PEOPLE’S CANTEEN / a post-communist dinner table
We welcome you to a People’s Canteen dinner inspired by times of limitation and scarcity.
Through this dinner, we encourage reflection on food rationing and the resilience of communities during challenging times. The dinner has a playful approach, recreating with humour circumstances that were regular occurrences in communist countries in one’s daily quest to procure food. Your access to food will be rationalised, we invite you to wait in line, haggle and collaborate for your meal in creative ways.
The menu consists of recipes from our countries of origin along the axis China-Poland-Romania. Following the meal, we will screen a thought-provoking film depicting food exchanges in Communist Romania, providing deeper insight into the shared dining experience.
The dinner is followed by two DJ sets by Central and Eastern European musicians to complement the mood and carry us into the night.
PROGRAM
19.00 – 19.30 – doors & queue
19.30 – 20.00 – getting food & negotiations
20.00 – 21.00 – dinner
21.00 – 23.00 – movie
23.00 – 00.30 – Mia // ig: @o0omiao0o (dj set)
00.30 – 02.00 – Chirty // ig: @cchirty (dj set)
For this culinary event we provide a ticket for 17 EUR, which incluudes the dinner and movie! 19:00-23:00
After the dinner, for the after party with two intriguing Dj sets, we will have sepearet tickets too for 5 EUR at the door! 23:00-02:00
The People’s Canteen is an invitation to reflect on scarcity and abundance. Coming from countries with a charged communist background we look back at food practices during times of limitation: Cold War and famine, times when eating indulgently was only a celebration of special events, while we experiment with the idea of scarcity vs. abundance. In a time when the world is turning increasingly politically extreme and the livelihood of people is threatened by overpopulation or climate change-induced food shortage, the future of our dining table is looking rather grim. The dinner invites participants to explore their food habits from this particular perspective, bringing to their attention topics harder to digest in a humorous and playful way. Food rationing during communism was restrictive but led to “creative” solutions that transgressed the limit of “eating just for fuel”. With limited access to products, people often resorted to inventive methods to put food on the table. So we invite you to play along, make exchanges, collaborate and question the way we eat now. We welcome you to join us on this journey of cooking, eating, playing and reflecting together on the future of our dinner table.
The menu is designed based on the idea of food rationing vs. feast. Portions are rationed through a punching card system (reminiscent of the communist experience). We will start the dinner as a cantine buffet where the guests wait in line with their punch cards to receive the food. Each course is inspired by a staple dish from a post-communist country of personal significance. For this dinner, we are collaborating with Fajne – an initiative to bring Polish cuisine and all things around the table to Rotterdam, merging with a fitting Chinese starter and a Romanian Funeral dessert. The music carefully curated by Psycho Club will carry us further into the night and enhance our experience.
MOVIE SCREENING
Tales from the Golden Age (2009)
dir. Hanno Hoffer, Răzvan Mărculescu, Cristian Mungiu
A multi-episode collection of vignettes comically unseating the propagandist myth that Ceaușescu’s Romania was the “golden age” of communism, Tales From The Golden Age is another notch in the country’s film-making renaissance which focuses on day-to-day life under the dictatorship to warm and often hilarious effect. Written by Palme d’Or winner Cristian Mungiu, who also directed one of the segments, the film is a crowd-pleasing festival title around the world and could well stir up strong nostalgia and bewilderment in all the post-communist nations.
trailer
MUSIC The dinner & screening are complemented by a fitting musical curation by Psycho Club, showcasing Central and Eastern European artists while supporting and connecting female producers and multidisciplinary artists.
DETAILS
colour & dress code: pioneer blue & worker’s uniforms
food: the menu will be vegetarian
details: for any allergy concerns and inquiries, you can e-mail: alina.turdean@gmail.com
ABOUT THE ORGANISERS:
Eat Your Feelings is a journey through the world of food in its vast interpretations outside the domestic context. It aspires to spark conversations and foster a sense of community through playful encounters that at times combine snacks and cinema. Pairing radio research with film obsessions translated into musical rhythms, recipe testing and gestures of social care. Centred around acts of service as a love language, we believe that food connects the personal to the social dimension, carries expressions, memories, cultural identity, national policy and social justice. Food is both a means and material that offers the perfect opportunity to explore (personal) stories, and emotions creatively by bringing people together. + collaboration with June Yu
@eat_your_feelings
Psycho Club
The music for this evening is curated by Rotterdam collective PsychoKlub: an event series supporting female producers and DJs from multiple genres, bringing together a wide arrange of electronic music, IDM, breakbeat, bass, glitch, electro and aesthetic beats of the underground. The collective includes artists such as Genyten, BenKult, Dirty Dms, c00, Tizi, Helmond Lang, Y3ble, Deniz H, Calle, Alberta Balsam, Pemzi and more.
@psychoklub
Fajne
The Polish word ‘FAJNE’ (pronounced as ‘FIJNE’ in Dutch) means cool and nice. Fajne is an initiative to bring Polish cuisine and all things Polish to the table in Rotterdam. It aims to break cultural borders and introduce Polish food culture to the Dutch-based crowd. It takes a modern approach by presenting food in a high-class manner while keeping it easy.
@fajne.rotterdam