Global cultural exchange “I want to foster the spirit of generosity”

How can we save traditional local dishes in the face of climate change? In this interview, Bettina Wodianka spoke to the experimental philosopher and artist Jonathon Keats about his projects and ideas.

Mr. Keats, your project, TASTING TOMORROW, was part of our first cohort in the R&D Lab of the C/Change initiative. Could you tell us a little bit about how the idea for the project evolved from the very beginning?

Half a decade ago, I started looking at the paintings in regional museums, particularly landscape paintings. I thought about how people often ignore or deny the impact climate change will have on their communities. I considered repainting those landscapes based on different climate futures and exhibiting them alongside the original paintings. What I was seeking to do was not only to show radically different futures as a result of climate change, but also to suggest that we have choices that we can make that will lead to those futures.

Covid came along, and that was challenging for many museums. But I had already made contact with Erin Riordan, an applied ecologist based at the University of Arizona because I needed an ecologist to help me to figure out what sort of flora and fauna would go into those paintings based on different climate futures. She’d suggested that we could use climate analog modeling, a method that can calculate locations in the world today that anticipate your climate fifty or one hundred years in the future.   When I started to contemplate the implications, I began thinking about the cultural context of change and the fact that we’re not at all prepared for cultural transformation.

More than anything else, it struck me that food is a cultural constant, a core part of how we relate to each other and how we relate to the place where we're from. So I started to think about how climate analog modeling might be applied to foodways. The heritage cuisine of any given culture is based on ingredients that have been locally available since time immemorial. But the future is looking very different and the ingredients that are the basis for familiar foods are no longer likely to grow in the places where those foods are familiar. Considering climate analog modeling, we started to discuss the possibility of looking to other places as inspiration for hybrid versions of foods that people are familiar with. How do we adapt your regional cuisine, such that it will use ingredients that will grow sustainably where you live, but will still have the essential flavors and other qualities that you associate with your home, with your heritage, with your family? What perspective did you adopt when addressing the challenges posed by climate change, particularly in relation to building resilience and fostering connections within communities?

The idea is to create a social network. Not in the way that Facebook has been constructed to exacerbate the worst behavior in all of us, but quite the opposite. I want to foster the spirit of generosity that will be essential to getting along with each other in the future. Generosity can be developed through practice. And food is one of the essential ingredients of generosity. You can invite guests to gather around your table, and you can relate your culture to the cultures of others, celebrating differences and commonalities. Instead of looking at adaptation as a problem, we can look at it as an opportunity and think about how everybody has something to share and to give in terms of ingredients and know-how. Food provides a way to foster resilience, bolstering cultural infrastructure.

How did C/Change help you develop this project?

Before C/Change, I was primarily focused on working with local communities in Tucson, Arizona. I worked with the master chef Janos Wilder to make dishes with ingredients from climate analog locations such as Pakistan, and also to create dishes for places that will eventually have Tucson’s climate, such as Burgos, Spain. For instance, we made a version of olla podrida using southwestern tepary beans instead of the traditional Spanish red beans. But I soon realized that the project would be strengthened if we could scale it to a planetary level, inviting everyone everywhere to participate. C/Change was perfect for us because of its pairing of Gray Area, where there is great technical expertise, and the Goethe-Institut, which shares our values and has the global network of people we need to be able to reach in order to scale. Through C/Change, we were able to create the first prototype version of Tasting Tomorrow, a social network with food as the focus, where people are able to look at their future in terms of climate analogs.

Was there a specific instance during your project evolution where you perceived a harmonious balance in addressing both climate change and cultural adaptation?

I still believe that paintings can be enlisted to stimulate important conversations about climate change and human agency. But when I started talking about food, I found a different kind of resonance, because it’s so relevant to people's lives. We need a multiplicity of approaches and ways in which to capture people’s imagination. In TASTING TOMORROW and your recent project Climate-Adapted Heritage Architecture, it seems you are orchestrating environments where the general public can playfully engage with envisioned futures. Regarding the online element, it's evidently centered on knowledge-sharing. The workshops introduce a distinct facet, emphasizing not only the exchange of stories but also the sharing of traditions and related knowledge, albeit in a more intimate manner.

My background is in philosophy. And it seems to me that philosophy is desperately needed in a world undergoing radical change, a world in which anxiety is driving alienation and animosity. Philosophy can help us to make sense of the world, and can help us to figure out what sort of world we desire. But academic philosophy is largely inaccessible to most people. So I’ve adapted aspects of philosophical practice in order to do philosophy in public. In particular, I’ve taken up the thought experiment, and distorted it in ways that would drive academic philosophers mad. Instead of thinking of a thought experiment as a mode of argumentation – positing a counterfactual as a way in which to prove a point – I’ve taken the thought experiment literally as a form of experimentation. The idea is to create an alternative reality, to conjure a possible future as a space for collective exploration. In this form, it’s possible to reconcile different perspectives, bringing people together. People are activated because the thought experiment is visceral and experiential.

What factors guided your choice to pivot towards architecture and infrastructure in the continuation of your work?

Thinking about climate analogues in the context of cultural transformation, I realized that vernacular architecture has a lot in common with heritage cuisine. Housing is increasingly challenged by climate conditions in terms of the capacity to maintain an indoor environment that is comfortable, and also in terms of the potential to maintain it using materials that are locally available. At the same time, the cultural qualities that make a house feel like home are likely to become more important as communities are stressed by harsher weather.
As a starting point, I’ve been leading workshops in which I ask people to make models of their houses out of cardboard and to highlight the aspects that matter to them with bright yellow paint. Then I provide information about the vernacular architecture of a place that anticipates their future climate and ask them to make modifications to their cardboard models that will make their houses sustainable in terms of thermodynamics and maintenance without disrupting the qualities that make the houses special on a cultural and spiritual level. I led the first workshop in Mexico City over the summer. Thirty students at the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM) experimented with architectural methods used by the Sana’a people of Yemen, which currently has the climate that Mexico City is expected to have in around 2070. For instance, the students introduced architectural elements that increase thermal inertia and support air circulation.

The process activates participants, giving them a sense of agency, while also helping to elucidate the affordances that architects and urban planners should consider during renovation. I’m working with partners at the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics to collect data that we’ll use to create new architectural hybrids and protocols. Ultimately it comes down to sharing knowledge and know-how, which is one way in which the architectural project overlaps with the culinary project – as well as a new project considering traditional attire that I’m developing with my collaborators at UAM. 

These projects are designed not only to have real-world impact in ways that are relevant to people and their livelihoods, but also to build a broader methodology and inspire greater sensitivity. They’re mutually reinforcing – and mutually reinforce the practice of generosity essential to cultural resilience.