Speculative Kitchens (Pula, Croatia, 2026)

The project takes the kitchen as a site of epistemological aerobics: a “speculative laboratory”, where human and more-than-human metabolisms intertwine. Through collective experiments, participants will expand their decolonial understanding of the interrelation of human and more-than-human heritage. Recognising smell and taste as legitimate modes of knowledge-making will allow participants to ‘become-with’ their collaborative entities through sensorial and embodied forms of understanding.  

Participants will engage with other perspectives of cooking, smelling, fermenting, moving, and tasting. Each activity becomes a critical and creative act, where heritage, rituals and scientific methodologies are seen as tools for the expression of plants and bacteria.

With the workshops, we wish to explore several methodologies of more-than-human interrelation. Through sensory and somatic mapping exercises, we aim to investigate individual and collective olfactory epistemologies, where the expression of smell is a form of communication of more-than-human entities, as odours are derived from locality and always in relationship with the environment. We wish to reframe culinary practices as processes of microbial and environmental agency through collaboration in fermentation and medicinal plant practices. With that, we aim to ignite the discussions on the cultural politics of smell and flavour.

Acknowledgements:

Big thank you to my collaborator, Laura Rodriguez. Thank you to Gallery Novo and Metamedia for facilitating the opportunity to hold this workshop. Thank you to Iceland Art Centre for providing the Travel Grant for this project.

Design by Oleg Šuran

All photos by Nastasja Miletić

Participants: Geraldine Santillana Armas, Nabil Almanssour, Kristina Suryani, Ivan Đukez, nat skoczylas, Laila Kasumagić, Marta Matulić, Milica Denković, Nik Esmeijer, Zara Esra Salomé Visser, Eline Flick, Adam Tuna.