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Comfort food

Comfort is a feeling

Photo by Hans Gaston

We don’t only eat because we are hungry. Our emotions play a big part in the food choices we make. When we are happy or when we are celebrating something, we reach out for different food items than when we are bored or very sad. Food can enforce certain feelings. At the same time, food can also distract you from feelings you’d rather not feel.

Should food be capable of putting you at ease (mentally as well as physically)? What does truly comforting food feel like?

Exhibition with 8 installations that made people think about food, their relationship to it and its comforting qualities.

Showcased in September 2023 during Open Monumentendag  within the beautiful setting of an old banquet hall in the middle of a hip beer hub in Mechelen (Belgium): Bier Central. 

Special thanks to Radar Mechelen, Bier Central, Stad Mechelen, Pringles, Kurt & René.

Photo by Hans Gaston

Photo by Hans Gaston

Photo by Hans Gaston

What does comfort food mean to you?

NL beneden

Click next to start a short questionnaire on comfort food. I might use your answers as a source of inspiration for future art installations ;).


Wat betekent comfort food voor jou?

Klik op volgende om een korte bevraging over comfort food te starten. Misschien gebruik ik je antwoorden wel als inspiratiebron bij het creëren van toekomstige kunstinstallaties ;).


Mindful coffee

Mindful coffee

Do you take on the challenge to drink your coffee mindfully today? Listen to one of the audio bits below to enjoy a guided mindful coffee meditation. Sit back, relax and… take a sip ;).

Mindful coffee_nl

Om van je dagelijkse koffie een bewuster moment te maken, luister naar het audio bestand hieronder:

Play Video

Mindful coffee_en

To make a mindful moment out of your daily coffee, listen to the audio below:

Play Video

Music by RelaxingTime from Pixabay.

Interested in creating a food and meditation session around your brand or product?

Get in touch!

Playful eating workshops

Playful eating workshops

Do you dare to get playful with your food? Have you ever questioned the way you eat? During the playful eating workshop I challenge participants to approach their food differently. Maybe your food has to tell you a great story or it wants to connect you with your body. Considering how you eat may result in sensorial, mindful and intuitive experiences that bring great pleasure to the act of eating!

Completely tailored to your needs the workshop will enable you to dive deeper into the theory of secret seasoning, a framework for playful eating that I created together with Ferran Altarriba Bertran. It’ll get you out of your comfort zone into an experimental and playful mind of state.

The playful eating workshop is great for teambuildings, family gatherings, art events, exhibitions and more!

Learn more about Secret Seasoning
Book workshop
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Greedy Fingers

Greedy fingers

What if food has a personality?
Could it reject you and your greediness?
Which message does your food have to tell you?

Playful Eating series

Playful Eating series

Selection of pictures taken within the project Secret Seasoning where Elise experimented with various ways of playful eating to inspire cooks, food designers and diners to approach the act of eating in a more joyful way.

Pinch-sect
Ribbed
Breakfast in a bottle
Chocolate Checkers
Pull Cup
Venus - Fruitful Statue
Hanging Tree
Spaghetti Shoulder

Interested in collaborating?

Are you looking for a creative way to communicate your message about food? Do you want to give food itself a voice?

Get in touch

Food Flirt

Food Flirt

In our current society, we are continuously seduced by food. Our mouths start watering when we walk past that burger billboard in the street. Our stomachs start grumbling when we are relaxing our minds on social media feeds and encounter an endless array of #foodpic and #foodporn images.

Food is everywhere and it gets us every time. Longing, craving, desiring. In a way we cannot help it. We are wired to be attracted to food as these nourishments helped us survive throughout history. What if this wasn’t the case and food needed to intentionally seduce us in order to be eaten? Difficult to imagine such a thing? We’ve got you! 

 

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About the project

This project is a collaboration between Ana Gutman and Elise Coudré, two food designers with an established practice in food & eating photography and visual language. Food Flirt started as a visual exploration of unusual links and hidden undertones within our current food culture. Our interest was soon drawn towards the seductive qualities food nowadays needs to have in order to please the hungry eyes of people. What if food adopted other strategies to convince us to take a bite? 

Through an extensive research process, we explored different seduction rituals existent in the natural world to then imagine those scenarios around a food-centered narrative. This with the aim to exaggerate the feeling of temptation we as humans have in the presence of food and, most of all, reflect on our own emotionally complex relationship with it.

 

Scripted

Scripted

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Photo credits: Isabelle Stauffer

Food is everywhere nowadays. It is instantly available in restaurants and stores, advertised on every corner of the street and has also been sneakily integrated into our social media feeds.

