Crowded kitchens – Exploring food access and collective practices
In our society, food is a commodity that can only be accessed through financial means. This creates a system in which many people are excluded and unable to access adequate amounts and varieties of food to ensure food security. Within this context, this thesis explores how the capitalist and neoliberal systems govern access to food, and how this translates into food insecurity and its multidimensional effects. The thesis aim is to understand how to collectively imagine and prototype food practices that can challenge these systemic inequalities and encourage collaborative action. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature, case studies analysis and design ethnography, the research seeks to understand how the system functions and which practices and elements could be employed to counter it. The goal is to create an experimental design project that can bring people together through collective food practices, collectivising needs and resources. The ultimate aim is to shift the focus from the individual consumption of commodified food towards the collaborative practices around food. Through a series of events in various contexts and within different groups, the project prototypes a system that uses collective practices in different situations through mutual aid and care.
Research, exploration, and experimentation is collected and reproduced through the thesis main output: a cookbook for many hands. As collaborative cooking is mainly carried by human connection, the experience of the cooking experiments is relived through narrated recipes. The food stands in dialogue with statements drawing from the thesis research on food security, food access, and collective provision through careful relation. Photographs, sketches, notes, and alterations illustrate the chaotic choreography of collective cooking. The cookbook also comprehends guidance gathering knowledge and starting points for a system of collaborative food practices to emerge from society, proposing the act of collectivised and mutual aid for everyone.
Download the cookbook and other materials from the project
