Using the artist's own eye as departure point, the diptych Belladonna and eye is part of a larger work which explores the relation between the metabolism of the vegetal kingdom and human vision. It shows how the sense of sight, like all senses, is embodied in the materiality of digestion: how sight is made and affected by the same molecules of plants.

Wietske Maas & Matteo Pasquinelli, “Manifesto of Urban Cannibalism”, in: Brigitte van der Sande (ed.), Food for the City: A Future for the Metropolis, Rotterdam: NAi, 2012.

Wietske Maas and Matteo Pasquinelli in collaboration with sound artist Trevor Mathison (Dubmorphology) present and invite you to the Berlin declaration of the Manifesto of Urban Cannibalism.

The Berliner Steinwein is a telluric brew percolating through the strata of minerals, sand and concretions of bricks that constitute the urban skeleton of Berlin. The Berliner Steinwein reverses the common habit of filtering and distilling, recomposing the fertile impurity of water and its promiscuity with soil, recognising the fellowship of all Berlin water with its ground.

Arts Holland, issue 1, 2012

Food for the City. A future for the Metropolis Edited by Brigitte van der Sande, NAi, Rotterdam, 2012

The first batch of Ferment Utrecht (Fermentum Ultrajectinum) was shared and dunk as a toast to new forms of communal production, between people and other, more than human urban life forms. The performance was held on Sunday 26 February and marked the close of the Grand Domestic Revolution exhibition at Casco, Utrecht.

Fermentum Ultrajectinum is a curative alcoholic beverage that taps into the energy and nutrient flows between Utrecht’s trees, bees, lice, plants, people and microbes. It is a simple recipe inspired by old pharmacist’s manuals and domestic know-how that draws on a complex trajectory of life worlds, histories and knowledges encountered in Utrecht.

Bream and roach are two fishes that swim in cockaignian abundance in the city’s canals, lakes and Amstel river. They are the most common freshwater fish in Amsterdam though not many locals go to the trouble of eating them. This was rather different a few centuries ago when this fish was deemed perfectly acceptable for human consumption, especially during lent by the fasting multitudes.

O.M. Ungers, Morphologie. City Metaphors,Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König, Köln, 1. Auflage 1982, 2. Auflage 2011

Maria Kaika, City of Flows: Modernity, Nature, and the City, Routledge, New York, 2005

An edible journey through the old collection and cloister garden of Centraal museum, Utrecht. Children can chomp their way through some of the most prominent vegetation seen within the museum collection. The plants symbolised in the paintings of Holy virgin as well as the museum's rich collection of 17th century still lives have been cultivated in the museum's former convent garden.

Andrew Dalby, The Tastes of Byzantium: the cuisine of a legendary empire, Prospect Books, London, 2003

FAMA Survival Guide Sarajevo, distributed by Workman Publishing, Printed in Croatia, 1993

50 guests oriented their appetites for an experimental dinner in Mediamatic bank as part of the exhibition Noord. The recipes were composed by Wietske Maas together with Sander Overeinder of restaurant As.

Maag als Kompas expedition invited dinner participants to become involved in the process of seeking, collecting and charting the urban victuals of Amsterdam Noord. This expedition and dinner (8-9 October) was realised in the framework of Noord exhibition by Mediamatic.

Clambering our way through the wet grasses and bogs of mud we take up our hunting positions. Camoflaging ourselves as dead tree stumps. Keeping very low and still with chin resting on the dew of the grass. We whisper. Michiel gives a duck call. Some minutes go by, maybe 10. A small gaggle of geese fly overhead. Then comes the pang of gunshot with pellets of hail bullet. A goose falling out of life, out of sky.

