Eating the Archive is a multi-faceted project exploring food as a portal to accessing and
preserving culture, surpassing generations and geographical distance. For diasporic communities, food is a common means of connecting with our ancestors, culture and even ourselves. But in the face of climate change, certain ingredients are going extinct. In Morocco alone, native sage is dwindling in numbers due to corporate developments, and sardines stocks are over-exploited due to heightened fishing technologies. This project aims to ask, what else will be lost with the extinction of these beings, and how can the sacred act of cooking and eating, preserve and protest against this.
For the first iteration, A.MAL and 422 Arts put out an open call for local residents of Manchester to come up with an idea, to host any type of event related to food and the topic, with a fee, a budget for expenses and the offer of a Food Hygiene Level 2 qualification. The three selected events were;
EVENT 1: Thursday 13th July 2023: Taiba’s Graduation Party for her Daughter
The first event was a private party hosted by Taiba, a proud mum of 6 from Afghanistan. Her proposal revolved around sharing traditional Afghani food, music and culture, and, beaming with pride for her daughter, a recent graduation from college, wanted to celebrate her achievements. Closed to only her family and friends, what transpired was a gorgeous evening of Qabli palow ,dompaline, bolani , onion bagi and so on, and lots of dancing and twirling in brightly coloured traditional dress.
EVENT 2: Thursday 20th July 2023: Return to Koshary by Heidi El Kholy
This evening was one of restimulation, connecting through straddling identities, and what exactly it means, and what it means to be native. With pink and purple soft furnishing, a plethora of dried flowers and Cairo old cinema projected on the walls, Heidi hosted a beautiful feminine space. With interactive activities like crushing garlic in a pestle and mortar, conversation prompts and beautiful poetry spoken aloud by Heidi, the evening was intimate and intense.
EVENT 3: Thursday 27th July: Chaat Stories with Satwant Bansal
Satwant Bansal was born in Nairobi, Keny, before moving to the Punjab region of India to then settle in the UK. Satwants proposal was focused around the many flavours she learnt to cook with and her complicated relationship to food and gender; from being forced to learn to cook as the oldest sibling in her childhood to now loving to cook for her own family. A big family style table, with saris as decoration and bollywood bhangra tunes blaring out, some 30 visitors passed bowls of chaat while listening to her stories.
For the second iteration of Eating the Archives, A.MAL invited Hannaa Hamdache to cook and perform her 'Mixed/Other Menue' at Bidston Observatory Artistic Research Centre. A space for artists to try out new idea and research interests together.
