As part of my scientific examination of cooking, I give lectures at conferences, in cooking schools or at universities.
Upcoming:
9.9.2019
Die Gemeinschaft Symposium 2019, Berlin
»Gibt es eine Neue Deutsche Küche? - Zur Entstehung und Weiterentwicklung der Neuen Deutschen Küche«
Is there a New German Cuisine? About the emergence and development of the New German Cuisine
Ongoing:
Understanding Cuisine:
How a look on the history of european cuisine offers new perspectives on contemporary fine dining
This lecture combines my practical experience as a chef with my theoretical knowledge. I talk about different chefs and their cooking styles, to differentiate styles and to retrace developments.
Past:
19.-21.6.2019
New Nordic Cuisine – The globalization of the regional
5.-6.4.2019
Museum Tinguely, Amuse-Bouche Der Geschmack der Kunst. Symposium zu Geschmack und Esskultur, Basel
Foods as Medium and Material in Art and Cuisine
October 25, 2018
New Nordic Cuisine – The Globalization of the Regional
New Nordic Cuisine appears to be an equivalent to what Scandinavian Design was during the 1950s: Both Nordic movements have a global impact on the self-understanding of a discipline and combine aesthetics and ethics.
René Redzepi’s restaurant Noma in Copenhagen is the centre of the culinary movement, that influences restaurants world-wide. Chefs from Reykjavík to Sydney are foraging to offer local, seasonal produce in its most natural way. In addition to that, Noma itself went to Japan, Australia and Mexico to adapt its concept to other regions. While it is based on Nordic ingredients, Redzepi and his team thereby continuously rework the idea of contemporary Nordic Cuisine by means of an ongoing exchange with other cultures. This dialogue results in an idealized cuisine, one that does not represent a complex, heterogeneous world but a tale of Nordic purity.
Food concepts and their global exchange are used as a medium by chefs and artists alike. While Redzepi uses complex dishes for his consistent but simplified narrative of a Nordic Cuisine, artists like Rirkrit Tiravanija, show the complexities of the modern world with simple dishes, trying to make inconsistencies visible.
Hence, to understand this culinary movement in its overall cultural and social meaning, I approach New Nordic Cuisine through the lens of the analogous use of food as medium by chefs and artists. I thereby analyse how New Nordic Cuisine interprets other cultures to construct its own identity. In addition, methodologies and tools of art history, combined with gastronomic knowledge allow to delineate how different chefs, cuisines and cultures formed New Nordic Cuisine and in which ways its visual appearance and its narrative helped to globalize this regional approach.
November 16/17, 2017
Metabolismen. Nahrungsmittel in der Kunst at Warburg-Haus, Hamburg
Foods as Medium and Material in Art and Cuisine
June 9, 2017
For the conference Food, glorious food: Food at the heart of nineteenth-century art im Museum Aan de Stroom (MAS) in Antwerp I will give the following lecture:
The Chef’s Image – Presentation and Self-Representation of Chefs in the 19th century
During the 19th century the culinary landscape experienced alterations which were caused, among others, by social changes resulting from the French Revolution in 1789. Cooking and eating in restaurants gained appreciation in bourgeois society and gastrosophes helped to elevate fine dining to a leisure of social relevance. The differentiation of the profession which followed these changes lead to a wide range of parallel and overlapping (self-)images of chefs as worker, artist, scientist, homme de lettre and intellectual. These various images are reflected in portraits, caricatures, frontispieces, menus and cookbook illustrations. Analyzing those visual representations of chefs throughout the 19th century, the changes undergone by the profession will be retraced. Last, it will be evaluated, how this very discourse continues to shape the image of chefs even today.
April 21, 2017
On taste
Slow Food Fair Stuttgart
October 2015
Culinary Turn: Lebensmittel als Medium in Küche und Kunst
Gehalten im Rahmen der 6. Interdisziplinären Studierendentagung der Universität Bamberg zum Thema: Turn Turn Turn - Medien der Kunst und Kultur im Wandel
October 2014
About the vanishing dead body - Changes in Foodways in Times of Industrial Production as Seen By Artists: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Our Food Culture
Food Studies Conference/Common Ground Prato
May 12, 2012
Gegessene Sprache und sprechendes Essen Sebastian Schellhaas, Prof. Thomas Vilgis, Felix Bröcker. Weltkulturenmuseum Frankfurt
April 27, 2012
Unser täglich Brot, Genuss oder Verdruss Lebensmittelmaschinen-
hersteller Bühler, Uzwiel, Schweiz