Transhumant Cookings

Barcelona (Cataluña), Blanca, Valle del Ricote (Murcia), Carabanchel (Madrid), Villanueva de la Vera (Extremadura)

The project emerged after seven years of work at hablarenarte in the Planta Alta residency space in Madrid, where food and the table naturally became spaces for artists, collectives, and communities to come together. From there, Cocinas Transumantes (Transhumant cookings) unfolds now in over four territories frome the Spanish state, connecting the urban and rural, the migrant and the anchored, the popular and the contemporary.

One kitchen, four territories:

Concinas Transhumantes is structured in 4 collaborative laboratories, each one of them rooted in a geographical context and a social specific one, and leaded by local cultural agents in collaboration with invited artists:

• Barcelona (Cataluña) · Laboratory «Entraña Migrante» · Local agent: La Creatura · Artists: Las Jamaiconas · With Sindillar/Sindihogar · Catering Saberes y Sabores

• Blanca, Valle del Ricote (Murcia) · Laboratory «Acous-coustic Sessions» · Local Agent: La Casa de los Engarces · Artists: Zineb Achoubie y Lorenzo Sandoval. With: colectivo Al’ Akhawat · Nat Llorente · La Cuarta Piel · AsoKultura Blanca

• Carabanchel (Madrid) · Workshop «Fermentando Territorios» · Agente local: hablarenarte / Planta Baja · Collectives and artists: Morfo · Club Atlético Los Amores · Asociación de Vecinas de Comillas

• Villanueva de la Vera (Extremadura) · Laboratoy «Cuchara de Palo» · Local Agent: El Cinorrio · Ally Collectives: Asoc. de Mujeres La Zarza · Asoc. Psii · Ringu Rango · Los Saltagavias · El Efecto Verdolaga · El Madroñal · EPA! Jóvenes Rurales · ADICOVER

Each laboratory works from its territory specificity: the diaspora and the migration in Barcelona, the andalusí patrimony shared between Murcia and Marruecos, the culinary memory of Carabanchel's women, or the pastoral culture of Villanueva de la Vera. In every case, the food acts as a point of entrace, as an excuse and as common language.

How does the laboratory works?

The workshops are organized into eight sessions of collaborative work with partner groups. They are spaces for cultural mediation that expand our understanding of what it means to create culture: we cook, we chat, we record, we listen, we improvise, we knit. Our goal is not a final product, but a process: the connection that forms around a pot, a shared recipe, or an oral account.

Final encounter: <<Kitchen pedagogies>>

The project concludes with a gathering that brings together all the participants. The common thread is cooking pedagogies: ways to transmit, remember, forget, and remix knowledge that is both technical and emotional. Each workshop presents tangible materials—films, sound pieces, fabrics, performances, recipes—from a transdisciplinary perspective.
Ways of learning, teaching, transmitting, and passing on that evoke emotion and taste; a feeling we urgently need in this world.

Cocinas Transhumantes is a project to talk art, with the support of the Ministry of Culture (Aid to Cultural Projects with Special Social Impact).