In Variations on a Café, OPENrestaurant, a collective of artists and chefs, collaborated with Fittja’s own meal ecologist, Ayhan Aydin.
They gathered ideas and stories, which were transformed into culinary experiences and presented in a multimedia format in the café. The café took on different forms, in different locations such as Residence Botkyrka’s apartment on Krögarvägen 26, Fittja’s public spaces and in the Fittja kitchen.
Variations on a Café also participated in the Fittja Pavilion, which was presented at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2014.
OPENrestaurant, Amanda Eicher & Ayhan Aydin, Variations on a Café, the Fittja Pavilion during the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale 2014
What role can an art institution play in our times? What can it become? As a way of launching the New Biennial of Art and Architecture, Botkyrka konsthall presents the Fittja Pavilion in Venice.
Can the Million Programme, the plan to build one million housing units during the years 1965–75 in Sweden, with its modernist grand-scale planning, and its weakly defined public spaces, be reevaluated? Can it bring about other kinds of contemporary art?
The Fittja Pavilion presents artistic productions and projects that have been preceded by an extensive time of context-specific research and collaborations in Fittja through Residence Botkyrka.
The focus is primarily on the potential of chance and tacit knowledge. Unexpected collaborations were carried out, where artists, architects, and musicians together explored what art can mean in encounters with audiences, places, and contexts.
During the New Biennale for Art & Architecture in Botkyrka, 2014, OPENrestaurant, together with Ayhan Aydin, presented Variations on a Café at the newly opened Fittja Kitchen. Here, the social potential of food was manifested as a tool for encounters, artistic processes, and local engagement.
Over the course of two years, OPENrestaurant developed various forms of a café for neighbors in and around Residence Botkyrka’s apartment.
In this kitchen and open knowledge hub, residents from Fittja’s many diasporic communities contributed recipes, memories, and perspectives on the food system in Greater Stockholm. The space functioned as a laboratory where local experiences and global food traditions met, sparking conversations about sustainability, community, and the political dimensions of everyday life.
Residence Botkyrka is supported by Botkyrkabyggen.