2018-2019 COOP study group: Banquet X: Climate Change and Speculative Gastronomy. Tutor Team: Bassam El Baroni, Diakron (Aslak Aamot Kjaerulff, Bjarke Hvass Kure)

Student participants: 

Assem Hendawi, Bethany Crawford, Edel O’Reilly, Francesca Hawker, Harun Morrison, Jasmin Schädler, Lucie Draai, Mandus Ridefelt, Risa Horn, Samantha McCulloch.

Tutor team:

Artist: Bjarke Hvass Kure

Curator: Bassam El Baroni

Scholar: Aslak Aamot Kjaerulff

Banquet X: Climate Change and Speculative Gastronomy program from Month to Month & Chronicles

DAI Week 10 (AKA Extension Days): January 16 – 17 (1 day), Cagliari | March 13 – 14 (1 day), Berlin | June 22 - 24 (2 days prior to DAI WEEK), Cagliari.

Banquet X: Climate Change and Speculative Gastronomy

In the aftermath of last summer’s record-breaking heatwave and its follow up by a typhoon-embattled fall, this COOP will attend to the question of how climate change prompts recalibrations of organizations and practices in the expanded field of art and beyond. While we are aware of the transgression of ecological tipping points, the elimination of keystone species, and the bending of climatological feedback mechanisms into devastating trajectories, such realizations are markedly permeated with many blind spots when taking into consideration the multitude of time scales at play. How is art organized and embedded in these climatological and temporal shifts? This study group will seek potentials for recalibration by learning from places, times and ideas that have fallen out of history’s mainstream narratives and are actively seeking to gain momentum by elaborating different ways of worldmaking. The aim is to construct a multi-dimensional object of investigation, by working through a variety of disciplines, approaches to asking questions, and styles of research in an environment geared towards collective engagement.

Meals are at the center of this institution’s flows of people and information, often playing the role of a temporary and informal hub in which all participants gather during a fragmented and intense DAI week. Building on this institutional function of the meal while exploiting its capacity for the articulation of concepts, research and communal bonds, forms the basis for the COOP’s planning for the end-of-year presentation. This COOP’s final format and outcome will be a banquet for the Dutch Art Institute. It will channel parts of the research through the prism of growing, engineering, cooking, serving and digesting food to explore pasts and possible futures for the nourishment of humans and other organisms. It will be investing some of the group’s time in researching the activities of banqueting and eating in public space - their histories, politics, and impact - as well as the history of working with food and its consumption in artistic practices. The purpose of this strain of research is to support the social element of this COOP’s consolidation and development as a group and help give form to the question ‘what should we do with climate change?’. Thus, sharing gastronomic research, cooking techniques and recipes will be encouraged and expected as a part of building this collaborative research platform.