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Paper short abstract

Based on my food installation, the paper presents a social encounter that reimagines the living room as a shared ecological commons. Through tasting as a method of inquiry into forgotten flavors and vernacular knowledge, this research explores how governmentality shapes what counts as edible.

Paper long abstract

This paper is based on a participatory food installation and workshop conducted at BioArt Laboratories during the Dutch Design Week 2025. “Welcome to the Living Room” is a social encounter that invites visitors to enter a space where all living beings—human and more-than-human—are welcomed as guests. Reimagining the domestic "living room" as a shared ecological commons, this space offers hospitality not only to people but also to memories, soil, vernacular knowledge, and edible roots. Here, food becomes the medium of welcome, and tasting becomes a site of negotiation between standardized regimes and localized, embodied experiences. The dining table transforms into an installation: whole plants, sliced ingredients, and accompanying stories on each root are displayed together.

The project traces rhizomatic connections between culinary traditions, local ecologies, and embodied memories. Each ingredient is grounded in specific soil conditions, regional tastes, and cultural geographies, offering a multisensory way to think through the politics of place and food. Building on Michel Foucault's concept of governmentality, this paper explores how dietary norms form part of broader regulatory systems that shape bodies, environmentality, and ways of living. Treating the living room as a porous, sensorial space where guests co-compose an edible landscape, this research contributes to environmental humanities and advances biosensory politics, presenting eating not merely as nourishment but as an act of care, remembrance, and situated knowledge.