MICUL MICUL
Maya Minder (CH)
In Japan seaweed is well recognized as a daily condiment and staple food. Consumption of seaweed stayed alive since ancient times and until today to create a genuine rich food culture around seaweed. Even scientists remarked by eating seaweed over many centuries a lateral gene transfer occurred within the Japanese microbiome. Nori, Kombu, Wakame and other seaweeds are also slowly entering Western diet and food cultures. Could these promising ingredients really represent an alternative to current diets to overcome the Anthropocene?
In recent years, artist and cook Maya Minder has been several times in Japan for her ongoing research project Homo Photosyntheticus - Lab and Green Open Food Evolution that is part of Creative Europe More-than-Planet project. For her last research trip in April 2023, Minder conducted cooking workshops as social sculptures in Tokyo and Osaka and looked into aqua-farming of Nori in Ariake-sea in Kumamoto prefecture.
In April, Maya Minder also launched her online project MICUL MICUL, a collaboration with the Swiss Embassy in Japan. MICUL MICUL project is a hybrid of cooking and evolutionary theory in digital and physical manifestation. A playful webpage asking reciprocally to share seaweed recipes and cooking together as performative intervention.
During her foodculture days’s presentation Minder will give an overview and share the outcomes about her several journeys.
www.more-than-planet.eu
www.algae.vitality.swiss
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Maya Minder (*1983) is an artist who lives and works in Zurich. She is the founder of the Open Science Lab at Zentralwaescherei, Zurich, and curator and organizer of projects and festivals, some of which are developed in co-production with the International Hackteria Society. She studied Art History at the University of Zurich and holds an MFA from the Zurich University of the Arts.
“Cooking thus transforms us”, is a framework Maya Minder weaves like a string throughout her work. Cooking allows her to reveal the metaphor of the transformation of raw nature into cooked culture, combining it with the evolutionary ideas of a symbiotic coexistence between plants, animals, and humans. She creates entanglements between human commodities and an animistic perception of nature. A table of diversity, not yet digested. Following the Biohacker, Maker, and Thirdspace movement she uses grassroots ideas, safe zones, and citizen science to enable collective storytelling through food and cooking.
Among many other institutions that have recognized her work, you can find Pro Helvetia, ZHdK Department of Design and Fine Arts, Ars Electronica, Kunsthalle Zurich, Gubler Hablützel Stiftung, and ZHAW.
@gasthaus_kitchenlab
http://www.mayaminder.ch/