+

BM: So, would you just call it a crisis?

SO: You could say so, an infinitely extended one. But simultaneously, there was apparently a booming scene of small galleries and international art events, everything seemed to become more professionalized – but it felt like there was a need for spaces where it was possible to keep things raw, and focus on an experimental stage.

BM: Actually, I think the crisis also motivated you to work together.

SO: We needed to have more autonomy, and to have a space of our own, we wanted to share work in progress, that you are not necessarily ready or sure of, but still need a community, interlocution, and feedback on it – and not only to be in the competitive stage of the museum or the gallery. 

BM: Were your ideas new?

SO: There have been several decades and examples of artists running spaces, artist groups and collectives in Mexico. With very diverse models and motivations, but with a  connecting thread of the need to do things collectively, across generations.

BM: So, you had some examples!

SO: We had some examples, but I think there is always a mix of affinity or resonance with previous forms of doing things, yet, every time you do it the specific people who come together or the specific need you have make you figure out the way it works for you. So, let’s say it is permeated with the spirit of previous times, but is also quite particular in its very own specific configuration.

SO: At Obrera Centro, they also made an amazing project called Herrateca. It works as a  “Public Tool Library”, by artists for artists, it is not an institution but a self-organized initiative, with tools for woodwork, steel work, ceramics, lighting, printing, and many different things.

BM: But only for artists?

SO: Yeah! It has a basic principle: if you donate something, you can make use of everything. They ended up putting together an amazing workshop, with equipment that is really useful, and there is a lot of different stuff. As an artist it is sometimes hard to have access to the kind of equipment and material they have. In a way it came from thinking: “if we come together, we can share the equipment we have” and basically, they did that. And, going back to the kitchen as a workshop: I have always seen it as an extension of the Public Tool Library. Although the kinds of tools are technically different, in the daily life of the space it seems pretty connected.

BM: Especially within a big city like Mexico City.

SO: They have had three different venues in Mexico City. They moved to the most recent one only last month. Previously, they were located at an old, abandoned school that they had access to for a couple of years. And after that, an amazing old house with a big garden, a pool, a bar, a theater, that used to be a very important site for artist collectives, the underground music and performance scene in the south of Mexico City, in the late eighties and early nineties. The “Herrateca” and the kitchen have had a new iteration, space and modality, in each of the venues. 

BM: You know, from my beginning years in the eighties and late seventies, I was part of the squat movements here in Amsterdam. So, I can see some similarities with what you and your friends are doing. We had something parallel back in the eighties in Amsterdam, it was called the Foundation Tool Lending Blue Thumb.

When I left my parents’ home, I was seventeen and I ended up in squats. There was an economic crisis at that time in Amsterdam. The city did not have a real grip on the youth at that moment. So, a movement started; some parts of the movement were destructive, and some not. I perceived myself as part of that movement, we were progressives. So, we also worked with artists, of course, and people that wanted to do something together. I ended up doing the cooking. 

I left school with no papers and had to get into the army, I didn’t want to go, of course. I come from a slightly conservative family; my parents were part of the communist party, yet open minded. 

There was more individualization in the squat movement than in the communist party.  We had more freedom and took big steps towards living together in squats with artists, junkies, people seen by some as losers, quite a lot of different people together. We created some restaurants there, art galleries, stuff like that.  

It has some similarities with what you just said, but totally different because our groups did not choose at the beginning to do that; we were forced to do it because of the crisis.

SO: Who did you cook for? Who would come to the restaurants? Was it an exchange among squats? For people from the movement, or for gathering?

BM: It was for the squat movement only. At the beginning in the spaces it was only squatters, but later there were also restaurants for those spaces. For example: at one of the squats, the last squat I worked at – I worked over ten years there – we opened a cultural center. It is still running, and we call it The OCCII; the O stands for Independence. We didn’t want to be dependent on subsidy, though sometimes we did ask for it. We cut subsidies for some venues; what we didn’t want was to lose autonomy. This was at a time when 25% of the youth were unemployed. Now it is different, of course.

SO: Obrera Centro has organized a bunch of things – mainly wanting people to get together, share ideas, or just try new things out. For example, if a museum didn’t invite you to show your work, or you had a show coming up, this would be a space to produce, or to show work in progress. I have been very lucky to collaborate with them in/with the kitchen, frequently.

