Food Forum IDK

From 1 to 3 June, the “Off the Menu” research group hosted a culinary environmental humanities forum in Herrsching am Ammersee that brought together academic researchers and creative practitioners working with themes such as preservation, memory, and temporality. We believe, in short, that eating is an example of what Timothy Morton calls “being ecological” (2018) and, together with the participants, the forum’s goal was to interrogate what we call the planetary turn in food (studies).

As everyone gathered by the lake at the Bund Naturschutz Villa, the participants were invited to mingle and snack while artist Caique Tizzi introduced his practice and how he translates research into edible installations. The first session then focused on fruit and ripeness, pickles and acār, and was accompanied by a tasting of childhood memories in the form of pickled German lemon. After a communal dinner, we went on a nocturnal night walk that was guided by the Bund Naturschutz, where we were invited to mimic how other species experience light and sound and touch.

The second day was packed from dusk to dawn with thinking, eating, and thinking-through-eating. From textures of water and rhythms of milk to microbial memory and rehydrated fish, the three sessions were accompanied by the communal cooking of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and complemented by a keynote from Kyla Wazana Tompkins about her conceptual thinking on deviant matter. The boundaries between kitchen and classroom blurred; participants and hosts had their hands full of shiitake as they prepared a dinner of fake eel while watching a video essay on lion fish in the Mediterranean.

On our final day, the last session brought us full circle – from fruit to crops – with two moving meditations on corn, cornscapes, family ties, and the migration of humans and nonhumans. The forum ended with lunch at Kloster Andechs, moving the group from down by the lake to high on the hill, showcasing the Bavarian landscape that we were surrounded by before everyone set out to return to their own corners of Europe and beyond.

Written by Philine Schiller