The fish Knows Everything

This ongoing project is directed at exploring, mapping and visualizing the interdependent relationships between the human and more than human beings and entities and the effects of the changing environmental conditions in very specific, amphibian localities; the Elbe river and its city Hamburg, the Merwede river connected to Rotterdam, and soon the lagoon from which Venice rises.
Here, methods of speculative gastronomy are utilized to address the existential challenges of climate change, pollution and toxicity, global warming, and of the mass extinction of non-human species, through the act of eating. Using speculative gastronomy as a tool, we ignite a rethinking of our relationship with the environment by transforming these abstract qualities into the humanly comprehensible, sensorial realm of food. Therefore, the conclusion of each of these chapters in the project could be expressed as a menu, a dinner event, a lecture or an exhibit.

During the dinner, from one dish to the next, some central themes emerge: the preservation and restoration of the balance between the city, the harbor, the bodies of water, its environment and its human and non-human inhabitants; seasonal rhythms and cycles, and the interruption of these by man-made installations; the definition of edible and inedible, the understanding of species superiority and inferiority, and how language contributes to these ideas; and the clash between human appetites for food and recreation, food politics, and the aquatic entities.