Activation
Recipes for a mouth / from a mouth of a river
This activation is an invitation to think about local foods, their source, their preparation and the way and with whom we eat it. An invitation to work on a recipe produced either individually or in collaboration with each other. But also with our brackish waters, their environmental and industrial challenges, and the histories of resistance and ancestry behind daily dishes as a means of interacting and understanding estuarian bodies of water. A reclamation that is not through data, nor charts, but, in the words of Claudia Lastra, through our ‘tongue as a reclaimed disruptive technology and valid form of enquiry.’
Recipes can be real, can be fictional or speculative.
How can you relate to your body of water through food, through cooking, through preparing. How is a recipe a vessel for local ingredients and knowledges? How do we interact with estuaries and their complex historical, social and in these cases industrial nature through an investigation directed by your taste? How will your recipe creates a dialogue between history, people and organisms, and their multiple environments?
Recipe 1:
From (the mouth of a river)
Think about a smell, coming from your estuary – what recipe is this smelling inspiring you to write, prepare or share
• What will you use (foods, skills, stories, local ingredients)?
• What does its preparation entail?
• Who will you be sharing it with, tasting it with. Where will this be?
• What story does your recipe tell?
Shared during Tidal Diaries C4PP
session 4 'to pollute - to cultivate'
In Brazil we understood the multiplicity of worlds behind acarajé, as well as in Bahia's moquecas. In Colombia it was fried fish.
We ate these foods every day, in all water shores, cooked by the same hands of the people who shared their stories with us. These recipes embody livelihoods, resistances, mangroves and waters. In the Thames it was fish and chips and the usual dichotomy between Cod or Haddock.
This activation also draws from recipes and local knowledges of cooking with estuaries. Two sources brought to the classroom were the fictional recipes from Fran Gallardo and Claudia Lastra, Talking dirty: tongue first! Recipes from the Mouth of the Thames (London: Arts Catalyst, 2016), and the recipes outcome of the Kitchen Salon, iniva in collaboration with Studio Voltaire - Artist Kitchen Salon Zine (London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 2023).
Pargo Frito y arroz con coco. Nueva Venecia. Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta.
Colombia
Fish and Chips. Southend by Sea, Thames estuary.
UK
Moqueca de lagosta e camarão. São Francisco do Conde, Baía de Todos os Santos.
Brasil
