gRig: Open Sauces, Brussels (Belgium)

Open Sauces, Saturday 22nd November 2008
FoAM Lab (Koolmijnenkaai 30-34 Quai Des Charbonnages, B-1080 Brussels, Belgium).

FoAM and the Guild for Reality Integrators and Generators (gRig) invited you to a synaesthetic dinner, to jointly sample, celebrate and debate the future of food.

Food is a nutritious and delectable product of our reciprocal, sustaining relationship with the environment. It is also one of the oldest cultural expressions, rooted in hospitality and sharing. As the gastronome Brilliat-Savarin noted three centuries ago, “the discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.”

Open Sauces unfolded in a sequence of experimental courses, matched with drinks, improvised music and esteemed guests. While savouring the foods, the guests were engaged in table conversations, sharing experiences, recipes and ingredients needed to demystify cultural, environmental, technical and ethical aspects of contemporary food systems. From molecular gastronomy to fair trade, from permaculture to food-tracking from open source to open sauces, we blended seemingly unrelated elements of our food chain. In an era riddled with environmental and cultural anomalies, these transdisciplinary and trans-local connections will become one of the keys to our survival, as individuals, communities and species.

With: Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Kultivator, Sher Doruff, Maja Kuzmanovic, Alok Nandi, Sneha Solanki, Wietske Maas, Matteo Pasquinelli, Kate Rich, Femke Snelting, Andreas Strauss, Maki Ueda, Allison Zinder and other local and trans-local food experts and enthusiasts.

The extended menu is available online at http://libarynth.org/open_sauces_reader

Photo gallery: http://fo.am/image/tid/443

gRig is a group of European artistic and cultural operators gathered around a mutual purpose; to research and create meaningful situations in hybrid (or mixed) reality, where digital media and physical materials, objects and spaces are increasingly intertwined. Partners in the project: FoAM (Brussels, Belgium), Time's up (Linz, Austria), InterMedia (Oslo, Norway), Interactive Institute (Stockholm, Sweden), Nadine (Brussels, Belgium) and KID KIBLA (Maribor, Slovenia).
Project is supported as a part of the Culture 2000 program.