Isabelle Joliffe, Kirsten Bertelsen, Georgian Gendall and Ferghus Doyle

The artists participating in the 2022 collaborative residency, took a keen interest in the land. Two of us had walking as part of our practices and many conversations around time and pace and the love of animals unfolded on walks around the island. We soon noticed that the island, which is made up of 300 inhabitants, have at least two sides; a local traditional side and a younger more touristy side. In between these polarised ends is a small supermarket.

The supermarket is called Coop. Everyone goes to Coop. If you need help with something you can go to Coop and ask the staff. They know stuff. The manager Walter told us where the moose hang out so we put up a sensor camera exactly where he told us and caught a whole family out for lunch.

There is a palatable tension on the island between tradition and modernity; the local and the global, settling and growth - yet for everyone it boils down to their fight for survival and what it means to remain rooted in a multi temporal world.

‘The Carrierbag Theory of Fiction’ is an essay by Ursula P Le Guin that came to be an anchor point for our thinking throughout the residency. Georgia brought it and started quoting from it and soon we had all read it. Here are some of the passages, we kept coming back to: ‘Many theorists feel that the earliest cultural inventions must have been a container to hold gathered products and some kind of sling or net carrier.’…. And this one: ‘We've heard it, we've all heard all about all the sticks spears and swords, the things to bash and poke and hit with, the long, hard things, but we have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained. That is a new story.’… And this: ‘for what's the use of digging up a lot of potatoes if you have nothing to lug the ones you can't eat home in--with or before the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home.’

Our conversations were revolving around the land and our relationship with animals. We listened to a conversation with Jesse Darling on https://www.informerpodcast.com/episodes/2/index.html and were inspired by their thinking around extraction.

The project started to revolve around the potato. People in Stokkoya know their potatoes; which sort to eat in February, which one to use for leffse (a dessert made for Christmas).

‘It is how we survive’

‘it is part of a long food tradition in Norway.’

‘It is the meal we gather around.’

At the local boat recycling company, we had found zinck and the owner allowed us to take a couple of lumps to make some experiments. Zinck’s melting point is about 420° Celcius and so we needed to build a solid furnace to obtain this temperature. We decided to make potato molds and cast as many potatos as we could. It was hard work. The first step into making was a cast from the inside of a potato. Sculptural aspects as well as social norms started to form part of the projects.

Along casting potatoes, we started exploring what people do with their potatoes. We were kindly allowed to put up a sign at Coop to ask for peoples recipes and soon all the staff at Coop was helping us collect the recipes.

One of the recipes intrigued us. It was a thin potato pancake made on a special pan and served with butter and cinamon. People told us they had spent their whole life trying to get it right so we thought we better call for assistance. Aina volunteered to help us. It turned out, there were quite some skills and tools involved in making leffse. Thanks to Aina we got it!

We now had a collection of 43 potato recipes collected from Stokkøya residents. From Sylva who is 83 and has lived on the island most of her life to Ebrahim who came from Syria five years ago and who likes potato Dauphinoise to 12 year old Carl who’s favourite potato recipe is to buy the frozen chips from Coop and cook them. We wanted to tell the stories of knowlegde and tradition and we wanted to tell the quiet stories, the ones people have taken care of and grown. The ones that bring people together.

So we decided to make a feast and cook as many of the recipes as we could and make a book with all the recipes in. It became a very special evening.