Bodem Kwaliteit Kaart (soil quality map), Gemeente Amsterdam

Irma Driessen, Tubelight, Gezien en Bevonden: Nature Vivant

As part of the Brussels Festival Kanal, cooks with medicinal plant know-how (Rasa Alksnyte, Wietske Maas and Christina Stadlbauer) sourced plants from garden and hidden green zones near to the canal and created an array of edible-treatments

A sidewalk snail farm set up in the former ABN Amro vitrines on the Vijzelstraat, Amsterdam as part of Mediamatic exhibition about Amsterdam Noord.

As part of an exhibition and a meal featuring the molluscan delicacies of Amsterdam North I am collecting as snails for a giant sidewalk snail farm in the former ABN Amro Bank vitrines on Vijzelstraat in preparation for the Mediamatic 'Noord' exhibition opening 10 September

A convivium in three recipes for a flower, a root and a leaf under the old motto of Schaerbeek: “Stubborn like a donkey, fertile as the ground where the cherry trees grow”. Guests are invited to develop a common appetite for some questions on art, nature and the city.

An expedition organised by FoAM lab as part 'Anarchitecture' to explore the edible pioneer plants that pop up on razed ruins, wasteland and demolition sites.

Wietske Maas and Matteo Pasquinelli, the current artists in residence as part of d o m i n o k i n g d o m, introduced themselves and their interests in the "third landscape" of Brussels and the edible ecologies of the city.

Gastronomy is inextricably linked with travel and exploring new places and spaces. It is only through eating that we really get to know the place where we live or visit. Using food sources found only in Noord, Wietske Maas asks what could the edible genius loci be that orientates us through Amsterdam Noord?

Animals who call graveyard grounds home are considered a right plague by Amsterdam's cemetery clients.

Charlie Chaplin, "Eating Machine", Modern Times, 1936.

Floor Tinga, online article: 'De Eetbare Stad', Ruimtezicht, August 2010.

The pea-like ripe linden nutlets of the linden (lime) tree Tilia x europaea, or other tilia species can be roasted and ground to a powder to make an instant coffee substitute, or even finer as a nutty flour for cakes, or eaten, roasted as they are

Mapping for Change is about defying and opposing existing structures. It decentralizes power, handing it back to individuals and allowing local communities to organize themselves autonomously. Alternative maps and visualizations are used to challenge and change official policy. They allow for multiple views and voices to live side by side.

Utrecht beekeepers are awaiting the next batch of honey, which, given the predominance of lime trees blossoming right this very moment, the next inner city harvest will be the Lime flower batch.

Armen-Apotheek voor de provincie Utrecht (Pharmacopoea Pauperum, Provinciae Rheno-Trajectinae), 1830.

Utrecht (Consules et senatores Reipublicae Ultrajectinae), Pharmacopoea Ultrajectina, Trajecti ad Rhenum: apud Theodorum ab Ackersdyck, Utrecht, 1656.

Utrecht-based Ethiopian restaurant owner Zeleke Zerfu brews an ambrosia in his restaurant basement according to the Ethiopian recipe, Tej. Instead of using the leaves of Gesho (an indigenous Ethiopian plant related to the Sea Buckthorn,Rhamnus prinoides) he uses hops, which has a similar bitter agent.

Comparing the plants found in Utrecht city with those that are used in Chinese medicine with acupuncturist and Chinese herbalist, Dr Guo-Dong Wang

The relations between Utrecht and medicinal horticulture runs deep. The city's interest in medical plants reached its apogee in the 1630s. A specialized medical garden, the Hortus Medicus, was established to further cultivate plants and concoct herbal medicines as cures or tinctures to stave off the plague.

As a first try-out, I used the lime leaf flower and lime flower honey to make plump little madeleines inspired by the French wartime use of lime flour together with Marcel Proust's madeleine induced involuntary memory. Perhaps the most well-cited extract of Rembrance of Things Past is when Proust tatses a petite morsel of madeleine dipped in lime flower tea

Elderflower comes into bloom with the first burst of summer. There’s plenty of elder everywhere. Enough to satiate a city. I plucked a few dozen heads to turn to wine.

