Photosynthetic Cookbook
Research class by Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky
What can we learn from photosynthesis? In this workshop we want to explore ways to make the process of photosynthesis tangible and learn how it tastes. How is light being transformed into glucose in the process? How is sugar / energy being passed on within the ecosystem?
Inspired by Mississauga Nishnaabeg writer, musician, and academic Leanne Betasamosake Simpson I propose to think of land as pedagogy. We will hike to the outskirts of Antwerp, including its forests, wetlands, salt marshes and dunes. I think of hiking as a form of activism. In conversations and observations we will learn with and from each other and our surroundings, look at photosynthetic plants and the transformative processes, make sketches, collect ideas, plant specimens and images. We will read texts related to photosynthesis / endosymbioses, especially the texts by the evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis will be central.
At the academy we will set up an experimental lab / kitchen, work with the material and ideas we collected on the land, look at the processes under the microscope and experiment with preparing wild food and sorbets from foraged plants.
Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky
Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky (1980 born in Bern, Switzerland) lives and works in Berlin. Her work is influenced by her upbringing on the edge of the forest with its inhabitants as her kin. Using personal and scientific stories of plants she works around the relationship of organisms and the evolutionary history of photosynthesis. She works with analogue photography and participative formats. He artist book Feeding on Light was published by Roma Publishing/NL in 2023. Since 2017 she runs Between Us and Nature – A Reading Club with Sina Ribak in collaboration with Zabriskie Buchladen für Kultur und Natur. She has shown solo i.e. at Kunstfort Vijfhuizen/NL, Bäckerei/Berlin, and Aargauer Kunsthaus/CH and in group exhibitions i.e. Bärenzwinger/DE, Colomboscope/LK, C/O Berlin/DE, Kunsthall Stavanger/NO. Kovacovsky has a B.F.A. from the Rietveld Academie/NL. She was a guest lecturer at Hochschule für Design Karlsruhe/DE, Rietveld Academie/NL, KASK/BE and KaE Stipendium-HKU/NL. Currently she is attending the Goldrausch KünstlerInnenprojekt in Berlin.
Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky is researcher at the Royal Academy.
evafiore.kovacovsky@ap.be
>> This research class is part of the Research Week during the annual research festival ARTICULATE.
