Arts Of The Working Class Logo

SOULS FOR FOODS CONVERSATIONS

On the Making of Tastes, Survival Kits and Interspecies Gatherings.

We kick off our multisensorial market at Atelier Gardens as an embodiment of the ideas, politics, queries, musings and reflections from the texts of AWC’s anniversary issue Food Eats the Soul. Evolving organically from print into the experiential realm, the market formulates three curatorial sections, serving as a point of connection between the 17 participating projects. According to their common interests and proposals, we have conducted a collective interview with some of the participants, tracing human needs for conviviality, nutritional goods and the aesthetic sublime. 

 

 

MAKING OF TASTES

with Sara David, Yanice Gianina, Mimosa Labor, Caique Tizzi, Anoe Melliou & G Res, Lucky You and Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi & Quynh Tran.

The task facing us as species today is carving out new spaces where taste can be changed collectively. We have to be aware of the fact that it is not just our economy that needs to be drastically restructured, but also the very notions of what constitutes “good” and “bad” taste; in other words, what is deemed discardable and what is worth preserving. The hands-on interventions of “Making of Tastes” at the market will engage in the reshuffling of these obsolete hierarchies.


IF YOU HAD THE CHANCE TO INVENT A NEW TASTE (BESIDES THE FIVE CURRENTLY RECOGNISED ONES), WHAT WOULD IT BE? 

Yanice Gianina: Nostalgia. Something that reminds you of your favorite meals eaten as a child.

Mimosa Labor: Vitamin D.

Anoe Melliou & G Res: The taste of trust. Perceived through an interpersonal connotation, trust might taste like a kiss.

Lucky You: Melancholy, the feeling of sunshine, desire and longing.

WHAT IS THE MOST UNDERRATED PART OF A MEAL? 

Yanice Gianina: Those long moments of silence when everybody is enthralled by the food, reaching across the table in all directions to help themselves to seconds and thirds… also, fresh herbs!

Mimosa Labor: The moment when the dinner comes to an end, and you say goodbye and after 1 hour you are sitting at the dinner table in your jacket and after 2 hours you have made it to the front door and after 3 hours you've decided to stay for another hour.

Anoe Melliou & G Res: The cutlery. Usually there, sometimes absent, often unnoticed - touches lips, tongue, teeth briefly or coincidentally. Relating to cutting, pinching, dripping; being sharp, slender, curvy it defines and selects the shape and the content of our bites. As a mediator it engages tactility and assists taste. Alternatively, we use our hands.

Lucky You: Good bread, the way a plate or vessel looks after the meal is consumed, or the feeling of satisfaction after the meal is finished.

WHAT CAN A PERSON DISCOVER BY OBSERVING A WELL-ATTENDED DINNER PARTY?

Yanice Gianina: People enjoying such humble yet extremely comforting traditions we share as human beings. Good food and good company is like magic.

Mimosa Labor: Sometimes a dinner can turn into a drama or a romcom, especially when there is friction between different people. There are exciting moments within routine dinner parties, that you get sucked into yourself.

Anoe Melliou & G Res: One might discover that language is nutritious. Meaning and interpretations of a common experience arise. Whether spoken or unspoken, the words above the table bounce between the guests and form threads of content. Indulging conversations interrupt tasting and naively play with the rhythm of breathing, of eating, of absorbing, of assimilating. 

Lucky You: A shared meal is it’s own microcosm of social relation, it’s our relationship to one another and the unspoken tensions and resolutions between guests and the food.

 

 

SURVIVAL KITS

with Matylda Krzykowski, Pane Per Poveri, Bom Dia Boa Tarde Boa Noite, International Wardrobe and AWC Merch

To buy or not to buy? That’s the question with which the market revisits cooking, culinary skills and degrowth. The following practices are micro-examples of world-making. They propose concrete interventions for a just nowness, rehearsing fair distribution and production.

WHAT IS A RITUAL FOR COLLECTIVE NOURISHMENT THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO INITIATE?

