In 2020 Sien Vanmaele, who had already been coached by Laika, initiated the research project Cooking workshops in preparation for the end of the world in which she searches for an answer to the question: ‘Can I save the world by cooking?’. Sien is fearful about the future for herself and others. She would like to find ways of working with others to restructure that fear so as to build a new world and she figures that cooking is the ideal approach. She has studied sustainable ways of producing and consuming food and is building on that knowledge by following courses, interviewing experts and literature studies. Subjects she is researching include seaweed, salt-tolerant plants, fungi, fermentation, insects, zero waste, cultured meat, forest bathing, ...

Each part is rounded off with a short try-out in the form of a performative cooking workshop for the public, either virtually or live. Once the series of cooking workshops is complete, she will work with Laika to condense all her new-found knowledge into a live performance. She already successfully did this in SEA MEAL, which premiered at Zomer van Antwerpen 2022 and got selected for the theatre festivals in Flanders and the Netherlands (2023). And with LAND MEAL, a high mass of bacteria and ferments presented for the first time in a pilot version during the BLOK-BLOC 2023 festival in Antwerp. Later the closing piece AIR MEAL will follow.

If you are interested in Sien’s research project, perhaps you can help her organize presentations of the various workshops. If you know of local partners (producers, experts, etc.) who might be able to make an interesting contribution to her research, don’t hesitate to contact her at sien@laika.be.