Andres Jacques opens Transspecies Kitchen in Belgium
Cooking, digestion, growth and decomposition are interconnected processes that create collaboration between different life forms. This is the central idea of the Transspecies Kitchen project. Andres Jack And the Office of Political Innovation (OFFPOLINN) marble Waste materials from the stone mining industry are reused and transformed into a sustainable outdoor kitchen. Combining ecology, politics and sustainable food preparation, the kitchen at the Middelheim Museum in Antwerp, Belgium, is powered not by gas or electricity but by molecular interactions. Acting as a collective digestive system, the Transspecies Kitchen shows that metabolism is a shared process that depends on cooperation and not just on humans.
All images by José Hevia
Kitchen activities as a group activity
Transspecies Kitchen was born in 2021 from a collaboration between New York and Madrid-based OFFPOLINN and stone processing company M-Marble Project. This unique kitchen aims to decarbonize cooking by using fermentation as the main cooking method. In Transspecies Kitchen, cooking is not just a physical act, but an ecological and political one. The kitchen embodies the idea of ”kitchening” as a realm of collective life, emphasizing the interdependence of all life forms. The ultimate expression of this is enzymology, the science of fermentation with bacteria and fungi. This process allows the kitchen to embrace decarbonized cooking and become an active participant in the politics of nurturing life.
The kitchen itself is made from marble waste, a by-product of the stone mining industry. Typically, only 30% of quarried stone is used industrially, the rest is discarded as waste. Transspecies Kitchen defies this waste by reusing discarded marble and transforming it with minimal modification. This rough and raw architectural approach fits with the project's wider strategy of deindustrializing and reducing waste.
Acting as a collective digestive system, the Transspecies Kitchen demonstrates that metabolism is a shared process that relies on the cooperation of non-humans. The kitchen blurs the boundaries between cooking, eating, and decomposition, showing them as part of a continuous molecular progression.
From July 2024, Transspecies Kitchen will be active in the Middelheim Museum Forest throughout the summer. It will host the event “Antwerfägier”, which explores the interplay between eating and being eaten in Antwerp's ecosystem. In the face of soil toxicity and the climate crisis in Flanders, Antwerfägier aims to foster new transspecies alliances based on mutual care. These alliances are experienced through the human senses as a range of physical and emotional responses, from taste and smell to intoxication and heartburn.
