Eat Art!

We get to know and appreciate our invaders in a series of meetings, workshops, exhibits and a great dinner. Mediamatic began 40 years ago out of curiosity about the cultural and social challenges of video. New media, interaction and networking were super interesting then. We started collaborating to learn what we could do with them. Check out the Doors of Perception exhibition to experience the excitement of that time.

Later we switched to ecology, living and working for the intimate senses of taste, smell and touch. The health of humans and the world are now our main focus. We started in 2006 with the Night Garden and Micro-Green Restaurant where we soldered robots in the show while enjoying a delicious meal prepared by artist-activist Debra Solomon (Urbania Hoeve). Designer Martì Guiché created our 2nd restaurant: Food Facility, a kind of Google for food. In 2011, we discovered poisonous and edible fungi in Mushroom Paradise. Then we learned how to grow fish and vegetables together in our Aquaponics systems.

Meanwhile, Sacha Landshoff and his team built the Tosti Fabriek. That was a living sculpture from which, after a year of hard work (and a lot of bellowing), an amazing stack of Ham and Cheese toasts came out. We have since replaced the fish with people and are growing herbs and flowers in an Anthroponics system. We think the future of food can be better designed without dependence on animal products....
Eating weeds fits very well of course with this mindset. We need time to learn how to harvest Knotweed safely and how to prepare it tasty and healthy. To that end, we are offering a great series of workshops this season. You will learn together with artists, designers and chefs to get the best out of this free vegetable.

The highlight in May is the dinner Knots, Weeds & Roots where you can taste in 5 courses how delicious (invasive) exotics can taste if you know what you're doing. The dinner will be an extra rich experience because the 3 creators each have immigration backgrounds themselves.