Energetic Entanglements
locality, energy, and the labor of nourishment
This is an invitation to a collective practice, as part of Relational Space - the winter trail at the Seasonal Academy. It will unfold as a 2,5 days workshop to collectively reflect, build, and speculate on an embodied relationship with energy and nourishment through the creation of an all-eating monster stove. This heating and cooking prototype is not only a tool; but also a proposition, a question, and an experiment.
The all-eating monster stove is envisioned as a creature of adaptability, drawing upon energy sources present in its immediate environment—dry branches, manure, reshaped into biogas, wind, sunlight—to transform raw ingredients into life-sustaining meals. Within surrounding mono-cultures, this stove confronts concepts of highly specialised, mono-functional products with an openness to transform and learn. Together, we will consider the interplay between energy, locality, and the labor of nourishment: what does it mean to adapt to what is around us, to work with what is abundantly available within the systems we create or interfere in, and to imagine practicable and simultaneously imaginative processes of making food?
This workshop takes inspiration from a practice of thinking-through-making—a way of engaging not only with tools, common goods and energies, but also with the broader relations they evoke: to the soil, the sun, the wind, and the beings we share our spaces with. It is an invitation to move beyond mastery and unquestioned comfort into kinship with what sustains us and the warmth of hosting friends.
Join us in making the all-eating monster stove—a heating creature, a conversation starter, and perhaps, a guide to rethinking our entanglements with energy and sustenance.
Contributor
Mascha Fehse is a trained architect based in Berlin. She deals with questions that concern public space and the commons, focusing on micro-scale collisions, applied experimental approaches and a design discourse that triggers curiosity and leaves room for a variety of perspectives. Her works orbit around social constellations, infrastructural relations, structural connections, sustainable conditions, imaginative associations, and constructive tensions, having resulted in a range of collaboratively produced, socially and ecologically committed spaces.
Practical Infos
Time
Thursday, 30th January – Sunday, 2nd February 2025
Welcome: Thursday 30/1
Thursday is the arrival day. In the evening you are invited to join a welcome session, both for the workshop as well as for the Winter trail.
Workshop: Friday 31/1 – Saturday 1/2
Through hands-on learning, we will elaborate on the stove’s design, bringing it to life as a working prototype while leaving space for speculative features to emerge. This process invites us to reflect on material sources and practicalities—what is possible now, and what futures might this all-eating monster stove imagine for us? We will be working with basic building techniques such as masonry, clay treatment and carpentry.
Celebration and Talk: Sunday 2/2
We will inaugurate and test the stove in its first meal-making efforts, inviting questions and provocations. Can it truly be a companion for nourishing resilience? There will be a hot snack and drink together with a lecture on “Combustion in Question” and an energetic entanglements exercise by Mascha Fehse
Completion: Sunday afternoon 2/2
We will complete the collective practice on Sunday afternoon.
Place
The workshop takes place at the land of Foresta-in-becoming in eastern Asturias, northern Spain. Exact location will be shared upon registration.
Cost
220 Eur that include 2,5 workshop days, 2 lunches, snacks and drinks during the workshop and on the celebration day
Accommodation
You can camp on the event site, or we can assist you with finding nearby accommodation.