Kitchen tools offer a support structure that generates social, environmental, and spatial situations, due to the gestures they involve and relations they create. In this work, the tool is reduced to its most archaic form—the hand, and, by extension, the body. Rather than inventing new tools, the focus is placed on the tactility of making and sharing food, in the most simple, intimate, and domestic form.
This conversation between Asako Iwama, Iris Lacoudre, and Camille Sineau unfolds in their separate kitchens, in front of screens, in three different cities. Their initial idea—to prepare a shared meal around a large sofra, as a way to celebrate the hand as a tool—was suddenly impossible. They were cut off from one another, prohibited from moving, touching, or sharing. What should have been a public gathering and performance moved to the intimate sphere of their respective apartments. The very absence of that dinner reveals how everyday cooking gestures are shared across borders, beyond the confines of private kitchens.
Critical Cooking Show is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and the Istanbul Design Biennial within the context of its fifth edition, Empathy Revisited: Designs for more than one.
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