Alien species served with local purities

For decades, the waters of the Mediterranean have been colonised by alien species, which have been observed to exist in a state of constant interspecies competition with the native flora and fauna. Institutions research ways of exploiting these invasive species proposing, amongst others, the promotion of these species as a new everyday dietary option as well as a delicacy in famous Greek tourist destinations.

In her seminal work, Purity and Danger (1966), Mary Douglas examines the concepts of purity and dirt, and their symbolism within the context of food taboos. The customary diets, she argues, serve to maintain the moral order of society and delineate symbolic boundaries, while the discourses surrounding food have played a significant role in the formation and evolution of national identities. In his 1990 book, The National Bean Soup, Elias Petropoulos offers a historical, economic, and social analysis of greek bean soup (fasoulada) recipes that were excluded from Tselementes's 19th-century cookbook, which is still regarded as the "national cookbook of Greece”. Petropoulos asserts that in the early 20th century, Tselementes represented the invasion of Western European cuisine in Greece.

Alien species served with local purities is a new production for a three-day exhibition on the hyper-touristy Greek island of Paros, at the invitation of Despina Zefkili. The work includes a cookbook of alien species and a series of sculptural souvenirs depicting the food recipes. The main ingredient in the first recipe is an alien species, which is being called the Parian anchovy, even though it is not an anchovy and not from Paros but from the Red Sea. The second one includes the blue crab, one of the most extensive alien species, imported, rumor has it, to be served as a luxury dish in Greek restaurants which eventually escaped into the local ecosystem. The last is the lionfish, utterly delicious with poisonous spikes, which prefers murky coastal areas such as ports, and appeared in Greek waters the same year that the Chinese logistics company COSCO began leasing part of the port of Piraeus. All the recipes combine the main alien ingredient with structural others, such as globalisation, overtourism, the refugee crisis and the rise of nationalism. Condensing the narratives that contextualise our recipes, souvenirs perform the etymology of their naming (latin: subvenire, to come up, come to mind), acting as mnemonic apparatuses.

Given that the main branch of Greek industry is tourism (an economic solution proposed by the head of the Marshall Plan, who visited Greece in 1949), it is also an important part of the local institutions’ cultural agenda which are extracting surplus from the local art scene. Through engaging with cooking recipes and the mass reproduction of souvenirs, we’re amplifying the internal tensions, oppositions and contradictions of the touristic construct looking forward towards its horizon of collapse that could reveal new perspectives for embracing Otherness.

Thanks to Alexia Dimou, Despina Zefkili, Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Timothy Laskaratos and Lysimachos Polychronidis.