Matylda Krzykowski: Looking into each other's eyes. 

Pane per Poveri: The ritual of leaving behind the over-structures we don’t need to express ourselves (shoes, phones and have you hands washed).

HOW HAS THE PANDEMIC’S EFFECT ON THE PACE OF SOCIETY AFFECTED YOUR PRACTICE?

Pane per Poveri: The very extraordinary circumstances of the last year have actually given to the experiment Pane Per Poveri has carried on, the possibility to become an intimate space of re-creation.

WHO IS THE BEST ALLY TO HAVE IN THE PRIVATE SPHERE?

Matylda Krzykowski: A routine choreographed entirely from small acts for personal happiness.

Pane per Poveri: The others.

 


INTERSPECIES GATHERING

with Rebeca Pérez Gerónimo, Mikrokosmos Berlin, Carolina Paoletti, Grace Denis & Margaux Schwab, Jess Zamora-Turner, Henri Schulzelutum and Fabian Knappe.

Caretaking through food and nourishment plays an essential part in the ongoing mission and expanding sense of what it means to be human. It is crucial to find ways to position ourselves in the entangled proximity of our everyday surroundings in a non-violent, non extractivist way. The temporary members of “Interspecies Gatherings” tackle these questions in a way that is not just discursive, but sensorial and above all, pleasant to taste.

HOW CAN INTERSPECIES SOLIDARITY BE ACHIEVED (OR AT LEAST ATTEMPTED) THROUGH FOOD?

Rebeca Pérez Gerónimo: By means of contamination and collaboration. Also by thinking of “fermentation as a metaphor” (Sandor Ellix Katz) –– how fermentation can infuse other aspects of our life making use of concepts such as time, intention, intuition and resistance in our day to day life.

Mikrokosmos Berlin: Curiosity and visual provocation bring people together around a table. The food needs to be tasty and evocative, so the participants are satisfied and start to talk about their feelings and opinions.


WHAT CAN THE GUT TELL US ABOUT OUR CURRENT RELATIONSHIP OR POSITION WITHIN SOCIETY?

Rebeca Pérez Gerónimo: Our gut is the innermost space in which we can talk about politics. What we eat, how we consume it and the value we place on it is a reflection of a complex social network in which we are entangled with everything around us. 

Mikrokosmos Berlin: People’s tastes reflect their life background. What people decide to put in their gut is a political choice that collocates them in a particular social-group instead of another. 


WHAT IS THE MOST USEFUL RECIPE FOR A LESS VIOLENT FUTURE? 

Rebeca Pérez Gerónimo: Any experiment in which fermentation is used as a method because through these processes we can witness transformations that come from the contamination between a great diversity of species, which I believe could provide a practical and vital experience where living beings coexist from notions of collaboration, without violence. 

Mikrokosmos Berlin: A dish made of self-grown ingredients. By choosing products with a less violent environmental impact. 

Jess Zamora-Turner: I’m thinking a lot about co-regulating my nervous system with the land. Building relationships with seeds, plants, soil, food honoring those intimacies and sharing them. I’m also thinking about how to seek alternatives to trauma. The small and subtle ways I can interrupt lineages of harm that exist in us.

 

//

 

 



  • Atelier Gardens
    is the space within BUFA (Berlin Union Film Ateliers), destined to unfold into an international destination for leading movements of social change, facilitating a wide range of initiatives and stimulating engagements for regenerative foods, rewilding of urban places, experiencing arts and media, education and social technology. Rooted in the history of the famous Tonfilm Studios, located just south of the former Tempelhof Airport, cultural practitioners are collaborating with Atelier Gardens to trace a map that activates progressive practices and collective action in a deliberative democracy.

Cookies

+

To improve our website for you, please allow a cookie from Google Analytics to be set.

Basic cookies that are necessary for the correct function of the website are always set.

The cookie settings can be changed at any time on the Date Privacy page.