WET ZONES Kitchen Activation | Between Land and Sea Festival | Palermo, Italy | Performance | 2023
The WET ZONES Kitchen, commissioned by Fondazione Studio Rizoma, proposes a future with localised water recycling, using a mobile kitchen unit and filtration system to promote sustainable water habits without demonising domestic use.
The WET ZONES kitchen suggests a not-so-distant future where localised water recycling presents a short term solution in allowing for the regulated consumption, disposal and reclamation of this finite resource. Mitigating damaging water habits and paving the way towards circular cities. The mobile kitchen unit proactively explores a kitchen water filtration system, using localised production and materials; the used water entering the system will be channelled through a range of filters which remove contaminants, before being purified to safe standards for reuse or discharge. This process invites us to address how we use water, what we put into it, and our day-to-day water habits, however it does not aim to demonise the domestic, but to provide temporary agency over our own water habits, sending a clear message to those in positions of power, our desired water futures.
In June 2023 myself and the team at Fondazione Studio Rizoma inaugurated the WET ZONES kitchen on the beach in Palermo infront of the Ecomuseo del Mare as part of the Between Land and Sea festival. A festival which has travelled from Tunis to Palermo. The water and food performance, designed to cater for 30 people, ended up feeding around 100 yet still only using just over half of the estimated amount of water needed for such an event. A combination of locally sourced and hand made elements enabled new methods for interacting with water in a public yet domestic setting. Footpumps and split sinks invited changes in water use and the seperation of pollutants and grease traps and biofilters cleaned the water to be reused for secondary tasks and discharged into the local flora.
The kitchen has now been moved to a site managed by the farming collective Aterraterra where it will be maintained and continue to be used for dining in 2024.
