Training for the Underwater(ed) Land

Economies, and cosmologies, focusing on BAK’s immediate surroundings and its wider setting of Utrecht as a way to engage with the spatial configurations and social transformations of the city. If the present and persistent not-yet of Morocco is the undernourishing of its already scarce water resources, and that of the Netherlands is the imminent threat of submergence, QANAT proposes treating them in common, as entangled ecologies. It also asks of creative and cultural practitioners: How can we sustain the memories, imaginations, and desires emergent in waters’ worlds?

This intervention knots a theoretical thread between QANAT’s proposals at BAK-Utrecht and the life-worlds both immanent and emergent in the politics and poetics of water infrastructure in Morocco. It proposes a concerted listening to speech/acts in moments we may otherwise consider to be problematic, parasitical, pointless, or pestersome, or at worse vacant, vacuous, or value-less. As breakdown is endemic to infrastructure, it continuously fosters the potential emergence of temporal, and possibility temporary, socialities, solidarities, and communitas in moments such as those above. Rather than aspiring to utopian political forms, here, breakdowns in liquid, resource, and human flow (present or yet to come) provide grounds for unearthing modes of relating to one another in common with system failures around us.

The first iteration of “The Scene of the Crime” took place in BAK (Basis voor Actuele Kunst), Utrecht (Netherlands) and was led by Nassim Azarzar, A. George Bajalia, Jérôme Giller within the frame of the QANAT Collective’s training.

Inspired by three forms of triangular iterations of socio-cultural power and flow, “The Scene of the Crime” is an invitation to act out, to play at, the relations between nature and nurture, culture and capitalism.
Beginning with elemental relations between earth, water, and air, the game is one of categories. The introduction of Claude Levi-Strauss’ “Culinary Triangle” demands the reorganization of these elemental categories, and asks the player make a choice - how to process this matter? Should it be smoked, combusted in a social gathering of fire and air? Or boiled, alone in a kitchen over a pot of water? Or consumed raw, in its most original state? To this we re-iterate the triangle on our own terms.
Should it be synthesized, subject to extraction, or gathered as is?

At this point the player must also consider their own geo-social context. This game emerged in Utrecht, Holland. The Treaty of Utrecht defined the terms of the “Triangular Trade” of humans as commodities, the exchange of slaves from Africa for gold and grain from the Americas, led by the Anglo-Dutch alliance with Spanish and Mediterranean sea-power and Labor.

Here the game takes another turn. We are no longer tracing history, but tracing and perhaps training
for the Not-Yet. Step into the future and choose an area of affiliation. Into what zone will you step, geographically, politically, socially, affectively? Gather your resources, and make a choice. Protect what you have, steal from others, or collaborate for a common goal. Will you re-tell the political history that has formed your region of choice, making the same choices, mistakes or otherwise? Or will you chart a new path? Nature, or nurture?

Humanity’s desire to exert control over its environment is perhaps best seen from above. The hinterland exhibits an intricate tessellation of productive landscapes. Within these striking images of competing lines and fields, we bear witness to the constant struggle between urbanization and food production. What does it mean today to live off the land? Entangled Ecologies aims to offer a prism through which to view the complex (entangled) relations between food, design, landscape, and infrastructure across various geographies.

Ruminations with artist, chef and educator, Asia Komarova, on ways algae might make up a larger part of our eventual diets.

House-made spirulina tagliatelle, tofu ragù, local watercress

Part two looked at conditions of alienation and uprootedness. A popular food trope in sci-fi films are meals that evoke a form of disgust. Food is reduced to mere practicality, solely to provide the body with sufficient nutrients. Its unappealing and synthetic appearance communicates that there is no known local anymore, only the abstract global.

The structure of a goûter sets the stage for a free flow of conversation.
So many of our fondest memories are nuritied by recipes that carry generational knowledge and know-how. They can create a sense of rootedness in a certain place and history, a way to self-identify via a particular culture or practise. In our goûter - part one, we gathered over a pottage, a classic comfort food, while we listened to each others' stories.

Rooted A menu

Go into the garden and gather what you see. Put it in a pot. Let it simmer for long enough to become a comforting mass of liquid warmth. Pottage, the medieval term for a semi-liquid dish, typically based on cereal, was a mainstay of diets for centuries. A simple dish that made its way into various cuisines and communities across the world. The embodiment of comfort food.

Carrot, celery, kale, oat, leek, mushrooms, onions, laurel, berries, herbs, nostalgia, comfort, familiarity, ritual, social nourishment, subjective past

‘Rooted-Uprooted’ was developed as part of the QANAT “Training for the Underwater(ed) Land” by the research group ‘Entangled Ecologies’ (Louisa Aarrass, Sara Frikech and Francesca Masoero), in the framework of the “Trainings for the Not Yet” at BAK in December 2019.

Oasis
A fertile landscape nourished by velvety chickpeas, lemon, tahini, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper. From this luxurious soil, crispy greenery springs.

Desert
Golden cliffs of grains make the couscous ground of this scape. As rocks or earthly constructions, cumuli of tfaya’s garnishment stand out. This sweet and salty Moroccan sauce combines onions, raisins, cinnamon, ras el hanout and honey reduced for hours.

Waste-land
A scape of dark rice punctuated by industrial container-shaped tubers, refined at high temperatures in olive oil with coarse sea salt, and an alchemy of herbs. An ominous, thick tomato-based pool accompanies this scape, served as a garnishment for its’ barren soil.

Productive land
Rich and fertile, this landscape aches to be used. Green lentils made Earth brown by hours of simmering, topped with kale, watercress, spring onions all radiant in a shiny extra virgin olive oil bath.

Underwatered land
Salty, blue-green sea where once was land. Lots of productive algaes to supplement our future diets: spirulina, chlorella, nori, kombu.