Scenarios about Europe, Scenario 2
curated by Esra Sarigedik Öktem
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig, Germany
2011

The Ontology of Eating
I installed one vitrine next to the bookshelf it resembles natural science museums or a cabinet at home hung on the wall and slowly filled by jars and dried vegetables I harvested at different places for a couple of months, collected, foraged at different places where i went placed what i found in the vitrine in a ritualistic way in an archeological way analysed conserved labeled and after a few months, the filled vitrine opened to others invited people with the theme of collecting ideas and shared the food even though the food eventually exits, this nourishment will retain a memory, a knowledge incorporated into the body vitrine as a symbol of organisms store of knowledge filled and emptied.
During this past autumn, I foraged and harvested ingredients in Germany and Japan and preserved them using traditional techniques. I have acquired a vitrine that is permanently located in Berlin, and it will be used to store the preserved foods that I collect over a period of time.

I have placed the vitrine on display in a bookstore and invited friends for an evening of conversation and food with the ingredients that were archived in the vitrine. In a traditional sense, archives can be revisited and the records remain static and tangible. This vitrine, however, will function as an archive that makes explicit this sort of knowledge acquisition. The preserved food will be consumed in a way that physically depletes the vitrine, but the memory will be re-internalized and transformed into the eaters’ bodies.