cooking sections

Come wallow with us! Manda Festivali (Water Buffalo Festival) returns to the pastures of Ağaçlı on Saturday 16 May. Set within Istanbul’s postindustrial wetlands, the gathering celebrates grazing corridors across the city’s northern edge, where buffalo routes continue to connect villages, pastures and fragmented ecologies under pressure from urbanisation. In its fifth edition, the annual festival will open with the second Wetland Parade, led by schoolchildren from Ağaçlı, Akpınar, Işıklar and Pirinççi, celebrating the multispecies life of the wetlands along the Black Sea. The day continues with live music, buffalo-herder portrait competition, children’s workshops, local producers bazaar, conversations with herders, guided wetland walks and tastings of Lopka — a collective product line developed together with the herders to celebrate postindustrial pastoralism. From 10–17 May, Manda Festivali also extends across restaurants serving dishes prepared with Lopka products, bringing the flavours and stories of these wetlands into the city: Alaf (Kuruçeşme), Dafni (Üsküdar), Karaköy Lokantası (Karaköy), Kontuar Pera (Beyoğlu), Mürver (Karaköy), Postane (Galata), Suzi’nin Yeri (Terkos), Apartıman (Yeniköy), Delicatessen (Etiler), Mangerie (Bebek). Photo: Ekin Özbıçer Graphics: An Endless Supply @weareclimavore @rca_soa @royalcollegeofart @communityjameel @cifar.ca @kubilayercelep @merveanil @ekinozbicer @anendlesssupply

Tomorrow, Tuesday 12 May, join us for the launch of the Declaration on the Rights of Peasant Seeds at MUCIV – Museo delle Civiltà, Roma, 10:30am. The Declaration proposes a renewed alliance between farmers, plants, and the ecologies they shape. Developed through assemblies and collaborations with farmers, cooperatives, legal researchers, and seed networks across Italy and beyond, it calls for the recognition of peasant seeds as legal subjects rather than mere resources. At a time of drought, rising temperatures, and accelerating agrobiodiversity loss, the Declaration affirms the rights of seeds to circulate and co-evolve. It contributes to a growing legal movement recognising the rights of cultivated nature, strengthening collective stewardship of agrobiodiversity. The launch marks the culmination of three years of research developed through Monoculture Meltdown, within CLIMAVORE x Jameel at RCA, in collaboration with the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, Navdanya International, GARN Europe, Campi Aperti, LUMEN, and supported by Coop Valdibella, Coop Ciauli, Coordinamento Agroecologia Sicilia, SeminAzioni, Coop Coraggio, Sementi Indipendenti, CIDCE, Oxford Real Farming Conference, XFarm, among many others. The event includes a press conference and an interdisciplinary discussion with farmers, legal scholars, artists, and activists working across food sovereignty, environmental justice, and the rights of nature. The Declaration is linked to the installation Rights to Seeds, Rights of Seeds, currently on view at Museo delle Civiltà as part of Museo delle Opacità #2. To read and sign the Declaration, link in bio. Photo: Eleonora Carrozza @weareclimavore @royalcollegeofart @rca_soa @communityjameel @museodellecivilta @vessel_artproject @lucchettimatteo @gabriella_patera @navdanyainternational @campiaperti_bologna @cicrocevia @valdibella.cooperativa.agricol @seminazioni @oxfordrealfarmingconference @xfarmagricolturaprossima @ciauliagricoop @cooperativa_agricola_coraggio @garnglobal

Very excited to share this new article we wrote with Hannah Landecker for the CCCB Lab expanding on the research for the House that Pigs built, currently on view at the Museum of Art in Public Spaces MAPS, Denmark, until 2 August. The installation sits at the intersection between intensive food industries and the architecture of domestic interiors. It puts forward the idea of “porkmodernism” as a way to explore the economic and aesthetic enmeshment of the animal and human worlds that is reflected in the look and feel of the everyday goods and surface finishes resulting from a century of chemical inventiveness aimed at revalorising slaughter waste. In porkmodernism, older artisanal strategies of using animal materials for candles, soap or glue were brought into the fold of industrial manufacturing in the twentieth century by extracting and purifying the different chemical components that made candles flammable, soap slippery or glue sticky in the first place. A stringent series of separation, distillation, purification and deodorisation operations was developed together with the industrialisation of animal agriculture to make profitable use of parts of the body that could not be directly eaten. Chemical polarity agents or the concentration of extracted elements such as calcium were made increasingly important to the clean lines and slick finishes of mid-century modern interiors, and the corresponding smooth textures and flowable powders of mass-produced foods, cosmetics and household goods. The essay is part of the CCCB Lab series edited by Gerard Ortín Castellví on the future of food. You can also read it in Català and Castellano > link in bio. Photo: Anders Sune Berg @cccb_barcelona @cifar.ca @maps_museum