A temporary urbanibalist headquarters will be set up as part of Casco's Grand Domestic Revolution project in Utrecht; a convivial experimental kitchen-pharmacy hosting dinners, talks and consultations to transform ingredients collected from in and around the city of Utrecht into a treatment for common domestic ills of our time.

The edible vegetation that has lain siege over the former defense zone is made into a 'Fort Beleg'. Beleg in Dutch means both siege and sandwich spread.

Yesterday plant specialist Claud Biemans and I trekked out to Fort Ruigehoek, a former military defense fortress just outside of Utrecht, where we made an inventory of all the plants growing on the ruins of Fort Ruigehoek. One of the most prolific plants growing between the brickwork and pavement seams at this time of year is [...]

In early spring, urban botanist Claud Biemans  (Floron Amsterdam), led plant aficionados on an early bird excursion through the giant Intratuin garden centre. Inside the store, Claud showed the source of the Amsterdam flora of the future: garden escapees.  These ‘escapees’ are plants that are constantly redistributed as they migrate beyond their ornamental confines and into the [...]

twighlight service Jeruzalemkerk Sunday, June 28th 2009 04:30h – 05:30h in the morning Jeruzalemchurch, Jan Maijenplein, Amsterdam Just before sunrise a ‘twilight service’ starts in the Jeruzalemchurch, in the light of undesirable plants in the church garden. artists: Annet Bult Christina Della Giustina Wietske Maas choirmaster: Maritta van Woudenberg choir: chorus Jeruzalemchurch organ: Hans Jutte vicar: Bas van der Graaf organisation: Foamlab http://fo.am prologue The ‘twilight service’ in the Jerusalemchurch in Amsterdam, which starts June 28th just before [...]

William Purvis, Lichens, London: Matural History Museum, 2000.

Artist, cook, researcher Henri Roquas has been exploring the relation between humans and cultural histories, and food diversity of the dutch archipelago through a series of experiemntal dinners that he hosts withon his East Amsterdam apartment

Urbmouth is a curative aperitif against the social and physical ailments of urban living and a toast to the productive metabolism of urban nature.

Soylent Green (1973) Science fiction film directed by Richard Fleischer

Musée des Plantes Médicinales et de la Pharmacie / Museum van Geneeskrachtige Planten en Pharmacie, l'Université Libre de Bruxelles

A supper for pathologic appetites held in the W.G kunst, a former sanatorium as part of the Wilhelmina Gasthuis hospital complex, Amsterdam.

H. G. Wells, Anticipations of the reaction of mechanical and scientific progress on human life and thought London: Harper & Row, 1901.

A. Geurts, Oorlogs-kookboek [War cookbook], Roermond: Romen, 1940.

Geuzenveldgroen-Slotersnoek is a recipe for an Umwelt of urban ingredients caught and sourced in Geuzenveld-Slotermeer in Amsterdam West.

Plants grow on disused ground and fish abound in its canals: an urbanibalist adventure which sets out to fish, forage, cook and eat the flesh and flora that thrive in Amsterdam West.

Wietske Maas & Matteo Pasquinelli, “The City Devouring Itself: Urbanibalism in Times of World Wars, Insurgent Communes and Biopolitical Sieges”, in: J. Seijdel and L. Melis (eds), Open #18: 2030 - War Zone Amsterdam, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2009

Six hours of casting the line, waiting, swapping stories and waiting again for the snoek to bite. Alas, no fish, but it was a beautiful day of being outside in the open, staring at the mercurial surface of the water, learning the tricks of the leisure fishermen and what, apparently the snoek like and don’t [...]

Thousands of thistles colonise the fallow zones of Amsterdam west. Yet these ‘plague plants’ are perfectly edible and delectable. Artist Wietske Maas and city botanist Claud Biemans invite you to join them on a thistle plucking expedition.

Domestic umwelt of albino Louisianna crayfish, saved from the pan and kept as kitchen pet.