Have you ever paused to become aware of the context in which you are making food choices?

With this project we took a deep dive into food decision making and how that may look like in the future. This project had multiple outcomes:

  • a funny booklet with comics
  • speculative future scenarios
  • experiential eating events

Scripted - an experiential dinner

The experiential dinner is a three-course meal that serves different future perspectives. With each course the setting of the restaurant changes in every aspect. Going from authorative to informative to … , the participants always start to discuss and speculate about the future of our food system which creates a great dynamic!

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Photo credits: Tomas Uyttendaele

Wij namen deel met 16 collega's aan het belevingsdiner Scripted. Het was erg fijn om samen over de toekomst van onze voeding na te denken tijdens een gezellig etentje. De verschillende voorgelegde scenario's zorgden ervoor dat we de toekomst echt konden beleven, dit resulteerde in erg grappige momenten en interessante discussies!
StinaKnight Moves
I participated in Scripted Sandwich with some friend and thoroughly enjoyed the experience! The storytelling around the different scenarios was very interesting and sparked a lot of discussions amongst my friends and with the other participants during and after the event.
ChristinaAttendee
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Scripted at your venue?

Are you looking for a unique teambuilding for your company? Do you want to host an unforgettable experience at your venue? Are you looking to have different & refreshing conversations at the table?

Scripted – the experiential dinner – might just be what you are looking for!

Get in touch

Scripted - 5 speculative scenarios

The project started with research into the (invisible) communication that happens between food & humans. The findings from the research were then translated into speculative future scenarios. Each of the scenarios describes a different futuristic world where the way in which we engage with food has changed completely.

These scenarios were eventually used to create experiential eating performances. The performances were all scripted around the future of our food choices.

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Do you want to develop your own creative concepts?

Do you want to integrate new and innovative experiential concepts for visitors? Are you looking to host an event, experience or workshop at your venue?

Get in touch
Back to Work
See next project

Komoon

Komoon

How might we improve mealtime experiences for families with a child with an eating disorder? Is there a way to help parents to support their child better during meals at home?

About the project

For parents of children with an eating disorder, family meals become a real struggle.  Komoon comprises a product-service-system that helps those parents in dealing with shared eating in an encouraging and effective way. 

The support that the product-service system provides, enables the parents to determine and carry out an appropriate approach during the meals with their family.

This project was developed within the context of my thesis in order to get my Master’s Degree in Product Development (Industrial Design).

A human centered approach...

Interviews

Through in-depth interviews with on the one hand parents with children with an eating disorder and on the other hand therapists, dieticians, psychologists and other professionals in the field, I acquired insights in the complex disease and it’s effects on the family.

Brainstorms

A lot of brainstorm sessions were organized during the design process. I organized sessions together with other designers, and with parents of teens and with experts on the field. A lot of ideas to fit the needs of the target group were generated during the sessions.

User tests

A lot of different prototypes were made. Families with teenagers and families with teenagers that have an eating disorder tested those prototypes during a period and gave a lot of feedback on them. The insights I acquired from the tests made sure that the final design of the personal element fit the behaviour and needs of the families.

Food meditation & storytelling

Food meditation & storytelling

Acting as a food appreciation facilitator, Elise aims to enable participants to enjoy food mindfully. 

During a food meditation and storytelling session, the partakers are guided through a story that is scripted around a certain food item. Whilst they are led into a completely different world, all of their senses will be engaged. The delicious story has an educational value as well as enables participants to connect with both the food item as well as their bodies.

Cookie meditation

During a cookie meditation session participants are invited to envision and visit a bakery in the middle of a green grassfield. There they meet the baker who shows them how he is making the cookies, making the participants smell, knead and taste. In a slow pace, partakers were taken through a conscious eating experience whilst enjoying a freshly baked cookie in a very mindful way.

Do you want to book a conscious cookie session for your company or group?

Get in touch
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Mindful coffee

A short guided meditation video that was created for any coffee drinker. Whether you enjoy your coffee at home, while commuting or in a coffee bar.

Click to try a mindful coffee

Mindful eating = the future!

Interested in creating a meditative audio story around your food brand or product?

Get in touch

Am I a murderer?

Am I a murderer?

Am I a murderer? is a stop motion project realized for cook.through.me. Cook.through.me is a creative game where participants send 3 random ingredients to a stranger and thereafter receive 3 ingredients themselves as well with which to make an expressive creation.

This is the tragic story of

– an avocado 🥑

– an egg 🥚

and

-a pepper 🌶.

Enjoy!

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