Former Primary School, Minde
Comidas criollas (creole foods) is the last declination of the long-term research project ‘Cuchillo’ by Iñaki Alvarez and Ariadna Rodriguez (nyamnyam). A series of meals with a small group of people, unfolding imaginaries within a contextual perspective.
Chopping, fileting and carving, three ways of cutting; the knife as an extension of our body. Intrinsic physicality in the union of movements through a tool that, like our bodies, changes shape and function throughout its life. Comidas criollas gathers us around a table; a meal that brings together the textual, objectual, visual and – above all – the experiential materials that have crossed the work centered on this tool.
The proposal is around the discovery of a knife on site; a tool that responds to the specificities of that place, and that is made in collaboration with a person who is dedicated to cutlery in that context.
Everything leads to a performative presentation of a meal for a small group of people, in which the ‘local’ knife is the only tool/utensil on the table. Through a menu that is based on the specificities of the place, the concept of ‘creole foods’ (comidas criollas) is opened up, regarding how food is situated in a genealogical way ‘between cultures’. The text resulting from interviews with a local butcher, greengrocer and fishmonger is also incorporated as part of the performance, as well as part of the publication/placemat. The other conceptual line that runs through the meal is the knife itself, and its entire history as a tool; this is a long term research by nyamnyam.
Ariadna Rodriguez and Iñaki Alvarez are nyamnyam. Joining their formations and deformations in various disciplines, their work aims to promote creation, diffraction and knowledge exchange through sharing strategies on each g-local context in which they work. In this crossroad of theater and visual arts, critical thought and pedagogies, nyamnyam’s work moves between the creation of projects and curatorship understood as a transdisciplinary space for relationship and disruption, clashing with the standardized vision of the mercantilization of culture.
They have developed various theatrical pieces presented at international festivals, such as the Festival Les Urbaines in Lausanne, Switzerland; the Radical Hospitality Festival at the Blackbox Teater in Oslo, Sweden; the MIR Festival in Athens, Greece; the Danza en la Ciudad Festival in Bogotá, Colombia; the SALIVA series at CentroCentro in Madrid; the Short Theatre Festival in Rome, Italy; or the ZOOM IN! Festival at the Duncan Dance Research Center in Athens, Greece, among others.