Concha, P. (2020) Curating pop-up street food markets in London. En Falconer, E. (Ed.) Space, taste and affect: Atmospheres that shape how we eat (pp.130-141). London: Routledge.
Abstract
This chapter explores how market organisers as cultural intermediaries or curators use their taste to create pop-up street food markets. I am analysing how the curation of markets demands the use of different kinds of embodied knowledge, economic and cultural, in order to create a market atmosphere or a sense of place. This curatorial work includes planning and negotiating the arrangement of different material and sensorial elements, including the selection of food traders with particular cuisines, the layout and design of the market, and the definition of the preferable audience. I will use findings from an ethnography conducted in 2014-2015 to narrate the case of Vibes Feast, a company that organises night markets across London in areas like Dalston, Lewisham and Battersea. I am using this case to specifically illustrate the curatorial work of market organisers; I am analysing their working practices and decision making process to understand how the setting up of pop-up street food markets is a relevant practice in the generation of tasted places of consumption in London.