Mon 30 March, 7pm 📖Join us at Reference Point to celebrate the London launch of our new book Waves Lost at Sea / Las Olas Perdidas. The evening brings together Duval Timothy, Nerea Calvillo, and Theodossis Issaias, alongside a live performance by ILĀ, in a programme reflecting on acts of reading and translation as ways of sensing and making sense of a world in transformation. Followed by drinks at the bar ✨🌊🌊🌊🌊✨ The book traces anthropogenic space, industrial food systems, and human-made climates across different projects: from artificially coloured farmed salmon and drained buffalo wetlands to ocean-filtering oysters and Sicilian tomatoes outlawed under EU regulations. It examines the legal, environmental, and metabolic struggles behind what ends up on our plates, while also opening pathways for different ecological futures. The publication features newly commissioned essays by Nerea Calvillo, Sria Chatterjee, Ros Gray, Yayo Herrero, Theodossis Issaias, Mari Margil, and Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz, alongside an extensive series of images with detailed captions and reflective annotations. The book moves through legal fictions, queer ecologies, disappearing landscapes, multispecies entanglements, and speculative tastes. Through these layered investigations, Waves Lost at Sea invites readers to rethink food cultures and agricultural imaginaries, decentering humans at both microscopic and planetary scales. Waves Lost at Sea is co-published by Fundación Botín and Spector Books on the occasion of the namesake exhibition at Centro Botín, Santander (October 2025 – February 2026). FREE event > to book link in bio @nereacalvillo @theo_issaias @hausofila @referencepoint180 @pocoeco @ros_l_gray @yayoherrerol @barbararmunoz @centrobotin @spectorbooks

Welcome to the House that Pigs built, where your toilet, teeth and cat bowl sing the tale of their own chemical becoming. 19 March - 2 August at MAPS Museum of Art in Public Spaces 🐷🏠 🐷 🏠🐷 🏠 In the House that Pigs built, the objects of everyday domestic life sing the cumulative tale of our own times and landscapes. Chemical agencies rendered from pigs become the protagonists of tales of surface activity, hydrophobicity and sheen. These agencies, which reside everywhere in the interiors and commodities of everyday life, are born from the body well beyond the more obvious harvesting of pigs for meat, literally arising from the ashes of the grease, bones, and connective tissue rendered from slaughter waste. A century’s worth of animals becoming chemicals and chemicals becoming animals has been at work, shaping our expectations of how things look or feel. The space visitors find themselves in reverberates the relentless poetry of contemporary processing from the undead depths of everyday objects, circling through the pig becoming world and the world becoming pig. In Denmark, pigs outnumber people by almost five to one. One-third of Denmark’s land is dedicated to pig farming. Industrial pork megafarms dominate the agricultural landscape, driving a system of intensive breeding and genetic modification in which sows are engineered to birth more than twice the natural number of piglets, producing tens of thousands of dead piglets every day as a collateral.  Embedded within the installation is a digital civic tool that provides public access to information about the expansion of pig megafarms in Denmark and supports participation in environmental decision-making processes. the House that Pigs built is a work by Cooking Sections, 2026, developed in collaboration with Hannah Landecker Studio team: Max Cooper-Clark, Rosa Whiteley Performed by: London Contemporary Voices (Connor Going, ILĀ, Rocco, Mia Shelbourne) Sound and Music: Richy Carey Metal fabrication: Mitre & Mondays Recording: Urchin Studios Data science and AI: Aleph² Online platform: An Endless Supply With the support of CIFAR and the British Academy Curated by Irene Campolmi Photos: Anders Sune Berg

