The Raw and the Over-Cooked: a social, neo materialist architecture

93% raw, 5% cooked, 2% overcooked

93% raw wool, 5% cotton fibers & hemp yarn, 2% cotton-PE yarn

Regarding encounters between matter and energy, the textile industry is a great example of our paradoxical reality. “The raw” versus “the cooked”, as described in the famous anthropological work by Claude Levi Strauss, has been associated with supposed dichotomy between nature and culture.  However, we fail to recognise that we include the natural when we cook.  A common, newly bought jumper is just that. It is a mixture of acrylic, polyester and a small amount of wool because the pure material is expensive. At the same time, surplus raw wool ends up in the bin, also for financial reasons. Acrylic and polyester are highly synthesized (overcooked) natural matter. When they end up in landfill, they pollute the environment and hinder all organic materials in their endeavour to return to a natural cycle.This creates an economic waste that simply consumes matter and energy irreversibly. This entropic process happens to a point where it becomes an insurmountable effort to re-concentrate the matters and the energies, to separate the raw from the cooked. Who would you serve a soup like this to?

‘The Raw and the Over-Cooked’ is a site-specific intervention in the permanent exhibition area of the Esche Museum, an architectural element in the form of a roof for social gatherings and workshops. By transferring the use of wool and (recycled) clothing to the architectural space, the artists create thermal and acoustic qualities. The duo uses modern knitting technology and mixes industrial waste fibres with raw wool. As the artists leave the seams between the raw wool and the cooked industrial fibres open, all materials can be separated again if required.