Soil at the Kitchen Table: The transpedagogical practice of Cocina CoLaboratorio
Francesca Fantoni talks with designer and food activist Emilio Hernández about Cocina CoLaboratorio's work in Mexico, where gatherings around soil become tools for collective ecological learning.
Creative researcher and designer Emilio Hernández moves between art, pedagogy and social practice. Since 2020, he has coordinated projects with Cocina CoLaboratorio, a collective operating across Mexico that situates artistic research within one of our most intimate and familiar sites: the kitchen table. It is through the convivial acts of cooking, sharing food, stories and practices, that the collective cultivates spaces for radical imagination, proposing alternative ways to inhabit our relationships with each other, with soil and with the food we grow and eat.
Within this context, Emilio is currently leading the activation of Slow Disasters in Santo Domingo Tomaltepec (Oaxaca), in dialogue with Andrew Merritt’s long-term interdisciplinary project examining the ecological and cultural transformations that shape landscapes over centuries. In Tomaltepec, the project unfolds as a public educational programme exploring liquid memories and ecological change. It has convened local food producers, cooks, artists and researchers around a ‘Soil Kitchen’, public study groups and field experiments to explore soil agency, listen to the layered histories of the territory, revive biocultural foodways and prototype community-led and regenerative practices for working with the land. Francesca Fantoni joins Emilio Hernández in conversation to reflect on this evolving practice and on how his transpedagogical projects can cultivate a renewed desire to be part of and care for our more-than-human collaborators.
“…underpinning it all is my curiosity about the power of gathering people to unlearn things together.”
Francesca Fantoni: Emilio, you’ve been involved in a range of initiatives with Cocina CoLaboratorio, from the Biocultural Living Archive, a nomadic platform that preserves seeds, recipes and oral histories, to the Experimental Plots where communities co-design prototypes for sustainable agricultural practices. Could you start by introducing yourself and explaining the methodologies and principles that underpin your practice?
Emilio Hernández: I’m a researcher, designer and educator working on food activism and transition design. I work with pedagogies of art, especially at the intersection of scientific, artistic and situated knowledges and I’m interested in creating spaces where these ways of knowing can dialogue with each other.
I’ve been developing what I call transpedagogical pieces, which are learning situations that give form to educational platforms for collective inquiry and action; some are informal learning settings and others more formal, but underpinning it all is my curiosity about the power of gathering people to unlearn things together.
More recently, and especially with Cocina CoLaboratorio, I’ve been exploring how these gatherings can go beyond human gatherings and become meeting points with the non-human world, recognising the material agencies of soil, water and plants in shaping collective life.
I’m especially looking into using the framework of Slow Disasters to enunciate and work with the gradual transformations that erode our relationships with the common land. I found that, particularly in local food systems like in Oaxaca, the deepest slow disaster that I recognise is the loss of the desire to be implicated in soil processes. There is a disconnection and a loss of desire to be part of the soil. For many reasons, like monoculture, changes in ways of living, and other factors, we are losing that desire to be with the soil, which implies being disconnected from the more-than-human world.
FF: When you speak about desire, you mean human desire, correct? It seems valuable to reimagine our human selves as part of natural processes. It makes sense, then, that much of your work with communities and individuals is through participatory practices and embodied approaches, often centered through food and the kitchen table.
EH: Yes, I mean human desire, but as something relational, as a force that connects people to the soil they are stepping on. What I’ve been noticing, and hearing from food producers in Oaxaca, is not only about soil degradation, but a gradual loss of the desire to stay implicated in those processes, a loss of the desire to continue cultivating. We’ve been educated to see the land as a resource, as productivity, as something external to us. So the slow disaster is not only ecological; it is also pedagogical. It is a weakening of the collective desire to remain in relation with the soil.
For me it is about having a constant dialogue with the people that inhabit the territory where I work. I see myself as participating in the dynamics of the community and, rather than me proposing what to do, I think it comes from listening to what people are interested in, what they are curious about and also what hurts. I try to pay attention to the open wounds that the territory holds and how they actually affect people. From there, I bring in these transpedagogical pieces as part of everyday life.
I like to propose activities and formats that don’t imply something special or uncomfortable but offer space for people to feel connected. We cook a lot, we walk a lot, we plant and we work touching the soil. We love to activate our bodies. Once I enter these spaces, only then do I introduce questions that touch on deeper philosophical or ecological ideas. For example, to speak about what is a disaster, what is a disaster that occurs very slowly, or to speak about things like monoculture. But I think it’s also about reflection and reflecting with people on their experiences and using their words, rather than imposing my own.
“How do we meet across differences and still stay rooted in each place? How can disagreement be invited to the table in a thoughtful way?”
FF: Could share some example projects from Cocina CoLaboratorio and how that way of working makes your practice tangible for the participants?
