Refrigerator Illusion

Kosuke ARAKI

Japan

〈Food Waste Ware〉,

Food Waste Ware
Food Waste Ware is a project which documented local food waste situation at several food markets and food shops in London as well as the designer’s kitchen and made tableware out of it.
ARAKI asked food shops to put aside some organic waste for him and visited food markets to see what happened after the closure of the markets. Although some of the vegetables were spoiled, some of them were still fresh enough to eat. It could be easily imagined that these were just a part of the enormous amounts of food daily disposed of. In addition, as he thought most of us were probably unaware of the amount of food we daily threw away, he took a one-month record of food waste from his kitchen. He was living alone and cook only for dinner, but even so, every week he could have around 1 kg of it.
The tableware was made from carbonized vegetable waste and animal glue extracted from waste from a meat shop. By bringing the issue back on the table, this project aimed to draw viewers’ attention to food waste issues and invites them to reflect on their eating habits.

Anima
Anima is a series of tableware handcrafted from food waste and urushi , Japanese lacquer. The heart of this project is inherited from Food Waste Ware and reinforced by its name in order to encourage us to rethink our relationship with nature.
Food is not a thing but life. We are eating life for our existence, but probably not so many people are seeing food as life when trading, buying, or eating it. ARAKI believes lack of this regard for life is one of the factors of wasting tremendous amounts of “food” every day for the economical or other reasons.
The tableware results in very dark brown (almost black) due to oxidization of urushi . As made from non-carbonized food waste, it appears brighter brown when exposed to strong light like sunlight. The use of urushi is crucial to make it usable and cherishable, giving it practical strength, waterproofness, anti-bacteria e ect, and sheen. In addition to that, urushi is a material that degrades but also can last thousands of years unless left under the UV rays for years—adornments lacquered in urushi excavated in Hokkaido, Japan, were proved from about nine thousand years ago.