Research in Residence: Anna Puigjaner / MAIO

In the framework of the exhibition Unworlding CUBEX, by researcher in residence Anna Puigjaner, CIVA hosts a performative cooking session and lunch with Merve Bedir, Care., Amy Franceschini (Future Farmers), Zahra Khatri (Cassonade), Mai Ling, Caroline Profanter, and Anna Myjak-Pycia.

Over the last decades, collective cooking has been actively and increasingly practiced by different social groups to build solidarity and resilience. Various groups have incubated and shaped forms of alternative kinship outside prevailing power structures, where pleasure, nourishment, and memories are cultivated. In that framework, the kitchen could become, beyond normative domestic design, a site for radical acts of care, to experiment with alternative economies and shared time and labor. 

Often used as a base for other recipes, broths can also contain stories. While a diverse range of ingredients simmer in the pot, the hours of waiting allow those who carry out care work to talk and exchange ideas. Cooking broth becomes a ritual, a social gathering. 

Care. is a research and educational project addressing care and architecture. It was launched in 2023 in the Department of Architecture at ETH Zürich and focuses on non-conforming bodies to promote new forms of interdependent care through design and theory. Architecture is understood as an instrument to promote forms of care that foster interdependencies among diverse individuals and social groups. Dismantling care regimes based on unevenly distributed and often invisibilized care labor, the program promotes an architecture that acknowledges the multiplicity of bodily dispositions in social space—from ageing to neurodivergence, from gender to class. 

Artistic Director: Nikolaus Hirsch 
Curators: Francis Carpentier, Nikolaus Hirsch 
Press: Valérie Roucou, v.roucou@civa.brussels

The event is co-organized by CIVA and ETH Zürich and supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.