I work sometimes as an educator, curator, artist, and a mix in between. In parallel, I have been working on these types of projects for a while now, and also doing workshops, artists talks, and curatorial talks. What I’m usually thinking about though, is how to bring people together. How to engage in creative and collective processes. To get together and – even though sometimes the art world does need or demand a more individual approach, or more introspective work – I think there is also a lot that can be done collectively.

Some fields are academically very strict about how the classes are taught, the methods we use to speak; there are also established codes, even in spatial arrangements. Institutionally and in art we know there are silent rules to follow. But we also really need to build spaces where experimentation is an important part of the creative process, like what you are saying happens in your Cantina-workshop. 

During these years, I was always cooking on the side because I enjoyed it. And at some point, I started feeling that however radical the ideas shared in conferences related to art practices, social practices and critical theory, things were happening discursively in the topics approached and discussed, but did not always manifest in structural, spatial terms, nor as a common practice. After a while, I ended up shifting things around: to begin by cooking together as an exercise, and only later reflecting on the experiences of working collectively. So, there is, for me, a close connection between social practices, cooking, workshopping and how this resonates and contributes to a wider understanding of art as practice. That’s why I wanted to hear your ideas about it, you have experience in this…

Is the squat movement still an important reference for you?

BM: At the Cantina I understand my role differently. I’m here to fulfill my part of pleasing a community, I would say. I come from an alternative movement, of course, so I do understand the role of art in society, but here my tasks are different.

SO: I grew up in a sort of commune, it was a different context but some things are amazing, some things are complicated, in these collective endeavors. To me now it has to do with community sustenance. Through food, there is something else that is being nourished in terms of relationships; not only networks or professional bonds, but living beings inhabiting the same spaces at the same time, meeting each other in our lives’ trajectories. How can we honor or acknowledge this? And what do you think was meaningful for you in terms of those experiences? I imagine it was important in terms of learning new things.

BM: Well, it is also a fight. It is not a uniform you put on, you must really shape it. You must come up with new ideas, work and sometimes fail but always get up again and fight.

I have also cooked at elderly houses for a while. Not a common elderly house though; they organized their own kitchen, and they asked me to cook for them. So, I would be part of their meeting once a week and we discussed what they would eat, and what they wanted for the next week. When I cooked for them they would help me in the kitchen… That was a fantastic job! Another one was for people with different capacities. Though this was a lot farther from my town. Those were the nicest jobs.

SO: Do you usually cook with a team? What is the team structure you cook with? Did you have different ways of organizing hierarchy at the squat movements, for example, or in other settings for cooking?

BM: Oh, there is a structure for sure, it depends also what your role is. Sometimes I was not the chef, sometimes I was alone, and sometimes I was the chef. So, it depended on my role each time.

SO: Now I’m interested in how people get to organize their kitchens. While professional kitchens and restaurants have quite hierarchical structures in general, there are also emergency kitchens, or more self-organized conditions. How do you cook, for example, when a disaster comes up or when you need to serve a lot of people outdoors, and set up the conditions in order to make it possible, especially when it is not a professional facility… 

We had a big earthquake in Mexico City in 2017, hundreds of people couldn’t get back home, many buildings had fallen and streets were blocked. There was an immediate need to respond, figure out the way to get ourselves out there and get people warm, healthy, nourishing food, to organize how to chip in to make it possible. The civic response was huge, using excavation tools, aiding people that were hurt, or trapped under the remains of buildings. Those who were able to help were trying to figure out what to do, and what was useful. There were emergent systems of people organized in chains, to hand things out; buckets full of rocks from the fallen buildings, and tools. All while trying to get people out from under the collapsed buildings. There were collecting sites organizing donations, like water, basic products, tools, etc., and getting them immediately distributed all over the city, wherever they were needed. Dozens of shelters were set up for those suddenly homeless. And there were also temporary kitchens working non-stop, organized to feed the volunteers and the people in the shelters.

BM: How was the control of this system organized? Was it all through a council or was it organized by small communities?

SO: A mix of things. Usually, in Mexico the larger official structures take much longer to respond and there is an unofficial popular culture of mutual aid – sometimes between neighbors or other types of communities – that reacts much faster. It is much more difficult to wait or even trust the government help to come, you never know if it will. The destruction was so heartbreaking anyway, and in such an emergency without a thought we just do whatever we can.

BM: Yeah! I was thinking about situations like this, and I asked myself: What would I do? The answer is: I would cook food, for sure.

