What’s eating Amsterdam?

An expedition and convivial dinner developed by Wietske Maas, Sher Doruff, Rick Dolphijn and others as part of the SOCIETY OF MOLECULES, a distributed Sense Lab event. senselab.ca * *Society of Molecules (2009), organised by Sense Lab invites participants of different cities across the world to plan local micropolitical “molecules” engaging in aesthetico-political interventions in a distributive participatory model. "What's eating Amsterdam?" is a new politics of consumption. The project not only sets out to consume the hidden meat and vegetation of Amsterdam, but also brings to light the sporadic appearances and lifeworld’s of the city’s flora and fauna. Throughout April and early May, the core participants of the Amsterdam component of Society of Molecules* will go cray hunting along Amsterdam’s canals (see Crustacean Canalibilsm). The cray catch will then be prepared with the help of crustacean-cook expert, Sander Overeinder of restaurant As. We see these crustacean hunting and cooking experiments as a way to productively enter ‘into the city’. From mid-late April we’ll be setting out to explore and reap some of the (in)visible crustacean and plant-life which inhabit Amsterdam’s dispersed yet intense ecological life-worlds — from the ever ‘invasive species of crayfish to anomalous shoots that thrive ‘out of control’ in the interstices of regulated urban space. Both the cray and the plants will be sourced from along the canalbelt banks or maritime transport routes such as the Rijnkanaal (Rijn canal) or the Noordzeekanaal (North Sea canal). A fresh water ecologist, an acquatic toxicologist and an urban phytosociologist who studies the relations between different urban-occurring species will help suss-out the safety and edibility of the respective cray and plant species. In early May, a meal — a crayfish soup made from the cray and plant life — will be prepared and shared between everyone who has partaken in the crab and plant hunt and cook process. Yet aside from the flesh and veg, it’s also, and perhaps just as importantly, the social, geographic and survival facts and anecdotes that are the vital ingredients shared in this city foraged meal. In short, this ’social molecule’ ingests some of the aliments found along Amsterdam’s waterways and in doing so positively disturbs the regulation and urban stratifications of city life in Amsterdam. *Society of Molecules (2009), organised by Sense Lab invites participants of different cities across the world to plan local micropolitical “molecules” engaging in aesthetico-political interventions in a distributive participatory model.