Food and Planetary Geologies Part 1

Our Berlin-based Food, Design & Innovation correspondent, Alexandra Genis, looked to space and earth for us. In this first part of her essay about questioning and rethinking food as an intermediary between living and dead matter, she looks to the mountains.

June 2020 – Berlin

Earth seems much more edible than I would have expected. Food particles were found in meteorites hailing from space. Ancient sugar molecules might have transported life to Earth millions of years ago. Meanwhile, in the Anthropocene, our food-waste is accumulating to form the mountains and valleys of the future. This mysterious involvement of food in the spheres of geology and terraforming interested me. I interviewed a Japanese researcher working with NASA, who has found sugar in a meteorite, and a Swedish Speculative Design-duo, investigating chicken-bone sediments. Could thinking differently about food, namely as the physical mediator between living organisms and ‘dead matter’ give us a better understanding of our connectedness to this planet and the planets beyond?

Part One – Chicken Mountain 

Leo Fidjeland and Linnea Vaglund are from Sweden. Both did their Masters degrees in Material Futures at Central Saint Martins, London. They now live in Berlin and run studio NonHuman NonSense, supported by their intern, Filips. The duo works with speculative design to create new narratives for science and politics. Through their work, they question the attitudes and morals, which make up our modern common sense. In humorous ways, Leo and Linnea explore paradoxical stories, which diverge from a human-centered point of view and take on the perspectives of animals, plants, and stones.