The Cookbook (training course)

“The Cookbook” aims to be a community art & food project focused in culinary as an art form and its numerous interconnections with art, design, philosophy, science and technology. By exploring ‘gastronomy’ as a concept, rather than a visual or aesthetic curiosity, we want to experiment with food as a ‘relational’ and to develop performances where the audience (rather than the work itself) is the major element and the food functions as the key ingredient able to interconnect participants and cultures.
The proposal is to build a live experience with a group of people (participants and locals) in a particular location (Picardie, France) for a given period of time (twenty days), documenting their daily-life activities concerning food and keeping a diary where everyone can not only write down recipes and other kitchen tips, but also reveal the possible interconnections between home cooking and many other social activities. That diary may be a weblog, an actual notebook, a set of photographs, a group of shopping lists, some audio and video recordings, and many other approaches to the idea of “food documentation”. The most important dimension is that the diary (i.e. “The Cookbook”) must be portable, shareable and spreadable. And that it can make people join together around many different culinary possibilities.
“The Cookbook” aims to become an artistic work that is physical and ethereal, conceptual and motional, archaeological and dreamland; at the same time contributing to the knowledge of a singularity: the food culture being produced within a family, a home, a group of friends, and a handful of cultures.

Important Information: the project aims to take place in Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, France, from the 1st of August to the 21st. Considering the specificities of the project Nomadways will be looking for organizations (partners) and participants with a background that somehow fits the purpose of the project: it might be a knowledge/connection with the culinary art; it might be relation with the cinematic and photographic tools; or simple a theoretical perspective on the matter.