SO: I live in a small town called Tepoztlán, located by the mountains. There, we have a fire season. In April last year we had a big fire that spread throughout the mountains. In Mexico we have official departments and authorities who are supposed to take matters into hands, but we have learned that we can’t wait for them; so we take matters into our own hands, sometimes help never shows up. I have a group of women friends – carpenters, physical trainers, firefighting brigade – and we are self-trained and organized. 

That time in April, the fire was getting too close to a friend’s house, and we had to evacuate them from their home. Because we have been previously organized, we were able to do it quite fast. This town has small neighborhoods with many local families, who usually settle around churches – churches are like social spaces for them, for better and for worse… For better because they have traditions and throughout the whole year they organize many festivities, carnivals, weddings, and much more. These are not private family celebrations, but quite public, they involve the whole neighborhood, and they cook for about 400+ people every time. They have the pots and the pans, but also the knowledge. There are generations of women who pass along the know-how: how to cook rice or mole for 400 people – also how to finance it – are extremely important. They are also mostly people that cultivate their own food, and they bring together corn, rice, wild turkeys, beans and all the social relationships that make it possible for them to cook for such a big number of people, and ten or so times a year. Their capacity, experience and knowledge for organizing all this is impressive. 

Now, when there is a fire, those same neighbors can organize in such impressive ways. They are capable of organizing themselves to respond to other natural disasters as well. It is not the same technical challenge or skills, but they know who comes first, who to call to sound the church bell so people show up in minutes ready to help. I’m thinking about cooking also in those terms: how it is also essential to have organizational skills, needed for other things in life. What would happen if you don’t talk to your neighbors or if you don’t have these interactions as part of your collective life? Then when the shit hits the fan, you start doing it all from scratch.

BM: Let’s be honest, the Western World is lost in an over-the-top individualization culture. Capitalism has won, and now we don’t have even the smallest bit of organizational skills, because communities are lost. At this moment if you talk about culture in the Western World, it is just a defense mechanism, not an open mechanism. It is just working for yourself. I’m quite jealous that things like that still happen in México.

SO: Well, communities continue to fight against investors that want to come in, they prefer tourism, some don’t want to cultivate their land anymore and people want to move to bigger cities. There are also drug dealer´s cartels getting into these communities, there is normalized severe gender violence, and it has been challenging for them to maintain these traditions. But it is still possible to learn directly from the little that is left and then, I feel, that learning from them is my responsibility as a person. To try to listen to the people who still know how to do it. It is usually older women who also learned it because that role was assigned to them, and it is both something that is imposed yet something that gives them a lot of power. They know that their role is powerful.

I don’t want to overly idealize squatting either, but there is a community sustenance aspect that feels closely related to all of this.

BM: If you want to trace examples of solidarity, you must go back many years in time. It is hard to find it now. We have so much going on at this point in the Netherlands that it is so easy to ignore everything. There is a feeling of helplessness, of not knowing what to do. Although this is a false statement because we can always do something; but nobody usually does. 

SO: Yeah, there is one thing about coming back to cooking and the workshop role of the kitchen; there is a lot of labor that makes this bubble possible, and we just cannot exist without it. This labor is usually not as fancy, and is often invisible or unacknowledged.

BM: There is so much stress going on, deadlines. People have a bunch of things to do. For example: people here at The Cantina are not always helping because they have deadlines on their side, they must reach them all. There is sometimes no time to work together, to help each other, etc. Working together is often not an option. To be honest, I don’t always allow people in my space. Because I have things to do as well.

SO: Do you like to cook with other people, outside of daily running of the kitchen? What’s your favorite way of cooking?

BM: I like to cook with my colleagues because they understand me. With my partner, she knows everything better. We have separated our kitchen “this side of the kitchen is yours and that is mine”. I do like to get directions; the kitchen is yours so, if you come with a group of people or if you come up with an idea and I can deliver, I really like to work together.

What we do for example with residents is: they come up with a thematic dinner. Often, they ask us to buy the ingredients and they start doing a few things and we do the rest. Some recipes I really can’t deliver, there was one project that included some sort of stew with okras, and I really don’t like okras. 

If someone has a request, then we work with it of course. And if we know that someone needs a little more attention for example, we help out, that’s fun! Sometimes it becomes a party. Some residents have knowledge or techniques that I do not have, and that is nice specially with the Asian, Chinese, and South African residents. 

SO: And some Mexicans too?

BM: I’m sure! I’m bad with names…