Natalija Gucheva, The Kinship Cookbook

What if we could use language in a way that would escape the predicament of being a functional instrument? What if our stories could invite the lichen, butterflies, bacteria, and fungi to teach us how to grief, love and grow? How does our forming of kin influence our collective responsibility?

The Kinship Cookbook is a proposition to gather, speculate, and share knowledge around the forming of inclusive infrastructures using recipes as a methodology. The process of assembly, based on gatherings revolving around different topics is essential in the collective manifest which the cookbook accumulates through time. Set to challenge traditional societal norms, it provides an alternative rooted in world building and speculation, and ultimately provides a new ground for collective reflection.

Using the emergent kinships as a prototype for the visualisation of the content of the recipes, the installation invites the audience to enter a possible world in which care and kindness is embedded in the formulation of these elements, and therefore forms a living, growing work.