Wietske Maas

Appetite for Noord

Gastronomy is inextricably linked with travel and exploring new places and spaces. It is only through eating that we really get to know the place where we live or visit. Using food sources found only in Noord, Wietske Maas asks what could the edible genius loci be that orientates us through Amsterdam Noord?

Enlarge

Appetite for Noord -

Appetite for North provides a culinary compass to North. Botanists, domestic and professional cooks, forrester, beekeepers, fisherpeople, biologists, toxicologists and local inhabitants share their curiousity, know-how and appetite to uncover some of the hidden culinary ecologies of Amsterdam Noord.

Streets populated by edible weeds; rowan, sloe and elderberry trees along the perimeters of volkstuin gardens; tasty thistle roots in forgotten margins of parklands and spicy succulent primrose flowers adorning empty building allotments. From housing terrains to arable polders, Amsterdam Noord boasts an abundance of palatable vegetation and untried meat sources. Here the skies rain geese and parakeets. Not to mention the edible aquatic treasures of the IJ. The Noord archipelago is a real life Cockaigne.

Enlarge

Hungry Building, Amsterdam Noord - Wietske Maas

Appetite for North is a course in gastronomic orientation that takes participants through residential districts, along the canals and across the industrial territories to locate Noord’s surplus sources of food and, most of all, to enjoy the rambling growth of its autonomous nature.

Appetite for North invites hungry punters curious to orientate their stomachs to participate in a diverse programme including botanical excursions; a lecture on urban hunting policies; a guide to poaching parakiets, and most importantly of eating of the genius loci of Amsterdam’s magnetic north.

The Appetite for North programme will be made available during the exhibition ‘NOORD’early autumn.