MobileKitchenLab, Yogyakarta

With "Hacking Angkringan" we want to achieve a unique interaction between the kitchen, the lab, MobileKitchenLab and the street. Kitchens are privileged spaces, where our research into what is the world made of and how matter relates to our stomach and body not only originated but also from where it developed into present day labs. Homo sapiens is a culinary primate according to Richard Wrangham (Catching Fire: how cooking made us human), to which we want to add that he is also a lab and science primate, curious and hungry for new knowledge and techniques of probing the world around. Cooking is our first technology that helped us digest the world around and make it taste better, which is after all also our mission in science.

Back in the 16.century the scientific labs emerged from the alchemist's kitchens and these artisans’ experiments always involved not only observations but also tasting. Labs slowly developed into specialized places, where we probe not only edible substances but all types of materials, many of them dangerous to our fragile bodies and taste buds, which probably created this image of the lab as a place outside of citizen control and knowledge, which mysterious policy makers regulate and protect us. Only in recent years we are starting to witness a reverse trend with molecular gastronomy trying to merge the kitchen and the lab again into hybrid spaces with experiments that taste. These often snobbish places and practices are using scientific techniques and knowledge about how food and molecules behave under various conditions to create new edible experiences.

We want to fight the snobbish molecular gastronomy with DIY messy gastrohacks and let the kitchen converge with the lab on the streets of Yogyakarta, a source of our inspiration and model for the future science – society interactions. The mobile push carts, angkringans etc. omnipresent on the streets of Indonesia are the first and most elaborated mobile food laboratories connecting science, art, and food. Angkringans are kitchen labs because they allow everyone to see and learn how to do something with food and various substances that doesn't happen in nature, to modify matter by cooking and mixing various ingredients so they taste well, and then to offer it to various people to get feedback. They connect the whole city through tastebuds and food preferences for certain cooking style and meals. These science-food laboratories on the streets of Indonesia are keeping the idea of citizen science alive and tasty because they let everyone be part of the cooking and providing feedback on the process, an immediate and honest real peer review process. They also allow people to interact with each other while the meal is prepared and while they eat and discuss all important matters. We simply think that angkringans are the perfect media for citizen participation in science, they offer the model, the tool and the space how to democratize science and make everyone part of a decision making and assessing science. The DIY and DIWO approaches in citizen science projects are embodied in the street food culture of Indonesia, which we believe should serve as a model for all citizen science initiatives.

Citizen science needs to go to the streets, it needs to taste and involve people in a very visceral and embodied way. We need mobile labs, wearable labs to bring the science experience back its roots which is curiosity about the world around and how we can digest it and transform all energy into something creative. With our project we hope to remind this culinary primate, homo sapiens, that tasting and probing the world around and sharing knowledge with others is our true nature. We also hope this to be tribute to the alchemist that made the first connection between cooking, distilling, understanding and playing with the world in their kitchen labs, but also to angkringans and all mobile cookers in Indonesia that offer such powerful metaphor for citizen science.