Body: The Vessel of Change

The human self is displaced in the insecure global regime – the Anthropocene, anthropos standing for human in Greek. We threaten ourselves in a deeply existential manner. The human no longer benefits the metabolism of the entirety. Only trying to satisfy its own appetite and materialistic desires. We are feeling the collateral quake of the metabolic rift and that makes us uncomfortable and numb, all while being pushed to release our tight hold over culturally rooted dogmas.

A crawling moss in a humid forest, warm belly churning the material just thrown into it, tourist-filled Amsterdam, or kefir grains in a jar of milk turning lactose into acid. Who are actors and What is the location of these thoughts and processes? The space in which metabolism takes place can also be distinctly metabolic. Termite mounds, the household, the kitchen, the city, the body or even a jar. They all talk back, sends impulses through forces, bonds, and interactions within and beyond them. Space, enclosed or not, is a vessel of animate events, but space is then animated in return. It becomes animate in relation to things, a series of exchanges. The industrial metropolis, the modern city — where provincial, transborder matter gathers in a mass exchange. It is the City of Becoming. Matter – physical, emotional or cultural – cannot be completely eradicated. It can shift its form, but never dissipate. And how this process of creation and transformation is accelerated is through provocation and participation. It’s the friction between particles which drives the metabolic process in this container. Healing the metabolic rift doesn't need to be an anarchist act after all. Initiative, collaboration and observation can bring nature and human-driven culture together. They are intertwined in many ways.

Japanese architectural movement with the name Metabolism, which imagined buildings that function in symbiosis with organic life. By acknowledging that buildings cannot be built with the starry-eyed idea of immortality, they created discourse around the ephemerality of architecture in post-World War 11 Japan. By questioning how it can be improved towards more organic and self-sustaining being. Movement within a settlement is what makes the whole system function. How material or energy moves from one space to another. Mass architecture is built in a closed circuit, ephemeral as it is, rather than opening up to the other, the natural.

The kitchen, the traditionally gendered space of preparing food, has shape-shifted in times of need. Soviet kitchens and urban kitchens in Lima, Peru are prime examples of food spaces which adapt to their socio-political climate. Urban kitchens were started during Peru’s second Military Government the late seventies. Rigorous economic times created an occasion for such ollas populares — popular pots in Spanish, volunteer citizens collecting leftovers from markets and offering cheap meals to the most affected. They are used by a community and act as complementary to private ones, which have ceased to be regularly used as a result of the propagation of this communal tool. In the current unstable cycle, communal kitchens exist in private homes, serving the public. This act enables spaces for the formation of political communities and agencies that transcend the notion of cooking and eating. It breaks certain societal dualities. Public — private, family — neighbourhood, female — male and how the local can stir the political pot.

Soviet authorities considered kitchens and private apartments dangerous to the regime was because they were places people could gather to talk about politics. In reality, this was the only non-state-owned meeting space. Samizdats, magnitizdats, bone music, and western radio. It became a hotbed for culture to thrive free from the regime. In Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, Anya Von Bremzen describes food in the USSR as purely … fuel for survival and socialist labor. In 1959, an exhibition of achievements between the United States and the Soviet Union took place in New York City and Moscow. While the Soviets displayed major technological achievements such as satellites and nuclear-powered ships, the Americans recreated displays of cars, abstract art, fashion items, music, televisions and most notably a model-house that an average worker could afford in the US. The kitchen within this house was the highlight of the exhibition. In what is known as the "Kitchen Debate", US Vice President Richard Nixon, and USSR Premier Nikita Khrushchev debated over the lifestyles of their respective citizens while standing in the American house model.

Khrushchev: On politics, we will never agree with you. For instance, Mikoyan likes very peppery soup. I do not. But this does not mean that we do not get along.

Nixon: You can learn from us, and we can learn from you. There must be a free exchange. Let the people choose the kind of house, the kind of soup, the kind of ideas that they want.

The kitchen serves as a locus for discourse and circulation of ideologies. It is within this condition that the house or any other space becomes the locus of economy in the original meaning of the word as oikonomia — economy or house management in its original use. How multiple characters, relate to each other in order to maintain a balance within a shared space. The economy of co-existence in which the necessity to metabolize becomes apparent. Whether that be food being digested or the relations between holobiontic creatures. Looking into metabolic methods of being, can open up pathways for a more sustainable and inclusive dialogues in a shared location. How a space functions in symbiosis with its dwellers is important to any metabolic process. As a reciprocal exchange, symbiosis includes, the kindness of strangers, the metabolic flow of gifts, by which the other is no longer a separate entity. Queering the mind towards the unknown opens up doors for a diverse co-dependent self.

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