»Mobile Eating« is different then the previous Cultural Library projects: It is the first research by students in another culture than their own. Furthermore it took much longer than the previous research workshops. Svenja Brüggemann, Judith Dörrenbächer, Johannes Schott, Jessica Stihl, Rafael Swiniarski, five German students from KISD, worked in Taiwan and advanced the concept of Cultural Library.
During their research, the studentsâ aim was to understand the effects of an increasingly mobile lifestyle on the subject of eating. While getting to know modern Taiwanese eating habits, they observed problems and identified potential solutions. They not only examined Taiwanese phenomena, but also linked the observations to findings and insights that are culturally independent and that respond to global developments. Concentrating on the correlation between eating and mobility, they identified four main topics: diversity and mobility, sociality and mobility, ecology and mobility and awareness and mobility.
The students finished off the project with a public presentation and exhibition at SCID. The research process, as well as the data and solutions that resulted from it, were made accessible to the general public. The entire project was documented from the point of view of process, and re-evaluated. The Taiwanese feedback on their results was also evaluated in the same manner. In this project, alongside the discussion of the contents, the concept of Cultural Library was systematically thought through, and the process refined so that the results of the various phases would be usable in the Cultural Library.
In their documentation you will gain insights into their work. The documentation is neither the written rerun nor the simplifying summing up of the project. That is to say it was worked out during the research process not afterwards. Therefore it demonstrates not the straight path to facts and results but also detours and loop ways of work. Since especially the detours contain important findings, this way of recording the process, completes the outcome of the project. During the research with all its enriching but wide-ranging paths of analysis, observation and conversation, focus points were set. According to those points the documentation is structured into the chapters ONE, TWO and THREE. Chapter one introduces Cultural Library and the first broad topic of research »mobility«. Chapter TWO leads to the focus point »Supply on the Street« and chapter THREE finally introduces the topic »Mobile Eating«. In the chapters FOUR and FIVE the results of the previous chapters are converted to make them more acessible. Chapter FOUR presents and explains the concept cultkIT. This concept reacts to research findings of first three chapters. Chapter fIve is about the exhibition displayed in Taipei. The exhibition visualises main research results and furthermore the concept cultkIT. Finally chapter SIX reflects the whole project. Beyond this structure, personal IMPRESSIONS of Taiwan intersperse the documentation and illustrate the intercultural experience and its influence on the work.