Gouda Embargo

Anastasia Eggers scrutinises the absurdity of a top-down imposed resistance to gastronomic cultures of other countries that is supported by the slowly growing phenomenon of food nativism – a nation taking pride in its tradition without questioning how those traditions were constructed. Through re-thinking the way we understand culinary identity and the tradition around it, this critical work highlights cultural tensions and frictions of globalisation in the age of increasing nativism. In a world where borders are closed, but the desire for globalised products still exists, Sonya, a fictional character from the year 2032, a product of globalisation, is seeking for ways of dealing with this contradiction. By following Sonya on her journey through a series of confrontations with different aspects of cheese making, we discover the possibilities of reproducing exact copies of these aspects, but also see the complexity and ridiculousness of doing so. We will discover a new notion of cheese, one which breaks away from concepts like Protected Designation of Origin (DOP) because even in the era of isolation, we will want to be able to recreate parameters of any location anywhere else in the world.