EH: Something I’ve been doing a lot with the Cocina CoLaboratorio collective is creating structures that help translate conversations into shared situations. The material aspect is important, but not as an object in itself. We call them devices because they help us ask questions and gather people through curiosity. Many of these devices emerge from conversations that are already happening in the territory. I’m interested in bringing down concepts that resonate with what people are already sensing, and activating situations around them.
For example, the Archivo Biocultural Vivo moves through the territory on a bicycle, just as food moves in Tomaltepec. As it moves, it gathers stories, memories, seeds, recipes and practices, and in that same movement it shares them back. We also created the Tamalera of Desires, a cooking pot where people place their wishes for the soil or for its future. It’s a more intimate way of asking and exchanging, opening a softer space to share. We’ve also developed public programmes to think together about our relationship with water in the context of drought.
I’m also interested in translocal learning. Sometimes we invite people from other territories to collaborate with us, and I’m always asking how to do that with care. How do we meet across differences and still stay rooted in each place? How can disagreement be invited to the table in a thoughtful way?
FF: Yes, how to sit with discomfort and use it as a tool. That seems to be a big ethical aspect of your collaborative practice, especially when dealing with the very real lived experiences of land ownership, territory and the cultural experience that people carry. A lot of care is required, and it seems like you’re navigating that.
EH: Yes. I also think about the fact that we are always speaking about futures, you know, always speaking about desirable scenarios. But we often forget how to get there. We forget that we have to transit to them. That’s why I’m interested in transition design, not just as a practice, but as a way of performing my work. It’s not just about leaving people with the idea that eventually we’ll get there, but actually asking: how do we activate that? I think that’s when the practice becomes really beautiful and situated, because we create friendships and build familial strengths. We go together toward these spaces, while also being very careful. For me, it’s my practice, my research, but for them, it’s their land, their source of income, their plots where they eat from. It’s very real. I think these transpedagogical pieces help to inspire, but also to help people transit toward these desirable spaces, where sometimes we accept that things don’t work, and sometimes things don’t work the way we want.
Part of my practice is to see the positives in this, the unlearnings. This is where the framework of Slow Disasters makes a lot of sense, because there is environmental degradation that we are not seeing, catastrophes that expand beyond a single territory that we don’t yet know how to deal with. For example, in Oaxaca, sun radiation is increasing. We don’t yet know how to respond. We know we’ll probably have to adapt and find food species that can survive these new conditions. But we don’t know exactly how. We are in the midst of a severe hydric crisis– the whole basin is drying. We don’t yet know how to handle that either. At the same time, we are learning. We’re also seeing a lot of pressure from the city, from developers who want this land. We don’t yet know what can be done, but at least recognising these pressures and bringing them to the table, that, I think, is important.
“I am interested in food activism, and for me that means recovering the agency of soil.”
FF: Bringing these topics into conversation is itself an activist gesture; giving people the language, space and agency to articulate their experiences of ecological change. Would you say your work is also activist in the sense that it creates the conditions and perhaps the courage for people to question or challenge existing policies and systems?
EH: Yes, for me, activism is not about shouting. It’s about creating situations where we become implicated together. It’s about taking responsibility for the situation we are already part of. And here, it takes the form of care, of new ways of learning, of inspiring one another to collaborate, of wanting to be there voluntarily, of desire.
I am interested in food activism, and for me that means recovering the agency of soil. In a territory like this one, with its Indigenous background, the soil was once understood as a living entity, and the relationship with it was different. At some point, that shifted, and we began to see it primarily as a productive resource. I don’t want to romanticise the past, but I am interested in asking how, in contemporary terms, we can re-understand that agency. Where do we see the soil organising life today? How does recognising that agency allow us to move together in response to the slow disasters we are facing?
FF: Working with non-human collaborators presents a whole other set of challenges and usually requires very site-specific attention. You have already mentioned the idea of a translocal approach; how important is it for you to work within both local and global contexts, and how do you navigate that while keeping your practice materially grounded in the soil, but also sharing your knowledge on a global scale?
EH: I think it is about avoiding fragmentation and accepting that we live in this translocal space, where we can actually invite ideas from other places to be reflected. We can also invite vocabulary, invite technology, but it has to go through a process of reflection. I think, especially in the context of a global crisis, and particularly a socioecological crisis, it is important that we communicate between knowledges. As I said, what we have in Oaxaca, for example, is not enough. We need researchers, we need scientific points of view. We need the arts to be more sensitive. We need to connect with policy makers. I think it is important to open the dialogue, but also to be very careful about what that means and to set boundaries as well.
“It is easy to say that the ecological crisis is a disaster. But what about the things we cannot name yet? How do we recognise that we are part of certain traces?”
FF: The interdisciplinary approach to your work means collaborating across networks is vital: you create alongside locals, farmers and scientists as much as academics and artists. This brings us onto your collaboration on the Slow Disasters project with Andy Merritt. You’ve already mentioned how that framework is shaping your concerns. Could you share more about what this means in the context of Oaxaca?
