Cooking
research class by Charlotte Koopman
For this research class, the kitchen will be the vantage point from where the participants will provide a daily lunch for everyone taking part in the research week. All conversations will take place in the kitchen while folding, pleating, chopping or stirring. Collaboration is key in this class, the direction taken will be a result of the skills and appetites of our formation.
Central to the kitchen will be Samosa or Sanbusak/ Sambusa/ Samsa/ Somsa/ Singara, an entire family of stuffed pastries or dumplings popular from The Middle East and East Africa to Central Asia and West China of which the Indian Samosa is merely the best known. We might look at design alterations to its traditional triangular or conical shapes and at new narratives of its contents.
We will look at broad and sudden ways of recipe and menu writing as a means of communicating a daily archive of the content of the Samosa. This may include audio/ visuals/ poetry and anything else that may seem suitable.
Prior to the start of the research week we will meet once, to introduce you to the history of the Samosa and the way it transformed during its travels after which our starting point will be the Now Samosa, here and new.
The session will be accompanied by a Simple Soup and The Continuous Hotsauce, to which we will daily add ingredients of our choice in an improvisation involving the produce of the day. There will be no time for rehearsal.
Due to the set time of the daily lunch your presence for this research and production kitchen will be required from 8:00 to 15:00.
No prior computer knowledge or experience in the kitchen is required. And don’t worry, after lunch dishes are no part of this research class!
Charlotte Koopman
Charlotte Koopman founded, together with Hadas Cna’ani, in 2009 a kitchen-collective named Otark. Otark cooks in various contexts and with varying line-ups responding to film, sound, words, the weather. Otark has a strong preference for Handwork / Close-ups (the near) / Off-beat (the far-out) / Slow-mo / Slapstick / Roots and Leaves and works according to the vershki i koreshki principle: foundation versus the way the wind blows, home-cooking on the move, and- as cooks do- works within a framework of a timeline, rhythm, repetition, seasonality and impermanence.
>> This research class is part of the RESEARCH WEEK October 2022 and the annual research festival ARTICULATE 2022.
