Prayas Abhinav Photographs, drawings, stories and a scale model from Petpuja, a project exploring the potential of urban food systems in Bangalore and Delhi. Petpuja demonstrates the possibility of a freely accessible network of community-grown food and looks at the nutritive, environmental and inter-personal implications that growing vegetables in the public can have on neighbourhoods. Petpuja translates as 'stomach worship.' It explores the potential of food growing initiatives, and references the rich street culture of fast food, street food and junk food in Delhi. Prayas Abhinav lives in Bangalore, India. He has an interest in re-vitalizing and re-imagining urban spaces. Through his work he explores how public spaces can be utilized for cultural and civic uses.

Employing social networks and low-fi technologies to connect communities and resources is often one of his approaches. In his projects, he experiments with the possibility of seeding networks and infrastructures that can exist around this reality. He has been part of efforts to seed open content movements in India and in 2007 helped launching the Creative Commons India licenses. He has presented his projects and proposals at 48c: Public Art Ecology (08), Urban Climate Camp, ISEA (08), Urban Typhoon, Koliwada (08), Sensory Urbanism, Glasgow (08), First Monday, Chicago (06), The Paris Accord, Paris (06), Public Service Broadcasting Trust (06), Sarai (05). www.prayas.in

FutureEverything's Curatorial Approach: Trade City

FutureEverything is showing two artworks at TradeCity from our recent Environment 2.0 exhibition. The artworks selected here both illuminate the theme of trade in unique ways. Aaron Koblin presents a stunning data visualisation of thousands of aircraft traversing America. Here a living image of the USA is created solely by this eternal motion along aviation trade routes, displaying the sinews of this most wantonly capitalistic country. Prayas Abhinav, in contrast, works from the ground up. His practice as an artist involves seeding grass-roots, social networks and infrastructures. It involves planting food as an intervention in the city, and looks at urban food systems, and the inter-personal networks that are needed to sustain them.

Originally presented at the Futuresonic 2009 Urban Festival of Art, Music & Ideas in Manchester during May 2009. Environment 2.0 was the culmination of three years of activities by FutureEverything in Manchester, Singapore, Lancaster and Berlin, which commenced in 2006. It included artworks that make visible and tangible outcomes of our actions at a local level, artworks conceived as social interventions, and artworks, which arise out of a sustained engagement and dialogue between artists and scientists. Here artists avoid cliches and address environmental sustainability in ways both forceful and irreverent. These artworks are curated by Drew Hemment and Dennis Hopkins.