The Social Kitchen and the Collective Picnic

By WAC | 4 OCT 2022

In 2007, the best chef in the world at the time, Ferran Adrià, was one of the participating artists in documenta 12. The artistic director, Roger M. Buergel, and his team found it pertinent that Adrià's creative genius was in Kassel, even though he had no presence at that year's edition: because —despite his knowledge, technique and experience— he did not produce “anything” there. There was some consternation and more than a few people wondered what the ultimate purpose of such an occurrence was.

Fifteen years later, ruangrupa invites Britto Arts Trust (a collective from Bangladesh) and Nhà Sàn Collective (from Vietnam) to do, unlike the renowned chef, "something" at documenta fifteen. Let's tackle it.

One of the artistic projects in Kassel by the Bangladesh collective is cooking and sharing of food in PAKGHOR, the social kitchen. To do so, they set up a space —in the middle of a newly created garden next to the documenta Halle— with the aim of gathering around a table and interweaving stories while enjoying food and tea made from the recipe book by the different communities living in the city. The food is a medium for the past and experiences to come alive amidst stories, music, poems and complicity. As could not be otherwise, the meetings are documented and the recipes, in turn, are collected for later publication.

In addition to their installations, the Vietnamese collective invites us to cultivate a garden of plants and migratory narratives -Vietnamese Immigrating Garden-, next to a queer house with sauna, where haircuts or homemade wine are offered and where debates, workshops and parties take place: among them, a collective picnic.

Perhaps in 2007 the "artistic" project was the press conference —two thousand seven hundred accredited journalists— with Ferran Adrià as the star attraction. In 2022 it is what this chef, on the other hand, did not do: stew and make others participants in his techniques, knowledge and experiences. Surprising, all of it. At this point we can't help but think of the World Central Kitchen by the media chef José Andrés. What an impact the "artistic" appropriation of the latter initiative by documenta quince would have had!

Enlightening, however. The evolution of documenta’s interest —from the Adrià star to the constellation of both the social cuisine by the Britto Arts Trust and the Vietnamese picnic by the Nhà Sàn Collective— shows how the sole gaze of the individual is consigned to second plane, in such a way that other, communally constructed one is integrated into the circuit of big international events or meetings. 

Although more than a few people will understand the purpose of this occurrence, the fact that we are talking about cuisine or chefs is not the point, since the aforementioned logic operates in every corner of documenta fifteen. In three lustrums, then, the transition to a "new" cultural territory, albeit homologated within the hegemonic institutional fabric, has taken place.

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