The Transition Zone — Nomi Toirkens

↗ Social designer, food enthusiast, bitter reclaimer and researcher working at the intersection of food, ecology, and social practices. My work explores how sensory experiences (especially taste) can reconnect us to what has been bred out, forgotten, or overlooked. Through foraging, craft and collaboration I create tools, tastings and narratives to invite new ways of relating to food, the natural world and lost knowledge.

The Transition Zone

May 2024

Collaborative project with Chiang Ming Chun, Adi Friedman and Pia Gräweas part of the Interspecies Economies collaborative project.

This costume is focused on the concept of knowledge as an exchange system and embodies the resilience of microspecies living in the aquatic ecosystem in the Dommel.
We located ourselves at the Eindhovense Kanaal environment, being a highly urbanized area that doesn't support a wide range of biodiversity. Especially with the disappearance of transition zones, which comes into play for the Eindhovense Kanaal. Transition zones refer to the natural ecosystems between water and land. Although this zone has decreased to being a straight brick wall, microspecies adapt to this altered environment. We were wondering: what can we learn from the resilience of microscopic aquatic organisms? We took this inspiration and applied it to this costume.

Functions of our modular costume:
- are producing and having oxygen
- storing food
- executing photosynthesis
- store the trash so we can live in a clean environment

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