“Feral Trade” is a public experiment in trading goods—primarily groceries—through social networks. Goods are sourced direct from their producers, using the surplus freight potential of social, peer and art-world movements, including artists’ and curatorial travel, to transport grocery products intercity. An online courier database coordinates the movements of all products and couriers and generates freight documents on the fly and a rich product biography including routes traveled, transit anecdotes and social negotiations specific to each consignment. The data collected enables the globally traveling feral trade product to conduct a broader array of information than typically relayed by products on the market.
The project was established in 2003 with the test import of 30kg coffee to the Cube Microplex (a cooperatively run cinema art space in Bristol, UK) from the Codecano coffee cooperative in El Salvador. The import was negotiated entirely through mutual acquaintances, e-mail, bank transfer and SMS. After six years in operation “Feral Trade” now forms a functioning underground freight and grocery supply network spanning the UK, Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and Australasia, with social connections and cultural routes as its primary mechanisms.

Links: feraltrade.org

Feral Trade is run by soie trader Kate Rieh and relies on the active engagement of social peers—friends, often other artists, curators and magazine editors; their interns, parents, mechanicsand bank managers—around 80 active agents and organizations who act as suppliers, hosts, couriers, depots, distributors and customers and who form the core infrastructure of the grocery business.