mare/FLUX – Fiumicina – An open Kitchen on the River
Fiumicina is the project by Johanna Dehio, Mascha Fehse, Johanna Padge for FLUX – River interventions and explorations: a multi-year programme conceived by Lungomare in which observation of and interaction with Bolzano’s river landscapes take place from various perspectives.
Fiumicina is an open kitchen on the river in which to trigger a transformation of the food chain, no longer as a route for private consumption but as a community tool. The many hands involved in the preparation of a meal are brought to the fore: from harvesting in the fields, to processing and preparation. The public space in which it is set up offers the ideal context for initiating collaborative processes as a means of shaping the environment in which we live. Through the practical and immediate context of cooking and food preparation, Fiumicina is designed to make, the transformative power of elements such as the sun and water perceptible, with a view to rethinking a more sustainable use of resources for climate-conscious nutrition.
Fiumicina comprises an infrastructure made up of a functional sculpture designed as a solar cooker, and an environment that includes workspaces, tables and seating. Surrounding it is a platform for workshops, with debating and enjoyable activities for all.
As a first phase in July 2022 Fiumicina initiated a three-day improvised kitchen as well as three workshops on the topics: Improvisation and construction, Spontaneous Herbs along the Riverside, Experimental cooking and baking, together with residents and experts along the riverbank of the Isarco.
Experimenting with the Sun - Public Programme
In 2024, Fiumicina returns to Bolzano to co-create an open solar kitchen that will be temporarily installed on the banks of the river during the public program in June and the festival in September.
During the public activities, Fiumicina offers a co-creative pathway in which to explore traditional cooking techniques using solar energy, questioning the origins and sourcing of resources, and bringing different food knowledge into dialogue, so as to foster an increasingly aware and sustainable reflection on the use and preparation of food.
Conceived on the River Talvera, Fiumicina brings people together by and with the water in a shared space that connects different beings, generations, languages, cultures and economies. It is a convivial place for collaborative research in a public space: ingredients, people, and knowledge are mixed in the kitchens, and becomes an opportunity for exchange and closeness.
“A key element in our practice,” say the artists, “is the experimentation, implementation and planning of on-site structures through the involvement of many figures. This collective process, with partly open outcomes, is the basis for the creation of a place where people want to take responsibility for a place over the medium or long term.”
To support its development, Fiumicina calls upon partners and collaborators in Bolzano and the surrounding areas to contribute to the shared preparation of meals or the construction of the solar kitchen, but welcomes anyone who wishes to contribute to the life of the kitchen, making it a meeting place. A process of participation and community building will be developed in cooperation with EURAC Research’s Institute of Regional Development to imagine and design a future management model for Fiumicina as a common good.
Johanna Dehio is a german designer living and working in Berlin. With a background as product designer, she works in different constellations on applied research and design projects in social and cultural context. Based on a study of different aspects of improvisation which are consistently serving as an impulse and inspiration, her work is concerned with the substance of relationships between people and objects/space. Throughout different collaborative projects, she developed a metaphor of the kitchen as a reference for cultural processes, approaching contextual questions through exemplary practical or sensual experiences. Johanna Dehio is teaching at University of the Arts Berlin, Free University Bolzano and HfbK Hamburg and holding interdisciplinary workshops and lectures.
Johanna Padge studied design and art in Halle and Hamburg. She is a master carpenter and has worked in the crafts and in educational projects in France, Germany, Mali and Mozambique. As a designer she deals with the topics of participatory design, participation and urban planning. Her work takes shape in designed spaces, exhibitions, publications, archives, workshops and conversations. Her interest here is in both social and built architecture, which she understands as processual
Mascha Fehse lives in Berlin and works between Arts, Architecture and Design. Her work deals with questions that concern public space and the commons, focusing on micro-scale collisions, applied experimental approaches and a design discourse that triggers curiosity and leaves room for a variety of perspectives. Her works orbit around social constellations, infrastructural relations, structural connections, environmental dependencies, imaginative associations, and constructive tensions, having resulted in a range of collaboratively produced and socially committed spaces.
Year
2022 – ongoing
