Anastasia Eggers' research-driven practice explores vulnerable ecologies alongside urgent social, cultural, and political conditions. It uses food as a medium to broach ideas of identity, origin, and geopolitics. Eggers investigates agricultural rhythms that arise when our dependence on seasonal cycles is severed or when new dynamics surface due to geopolitical shifts or changes in market conditions. Her recent works explore rituals in agriculture as a tool to bring hidden narratives to light and to envision new forms of collectivity, coping, and awareness.
Migrating Seasons - The farmer’s almanac is a traditional calendar documenting the rhythm of the agricultural year including knowledge on sowing dates, tide tables, and weather forecasting. However, due to global trade and the modernization of agricultural technology, the knowledge of this almanac became obsolete or at least out-of-tune, as well as the traditional harvest celebrations and rituals.
Migrating Seasons is an attempt to redraw the farmers’ almanac according to the contemporary post-seasonal world, where the growing, harvesting, and consuming of food is no longer dependent on natural factors. The project looks at agricultural practices and their interdependence with phenomena such as the trans-European movement of workers and goods, international politics, labour rights, and energy supply. Several events representing crucial aspects of modern agriculture are highlighted on the timeline of the year. Can they become the subject of new celebrations and rituals that introduce the invisible realities behind our food system?
The project is part of my work within Seasonal Neighbours, a loose-fixed collective, focusing on different forms of seasonality and forms of cohabitation in Europe’s countryside.
Supported by Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie
Aubergine Season Relay - Every year during week 44 the "Olympic Fire" of the aubergine season is passed on from Westland (Netherlands) to Almería (Spain) to mark the switch of the seasons between Europe’s two biggest exporters of aubergines. Looking at how the season is directed by economic aspects, and what are the logistics making this switch possible, the project follows the aubergine season and its pathways and traces in Europe.
The project is part of my work within Seasonal Neighbours, a loose-fixed collective, focusing on different forms of seasonality and forms of cohabitation in Europe’s countryside.
Supported by Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie
Brexit Herring - Brexit Herring traces shifting dynamics in herring fishing following the UK’s departure from the EU. It focuses on the changes within a fishing community on the east coast of England, who, along with many others, were promised a “sea of opportunity” by the Fishing for Leave campaign, replete with hundreds of thousands of tons of fish. Instead, with access to only a fraction of those stocks and few future prospects, they have been left alone to navigate this new sea of opportunity.
Viennese Caviar Goes Vegan - Viennese Caviar goes Vegan is a new take on a luxurious dish that is known for economization of nature. Within a tour combined with a workshop we will harvest ingredients that have positive implications on the environment in the urban space and produce vegan caviar together with the participants, experimenting with how the value of a historically imported product can be reinterpreted through local production processes. (Collaboration with Ottonie von Roeder)
Kitchenbath - Wellness treatments performed with by-products of dairy making: a homage to Cleopatra’s milk bath integrated with kitchen processes in a domestic environment. (Collaboration with Philipp Kolamann, photo: Kramar/Kollektiv Fischka)
Cow&Co - Cow&Co is a concept introduced by a herd of cows that want to start their own business. The cows turn themselves into self-sufficient milk production machines. Methane gas collected from their stomach is used to fuel a milking robot while they roam independently in the green spaces of a city and use an online service to connect with their customers. This service allows people to select a cow and collect fresh milk from it. The animals are equipped with a welfare sensor so they can monitor quality, and can also use the data for technical, veterinary and nutrition maintenance. Cow&Co questions the production-consumption relationship between people and cows and proposes an alternative business model. (Collaboration with Ottonie von Roeder)
Egg To Go - Egg to Go is an egg take-away that is run by chicken, an insight into a fictional city, where animals and humans cohabit unitedly. Chicken, liberated from the farm, are roaming in the city space, taking over the space they need. They are now at eye-level with humans as they are able to produce food for them independently, using smart technologies and their own bodies and natural resources as an energy source. The chickens power their vending machine with natural resources and their own manure that is digested into biogas. (Collaboration with Ottonie von Roeder, photo: Vienna Design Week/Kollietiv Fischka)
Gouda Embargo - Taking Russia’s food embargo as a starting point, this project explores the inherent contradictions in today’s local-vs-global rhetoric by creating a fictional narrative that exaggerates the consequences of the political interference in food production and consumption. This narrative highlights the potential tensions that emerge within a context of growing food nativism.
