and rarefied, they are committed to focusing on design and practice that is down to earth and accessible.
Party Crickets aims to inspire people to get their hands on the crickets, their hearts in the crickets, and finally, the crickets on their plates. You can support the project by visiting their website and clicking Donate. Tallichet and Brody began farming crickets in 2016 as a collaborative creative project that combined their interests in sculpture, urban farming, social practice, design and environmental / social justice. Eating crickets offers environmental and health benefits that far surpass conventional livestock and even many kinds of vegetable protein. Over the last three years they have built seven models of cricket farms in their homes in Queens and Brooklyn and fed hundreds of people their home-raised crickets. They have presented their farms, and played music with the crickets, at The Free Library of Philadelphia, Children’s Museum of The Arts, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and The National Gallery of Fine Arts in Jordan.
Instagram Live
To access the Instagram Live broadcast of the performance, visit @smackmellon within Instagram and click on our profile image. There will be a magenta border around it once we are streaming. This will be accessible for 24 hours on our profile, if you need to stop watching or join late. You can watch this recording later under the IGTV tab on our profile page.
This exhibition and program are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, New York City Council Member Stephen Levin, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Robert Lehman Foundation, Select Equity Group Foundation, many individuals and Smack Mellon’s Members.
Smack Mellon’s programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and with generous support from The Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of The New York Community Trust, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Inc., and Exploring The Arts. In-kind donations are provided by Materials for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs/NYC Department of Sanitation/NYC Department of Education.
Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.
Smack Mellon would like to extend a special thanks to all of the individuals, foundations, and businesses who have contributed to the NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund.
This project is made possible with funds from the NYSCA Electronic Media/Film in Partnership with Wave Farm: Media Arts Assistance Fund, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.