The winter solstice marks the longest night of the year in the Northern hemisphere. This moment, when the sun seems to stand still for a moment, has marked an important transition in our planet’s cycle since the earliest times. On this day we embrace scarcity, abundance, and renewal in this specific cusp in time. During this event we will gather together to celebrate the winter solstice and think about how we can collectively prepare for times of scarcity. Through conversations, cooking and eating together, and watching a film, we will explore how our own human cycles are inextricably tied to the cycles of the seasons and agriculture.
Mariken Heitman, renowned Dutch novelist, educator, and vegetable farmer, will be joining us as a guest. Her work, both in farming and in writing, reflects on how the cultivation of crops can be seen as one of the most intimate relationships between human bodies and their surroundings. In her work she’s also increasingly critical about the artificial division of human and nature. While we prepare food and cook together, we will have a conversation with Mariken to reflect on cycles of growing, harvesting, preserving, celebrating, and resting—both of humans and of the land. We’ll also explore how in literature and in art speculation can be used as a tool to build words and carve out space for new perspectives.
The practices of stocking provisions and creating energy reserves for times of scarcity also carry celebration within them. Throughout the evening, artist and chef Maria Khatchadourian will guide us to collectively prepare food and cook together, reflecting on the tensions between abundance and scarcity that are present during the winter solstice period. Bringing together winter plants and roots, both foraged and cultivated, our collective meal will reflect on the past and future (embodied knowledge) and notions of sustenance in relation to scarcity.
The evening will finish with a screening of Saul Williams’ film Neptune Frost—a transdimensional sci-fi musical set in past-, future- and present-day Rwanda, in the afterlife of the nation’s civil war. An adventure into anti-narrative as Black diasporic treatise, Neptune Frost tells of a generation of dreamers escaping the psycho-social wreckage of colonization, genocide, and the residual brutalities of global extractive industries.
Mariken Heitman studied biology in Utrecht, and currently writes and works as a gardener and teacher of vegetable cultivation. She has published short stories on de Fusie, De Optimist, Papieren Helden, nY, and extra extra magazine. Articles and essays by her have appeared in De Volkskrant, De Standaard and NRC, among others. In 2019, her debut novel De Wateraap was published by Atlas Contact. It was nominated for the Bronzen Uil, the Anton Wachterprijs and was on the longlist for the Jan Wolkersprijs. Her second novel Wormmaan was published in August 2021. Her latest novel De Mierenkaravaan was published in August 2024.
Maria Khatchadourian’s artistic practice takes shape at the intersection of food and art, where inherited recipes, food imaginaries, and communal gestures of eating and cooking together become a gathering ground to unearth notions of exile and loss. Through durational performances, installations, and collaborative dinners she wants to shed light on the politics of care and conflict, of kinship and hardship that shape the landscapes we inhabit.
Get your tickets in our Eventbrite page!
Full programme (Cooking, dinner and screening):
Regular ticket – €12,50
Student ticket – €10,00
Only film screening (from 20:00):
Student discount – €4
Regular ticket – €5