Join us at the House that Pigs built 🐷 🏠 🐷 🏠 Opening 19 March MAPS - Museum of Art in Public Spaces, Køge With presentations by Cooking Sections and Hannah Landecker 🐷🏠 🐷 🏠🐷 🏠 In Denmark, pigs outnumber people by almost five to one. the House that Pigs built reflects on how substances extracted from the connective tissue and bones of animal bodies - particularly pigs - have, for over a century, been a more or less invisible part of everyday life. Gelatin and glycerin, fatty acids and calcium derived from slaughterhouse waste, purified and processed, enable materials to solidify or flow, to emulsify or to shine. Visitors enter a “3D rendering” of an apartment in which each component, including a door, a window, a chair, a drying rack, and a toilet, literally “speaks” about its own making. The thick consistency of toothpaste, the smoothness of water-repellent surfaces, and numerous related chemical properties derive from pig by-products and are therefore part of the story connected to the pig industry. The house whispers a fable of extraction and of shared material cycles: the pig is in the building; the building is in the pig. Embedded within the installation is a digital civic tool that provides public access to information about the expansion of pig megafarms in Denmark and supports participation in environmental decision-making processes. Marking the 25th anniversary of the Aarhus Convention on the right to environmental information, the exhibition offers information and the possibility of political action, and imagining futures beyond human exceptionalism. the House that Pigs built is a work by Cooking Sections, 2026, developed in collaboration with Hannah Landecker Studio team: Max Cooper-Clark, Rosa Whiteley Performed by: London Contemporary Voices (Connor Going, ILĀ, Rocco, Mia Shelbourne) Sound and Music: Richy Carey Metal fabrication: Mitre & Mondays Recording: Urchin Studios Data science and AI: Aleph² Online platform: An Endless Supply With the support of CIFAR Future Flourishing Programme and the British Academy Curated by Irene Campolmi

Last weeks to see the Waves Lost at Sea / Las Olas Perdidas at Centro Botín, Santander, on view until Sunday, 1 March. Come and see the extraordinary performers who have kept the 11 waves alive for months: Maider G. Etxegibel, Rebeca García Celdrán, Lucía López Madrazo, Léa Misseri, Laura Ramirez Ashbaugh, Julia Zac, Zhenxiang Zhao moving to the music composition by Duval Timothy. See you in Santander! 🌊🌊🌊 Mundaka 2003. The renowned wave vanished overnight from the coast of Biscay. Enormities of sand dredged to improve ship access. Sediment flows, fatally disrupted. Tourism, decimated. Despite Europe’s first to receive formal recognition, the wave only came back sporadically, fragile. Some interpreted the wave’s disappearance as a retreat of Basque goddess Mari, her silence a rebuke to sand theft. @centrobotin

Waves Lost at Sea is out, and we’ll be speaking about the work, the book, the process, and upcoming projects this week: tonight (Wednesday) at 7pm at Centro Botín, Santander, in conversation with Yayo Herrero…and tomorrow (Thursday) at 7pm at Infinito Delicias, Madrid, in conversation with Dani Burrows. Waves Lost At Sea / Las Olas Perdidas follows the evolving practice of Cooking Sections, founded in London by Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe. Since 2013, their work moves between visual arts, architecture, and ecology, investigating the infrastructures and extractive legacies of industrial food systems and human-made climates: from artificially coloured farmed salmon and drained buffalo wetlands to ocean-filtering oysters and outlawed Sicilian tomatoes. Decentering humans across microscopic and planetary scales, their practice reveals the legal, metabolic, and environmental struggles behind what ends up on our plates, while imagining future horizons. Published on the occasion of Cooking Sections’ namesake exhibition, curated by Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz at Centro Botín, Santander (18 Oct 2025–1 March 2026), this monograph brings together six newly commissioned essays alongside an extensive sequence of images with detailed captions and annotations by the artists. Traversing legal fictions, queer ecologies, postindustrial landscapes, multispecies entanglements, and speculative tastes, Waves Lost at Sea brings together contributions by: Nerea Calvillo, Sria Chatterjee, Ros Gray, Yayo Herrero, Theodossis Issaias, Mari Margil. Bilingual edition (English/Spanish) Co-published by Spector Books and Centro Botín Graphic design: Malin Gewinner Text editing: Amy Sherlock Translations: Daniel Lacasta Fitzsimmons @centrobotin @fundacionbotin @spectorbooks @ros_l_gray @nereacalvillo @pocoeco @theo_issaias @fundacion_carasso @_lourdescabrera_ @yayoherrerol @barbararmunoz @infinitodelicias

