Cooking Sections: Edible Maps and Climavore Proposals
Alon Schwabe and Daniel Fernández Pascual, the duo behind Cooking Sections, use food as a medium to explore ecology, politics, and history. Their project 'The Empire Remains Christmas Pudding' (2013–ongoing) recreates a 1928 Empire Marketing Board recipe to trace shifting supply chains and Britain's colonial legacy. 'Climavore' (2015–ongoing) proposes eating according to climate events, using drought-resistant ingredients and filtering bivalves to improve ecological health. The article, part of Afterall Journal 49, was written by May Rosenthal Sloan and published on 8 April 2020. It argues that artists like Cooking Sections make academic research tangible, linking everyday eating to global systems.
Key facts
- Cooking Sections is a duo: Alon Schwabe and Daniel Fernández Pascual.
- They describe themselves as 'spatial practitioners' with backgrounds in architecture and performance.
- The Empire Remains Christmas Pudding uses a 1928 recipe from the Empire Marketing Board.
- Ingredients included Australian currants, South African candied peel, eggs from the Irish Free State, nutmeg from the British West Indies, and Cypriot or Palestinian brandy.
- Climavore proposes eating according to climate events, not just local sourcing.
- Early Climavore iterations used drought-resistant ingredients and seaweed/bivalves for polluted shorelines.
- The article cites a study on ocean acidification causing mass extinction 66 million years ago.
- Dr Michael Henehan warned that a 0.25 pH unit drop can precipitate ecological collapse.
Entities
Artists
- Alon Schwabe
- Daniel Fernández Pascual
- Cooking Sections
- May Rosenthal Sloan
Institutions
- Afterall
- Afterall Journal
- Empire Marketing Board
- University of Chicago Press
Locations
- British Empire
- Australia
- South Africa
- Irish Free State
- British West Indies
- Cyprus
- Palestine
- Britain
Sources
- Afterall —