A convivial service held at dawn on the 28 June 2009 at the Jeruzalem church, Amsterdam.

An expedition and convivium developed in cooperation with Wietske Maas, Sher Doruff, Matteo Pasquinelli, Rick Dolphijn and cook Sander Overeinder.

The menu for the convivium 'What's eating Amsterdam?' at As restaurant.

Fisherman Piet Ruyter took us out on his boat to check his traps in the waters behind Amsterdam central station.

An exploration through the streets and weeds of Amsterdam West.

"The paw is old school," says Glemie Dean Beasley, a Detroit raccoon hunter and meat salesman. "It lets the customers know it's not a cat or dog."

Two exotic aquatic decapods have taken up residence in the posh precincts of Amsterdam's canals and waterways: the American red swamp crayfish and the Chinese mitten crab.

A conversation about earth from another planet 1000 years from now: do you remember that silver birch tree? — Anton Chekov, 1899.

Making a soda starter culture using Amsterdam Shepherd's purse roots instead of ginger root.

Urban Edibles, FoAM lab a growing map marking food sources in public space in and around Amsterdam.

To control its swan population, the Amsterdam city council would tattoo the black bills of cygnets with the insignia of Amsterdam: 3 Andreaskruizen

A mythological urban ambrosia presented at Open Sauces, a dinner organised by FoAM, Brussels.

This inventory is an under-construction historical overview of survival techniques and sources of food that have been improvised and hunted in the urban environment under the extreme conditions of war.

Koos Bosma, Schuilstad: Bescherming van de bevolking tegen luchtaanvallen, Uitgeverij Sun, Amsterdam 2006.

A confection-making stand as part of City Sense, an event curated by Nat Muller at Garajistanbul.

A kumis style fermented milk and honey drink for the exhibition A Time Like This in Melbourne.

Herbert Sukopp, "The City as a Subject for Ecological Research" originally published in German in 1973 translated into English in Urban Ecology: an international perspective on the interactions between humans and nature, Springer, 2008

Herbet Sukopp, On the early history of urban ecology in Europe, Institute of Ecology, Technical University Berlin, 2002

Remco Daalder, Stadse Beesten, Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bas Lubberhuizen, 2005.

Today we went on a goose hunt. Our hunting grounds were reached within 15 minutes by bicycle from the centre of Amsterdam.

Learning the art of hunting and a crash course in Dutch wildlife management on culling the surplus of swine and deer.

At Schiphol, birds and planes share the same airspace. Sometimes it goes wrong.

Pleegzuster bloedwijn, translated as 'Nurse's blood wine' is an age-old remedial drink given to alleviate stress, tuberculosis, or most commonly as a cure for aenemia. A drink to reinforce the blood.

In early summer, a diasporia of red flander's poppyies pop up everywhere along railway tracks and the outer edges of town. A syrup can be prepared from the scarlet flower petals.

In catching snails which one will cook oneself, one experiences the joy of a hunter who stalks his prey, anticipatory stew, and that of the fisherman casting his line, with matelote* before his mind's eye. — Alin Laubreaux, The Happy Glutton

The first ever urbanibalist dinner was held in Amsterdam in March 2007.

In Dutch 'trek' means having appetite, in English it's a long arduous journey, a migratory route.

Swans are sometimes deemed a plague in and around the Randstad in the Netherlands particularly when they flock to pastural zones and forage and gobble agricultural crops. On these occassions, farmers or council bureaucrats have called in hunters to cull a few to stave-off the rest and prevent further harvest damage…

Johan van Zoest & Martin Melchers, Leven in de Stad: Betekenis en toepassing van natuur in de stedelijke omgeving [Life in the city: senses of nature in the urban environment], Utrecht: KNNV uitgeverij, 2006

Martin Melchers & Geert Timmermans, Haring in het Ij, Amsterdam: Stadsuitgeverij, 1991.