EH: The collaboration has been very interesting for me. I had already been thinking about the collapse of socioecological systems and reading about ideas like feral ecologies, the sense that ecosystems and cultural practices are not simply disappearing, but transforming into something else. Working with the Slow Disasters framework helped me slow down that reading and pay attention to gradual shifts, to processes that feel normal but are actually reorganising entire systems.
In Oaxaca, that makes a lot of sense, especially in a place that is so bioculturally diverse. Culture is not static; it is always evolving. But at the same time, certain ecological and historical processes affect things slowly, often without us noticing. The question becomes: which processes are unfolding quietly around us? And which ones are we ourselves performing today that we could actually stop?
It is easy to say that the ecological crisis is a disaster. But what about the things we cannot name yet? How do we recognise that we are part of certain traces? When you look at haciendas, for example, the remnants of the colonial era, you can clearly see how past actions shaped the soil, organisations and decisions. The wounds are visible. The soil holds evidence.
But what interests me even more are the new traces we are building now, which are much harder to judge. One case that really resonated was research we did on a very specific chilli pepper species called the guintabich, or tabiche chilli. Women told us they used to cook with it and harvest it, but suddenly they stopped. When we investigated what happened, it basically coincided with the introduction of canned chilli in Mexico. It became easier to just open a can. The canned chillies mixed with local food, and it became part of traditional dishes, which are delicious and taste very good. Nothing dramatic happened. But what happened was that a whole system changed: the people who used to produce it, sell it, and cook it, stopped doing that. That practice went into pause. We cannot really judge whether this is good or bad; it is just something that happened that made people’s lives easier. But it also came at the cost of many things falling apart. For me, this is what a slow disaster looks like.
FF: I can see that ripple effect, where once one element changes, it affects the economic food value system and then it begins to impact the surrounding labour and cultural practice. But as you mentioned, whilst these shifts sometimes happen across a visible timescale, oftentimes they unfold quietly whilst we’re living through them. On that note, do you see an ongoing role for sharing knowledge about the legacy of colonial land practices and their relationship to today’s climate realities? Is that still part of the learning and transformation that’s taking place?
EH: I think it is more about the transformation of soil, and how soil is used. Of course, sharing knowledge about the past can help, but I think it also has a lot to do with people’s needs. As I said, I am very curious about desires and how people desire to use the land they inhabit. They feel very proud of where they come from, proud of their history, even if sometimes they do not fully understand it. We recently collaborated with a researcher and discovered amazing new insights that brought light to this past. I think having these moments, where we share the deep past or the history, helps a lot in actually changing perceptions. It also helps us see how certain ways of using the soil became normal, and how certain relations of power continue in the present.
But in reality, there is water scarcity, people need to eat, there is a need for better income, people have other kinds of work. Women are being empowered and are moving out of kitchens. At the same time, there is this feeling of pride of being from the village. So it is not only about colonial land practices as something in the past, but about how those transformations of soil continue to affect how we relate to the land today.
“I think we have to activate that termite way of thinking, and basically continue ‘eating’, because eventually we will finish a piece of wood and then go for the next one…”
FF: It seems like a challenge of reconciling lived experience, like you say, the economic reality of needing to eat and being able to access what is available, alongside the desire for a more sustainable relationship with the soil. It is a difficult balance, but one you are rightfully grappling in its complexity. What seed of thought helps you sustain hope in this work?
EH: I have recently been reading the work of Mixe linguist Yásnaya Aguilar. She speaks about being like termites and the power of minuscule structures, to help us understand that our activism, our processes, our gatherings, are very, very small compared to global movements. But termites are very consistent. When they start eating wood, they finish it. I think we have to activate that termite way of thinking, and basically continue ‘eating’, because eventually we will finish a piece of wood and then go for the next one, or at least die full, you know. I think there is potential in these minuscule structures, in these little events that probably go unnoticed, the ones we don’t shout about, but they mean a great deal to us, and that is amazing. I also think they fulfil our willingness to be part of something, the desire to be part of the soil. I think that is amazing.
FF: That’s a very hopeful image to keep us motivated in climate action; what happens on a micro level, cycles toward the macro, the bigger picture. And in your case, when you are imagining the termites and the ‘eating’, it is often around actual food. You are bringing people around the table and working with food practices, so there is a lot of joy in that.
EH: Yes, a lot of joy. Celebration as well. Celebrating that we can be together, taking care of ourselves and of what we eat. I think that is already quite a lot.
Emilio Hernández continues to develop transpedagogical practices with Cocina CoLaboratorio in Oaxaca, where he facilitates dialogues and gatherings among communities, local authorities, creatives, researchers and academics. He is particularly interested in developing translocal communal spaces that facilitate learning and inspire social action.
Slow Disasters is a long-term, multi-continental project and methodology developed by British artist Andrew Merritt. The activation of Slow Disasters in Santo Domingo Tomaltepec, Oaxaca is developed by Cocina CoLaboratorio, under the direction of Emilio Hernández and with the support of Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo. You can learn more about CoLaboratorio here and the Slow Disasters project here.