In collaboration with FoodCultura and Antoni Miralda, students of the module "Self-production", part of EINA’s bachelor degree, undertake a conceptual and material research around the cultural and emotional imaginaries of food, eating and the edible, devouring and the devoured. The acts of and around ingestion, preparation, and transformation — the ecosystemic relationships and transitive powers of edible matter though animal, biological, post-human and decolonial discourses — become guiding notions for speculative object-based processes.
Based on selected objects from the FoodCultura Archive, students will be asked to participate in a collaborative action. With a focus on the use of cartography and taxonomy, the project is concerned with the ontology of the archive, and the various narratives that construct it based on similarities or continuities. Students will engage in the creation of relational constellations by exploring and identifying themselves with objects from the FoodCultura Archive, which they will put in dialogue with objects of their choice: domestic, found, purchased… and to which they will add their own imaginaries and artistic / cultural references, while identifying and possibly counteracting the capitalist and colonial narratives that their classification, origin or use embodies.
Proposals can include a variety of formats such as photography, audio, video, printed material, or assemblies of the objects themselves. They will be complemented by fieldwork around the city of Barcelona, in the areas of Collserola and Poblenou.
The results will be presented at EINA Bosc in June 2022, culminating in an exhibition including works ranging from the archive box to survival food, from tectonics to the dematerialization of taste, going through the throats of indeterminate beastly characters chewing on themselves and agonising publicly. The exhibition will revolve around a historical video by Miralda, Milk, Coca Cola & Balut (1986), and will include performative research projects, food speculation and prototypes of impossible spices and condiments. The act of eating the balut — a fertilized duck egg, common in the Philippine diet — will trigger the celebration, tasting and opening of the project.
FoodCultura is a non-profit foundation created by Antoni Miralda and Montse Guillén, located in the Poblenou district of Barcelona. It functions as an archive and platform for creation intertwining culture, anthropology and contemporary art. FoodCultura Archive, based in Barcelona, focuses its activity on a multidisciplinary and festive collective research of objects from different countries with diverse uses and origins and related to food and popular culture.