Kitchen Project II (2013)

Kitchen Project is a collaboration between Quarantine, Manchester and Rania Ho and Wang Wei.

In this project, Rania and Wang Wei became hosts in the transmission of some simple cultural and culinary knowledge.  They learned some simple dishes in a cooking school in Beijing which is aimed at tourists and ex-pats and purports to teach “home-style” cooking.  Most were recipes that neither Rania or Wang Wei had ever cooked or eaten at home. The project both subtly and directly addresses our perceived need to seek out the “authentic” in cultural exchange.

The first iteration of Kitchen Project took place in Manchester in February 2012. Rania & Wang Wei taught cooking classes in people’s homes in Manchester, playing with ideas about tourism, authenticity and food, delving into an exploration of the term ‘cultural exchange’.  Read a blog about this version here: http://kitchenproject1.blogspot.co.uk

In May 2013, Kitchen Project 2 was presented as a pop-up on the outdoor terrace of the Stadsschouwburg in Utrecht, as part of SPRING Performing Arts Festival. Cookery classes started at midday and finished at 8pm.  Across 3 days we ran 30 classes and worked with 142 people.  And did 22 hours of washing up…