Fruit Stories, audio, video & photograph archive, 2008 – ongoing

One part of our long-term project The Colonial History of Fruit, is an archive of individual Fruit Stories on videotape.  We’re interested in two kinds of colonialism: the history of the fruit itself, how it got from one part of the world (in the case of the banana, from New Guinea to Central America), and which political and economic forces pushed it along. The second history is more personal and social: how the banana (and other fruits) has touched individuals, from those who eat them to those who pick them, personal stories of the many different relations one can have to a fruit. These could be memories, dreams, fruits they heard of and never had, fruits they love or fruits they hate.  This archive grows as we travel.