Japan: Nori Pan art project

Dutch artists Hannie van den Bergh and Jan van den Berg recently travelled to Yamada-machi (Iwate Prefecture) in Japan to establish their Nori Pan art project. The Dutch edition of Nori Pan will take place in December 2019 in Amsterdam.

A culinary dialogue

Nori Pan is a culinary dialogue between typical Dutch and typical Japanese "flavours & ingredients", especially seaweed and dough products. After extensive preliminary research with various seaweed and dough experts in both countries, the artists travelled to Yamada-machi to create intercultural dishes, in collaboration with local chefs and experiential experts. Dishes such as: ‘stamppot’ with crunchy wakame stem (kukiwakame), ‘stroopwafels’ with akamoku powder, ‘bitterballen’ with crispy wakame, and edible bowls of bread and nori. The dishes were presented during intercultural meal sessions in Yamada-machi, during the city's annual festival (o matsuri) and during a tasting event in restaurant 8ablish in Tokyo, in collaboration with historian Isabelle Tanaka-van Daalen.

Table conversations are an essential part of Nori Pan. Conversations in which the participants, on the basis of special questions, exchange thoughts and experiences about, for example, craftsmanship, eating habits and table manners, sensuality, taste and memory, and hospitality.

Edo Sanpu 2020

Nori Pan is part of the multiyear, intercultural artists' dialogue Edo Sanpu 2020, a collaboration project of the Dutch artists Hannie van den Bergh and Jan van den Berg and the Japanese artists Botan and Hirokiti, about imaging — oneself and the other — in the Netherlands and Japan. The final exhibitions of the project will take place at the end of 2020 in Tokyo and Amsterdam.

Edo Sanpu 2020 is made possible with the financial support of the Shared Cultural Heritage Matching Fund of DutchCulture, the Netherlands Embassy in Tokyo, and various Dutch and Japanese organisations.