As a part of the European Academy of Participation hosted at Herengracht 401 a group formed to take care of the very simple and practical task of preparing lunch and dinner for all those who attended. While chopping, stewing, and stirring, certain thematic trajectories intuitively emerged and were explored:
- Limits as possibilities
- Cultures of cooking
- Knowledge sharing as flavour sharing
- Food taboos
- Relative umami
- Mapping food idioms of different languages
- Alternative uses
- Filth and cleaning
- Yesterday’s leftovers as today’s new
- Choreographies of the kitchen
- Food stories
- Food histories
- Daily routines
Grocery Shopping 
Peppers to chop 
All hands on deck 
In between snacks 
Tactic for talking about food taboos 
Food taboo stories 
Ask your table partner a question 
Pick one or two 
A mountain of peas 
Lunch 
Turkish salad lessons 
Recipes 
Recipes 
Germination 
Germination 
Germination 
Produce from germination 
Dinner 
A fresh start 
Medicine 
Dinner 
Dinner 
Dinner stories 
Dinner stories 
Dinner stories 
Lunch 
Shared memories of a beloved pea soup 
The aftermath 
Lunch 
A reveal of aroma 
Couscous 
Turkish cooking lessons 
Dinner Stories 
Preparations 
Sweeping the dining room – erasing the traces.
At the end of the week, a publication was produced called, Cooking and Conviviality: Not Quite A Reader. Functioning as a souvenir, the document included documentation, references, personal notes, and reflections on cooking and eating together.
For an impression of the kitchen soundscape, you can listen to it here.
European Academy of Participation Course in Amsterdam ran in parallel with the one in Bucharest and in Marseille. Amsterdam specifically focussed on peer-learning and horizontal knowledge exchange and thereby building an alternative space of learning. Practitioners from various disciplines developed their understanding, their knowledge and their perspective on participatory art practice.