OUT NOW: Cooking Sections: Waves Lost to Sea Waves Lost at Sea traces the evolving practice of Cooking Sections—founded in London by Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe—whose work spans visual arts, architecture, and ecology. Since 2013, they have been investigating anthropogenic infrastructures, industrial food systems, and human-made climates: from artificially colored farmed salmon and drained buffalo wetlands to ocean-filtering oysters and Sicilian tomatoes outlawed under EU regulations. Their research-based practice exposes the legal, environmental, and metabolic struggles behind what ends up on our plates, while simultaneously working to create prospects for the future. This monograph brings together six newly commissioned essays alongside an extensive series of images with detailed captions and reflective annotations. The book traverses legal fictions, queer ecologies, disappearing landscapes, multispecies entanglements, and speculative tastes. Through these layered investigations, Waves Lost at Sea invites readers to rethink food cultures and agricultural imaginaries—decentering humans at both microscopic and planetary scales. @cookingsections was nominated for the 2021 Turner Prize, received the Special Prize at the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize, and was shortlisted that same year for the Visible Award for socially engaged artistic practices. Co-published with @fundacionbotin the book appears in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name—Cooking Sections’ first show in Spain—which runs at @centrobotin , Santander, from October 2025 to February 2026. Designed by Malin Gewinner With contributions by Cooking Sections, @nereacalvillo , Sria Chatterjee, @ros_l_gray , @yayoherrerol , @theo_issaias , Mari Margil, @barbararmunoz @gutenbergbeuys @vertreter_rei @perimeterbooks @interartparis @artbook

What happens when performance meets everyday activism? In this episode of The Process, Somerset House Studios' artists, @cookingsections ’ Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe explore the blurry boundaries between fact and fiction in artmaking. They hear from Paula Serafini, Senior Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries at Queen Mary, University of London, and Liv Pennington and Michele Shonfield, two of the ministers involved in the installation, on how art can empower people to speak out on issues that affect them. Produced by: @arlieadlington

Waves Lost at Sea is now open at Centro Botín, Santander, through 1 March 2026. For centuries, coastal communities have read waves for navigation, nourishment, and joy. But dredging, sand mining, and port construction have reshaped shorelines and erased some of the world’s most remarkable breaks, from Mundaka on the Basque coast to the phosphate port of El Marsa in Western Sahara, and apartheid-era beach towns in Cape St Francis, South Africa. In Peru, Azores, Baja California, or Hawai’i, breakwaters and speculation displace communities and erase more-than-human habitats. In the name of progress, these violent processes are logged in wave height, shoreline retreat, GDP flows, and no-go swim zones. Even if waves constantly appear and disappear, some are now permanently lost, leaving traces of extractivism and seabed scars, as well as vanished underwater ecologies. Waves Lost at Sea traces a geography of disappearance through eleven breaks. Reconstructed with scientists from GeoOcean, University of Cantabria, their height, speed, and pulse are translated into a sound composition by Duval Timothy, continuously activated by performers within an installation of suspended springs. Waves are mourned through protests, lawsuits, oral histories, and fading beach signs, making the struggle over waves inseparable from the struggle over land and livelihood. Yet new forms of custodianship are emerging, from Chile’s Espacios Costeros Marinos de Pueblos Originarios to Peru’s Ley de Rompientes to Brazil’s recognition of waves as entities with legal personhood and Cantabria’s proposed 7-wave protected surf zone. Waves Lost at Sea is a performative installation by Cooking Sections, commissioned by Centro Botín, 2025. Curated by Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz. Music: Duval Timothy Performers: Maider G. Etxegibel, Rebeca García Celdrán, Lucía López Madrazo, Léa Misseri, Laura Ramirez Ashbaugh, Julia Zac, Zhenxiang Zhao Cooking Sections studio team: Max Cooper-Clark, Sofía Yáñez Perteagudo, Rosa Whiteley Wave research: GeoOcean Structural engineering: Manja van de Worp Fabrication: Acualé, Isocor, Muelles Zaldua Photo: Lourdes Cabrera @centrobotin #santander #lasolasperdidas

This Saturday 27th September, come and wallow with us! The water buffalo herders of Istanbul’s wetlands invite you to the 4th Manda Festivali (Water Buffalo Festival), hosted this year in Akpınar village. An annual festival we started in 2022 continues to celebrate the presence and permanence of buffalo ecologies in the city’s postindustrial pastoralist wetlands, despite being increasingly encroached by urbanisation and infrastructure. This edition, organised as part of Water Buffalo Commons, CLIMAVORE x Jameel at RCA with Eyüpsultan municipality, MSA, Ariste and Anatolian Grasslands, gathers herders, musicians, environmentalists, artists, biologists, cheese makers alongside the public. If you are in Istanbul, join us for metabolic walks, workshops, a buffalo-herder portrait competition, and tastings of buffalo milk desserts. More details and shuttles link in bio 🚀 Photography: Ci Demi @ci_demi Graphics: An Endless Supply @anendlesssupply @weareclimavore @communityjameel @royalcollegeofart @rca_soa #MandaFestivali #WaterBuffaloCommons #istanbul