"I think the area of research is our business, too," says Urkiri Salaberria when referring to Fine Arts professionals. She thinks they lack the tools to be able to research this discipline, and in her thesis puts forward some steps to be able to catalogue intangible heritage, with the purpose of converting what cannot be touched into something that can be classified and researched. Of all the intangible heritages, Salaberria chose the culinary world and everything surrounding it as her model to be able to produce her thesis. It is no coincidence. Due to the fact that gastronomy has been giving people a lot to talk about recently, she set herself the task, while she was at it, of clarifying whether or not it is an art. Her work is entitled: Ensayo para una definición del espacio culinario. Propuesta para la catalogación de patrimonio inmaterial (An attempt to provide a definition of the culinary space. Proposal for cataloguing intangible heritage.)
The opinions that have poured forth about Ferran Adrià's restaurant El Bulli, the declaring of French cuisine as an intangible heritage by Unesco… have given Salaberria food for thought and have been one of the things responsible for triggering her thesis. In these two cases the word art has emerged on more than one occasion. However, as she asserts in this piece of work, gastronomy and cuisine are not art. "Of course there is creativity, but today, a housewife is also creative when it comes to getting through until the end of the month. I do not think that gastronomy should be incorporated into fine arts. At the end of the day, food is a very social topic, but seen as a primary issue," she explains. She therefore regards it as a separate discipline. Research can certainly be done on it, which is why she embarked on analysing it and other intangible heritages in a more precise way: "I think we are becoming increasingly aware that, even though we cannot measure it –because we do not have the tools– it does nevertheless exist. It has yet to be developed. There is no methodology, it has no language of its own… everything is waiting to be done."
Real, imaginary, symbolic
Therefore, and in order to be able to put forward some proposals on how to catalogue intangible heritage, Salaberria has chosen the culinary space as the object of her research: in other words, the sum of gastronomy (folklore), cuisine (preparation) and food (objects). Bearing in mind the conclusions drawn from this experience, she proposes that these three aspects be distinguished for each intangible heritage: "Firstly, there is the actual materiality. Secondly, the imaginary one; how the individual reacts before each action, the sensoriality, the aromas, etc. And finally, the symbolic materiality; the meanings upon which consensus is reached in a culture (for example, the white dove and peace)". As the researcher describes in detail, the more types of materialities that can be distinguished, the more accurate the comparative study between the different intangible heritages will be. For example, if symbolic materiality were to be effectively differentiated, we would be capable of realising that two cultures have similar dishes, although sometimes one is preceded by a reputation, whereas the other is unknown.
The challenge is to fill in a record card that is capable to combining these three types of materialities and correlate the key points in each aspect. Salaberria refers to some of the measures to be taken to achieve this aim: apart from correctly defining the culinary space and the object of the research, among other things, it would be a question of creating a collection of tags that specify the micro-information of the said objects or of deciphering their organoleptic properties. If all this is achieved, it could be used, for example, to make connections between recipes belonging to different cultures in the world, to find common sensorial aspects between different cuisines, and even, in the future, to recreate dishes without using ingredients, but by means of specialised devices.
Thanks to the record cards and parameters proposed in this thesis, Salaberria has embarked on applying systematization to intangible assets like the culinary space, and thus turn them into something that can be catalogued. Used properly, it would be very valuable, "because, at the end of the day, what you are doing is protecting the heritage." But it also provides much food for thought on the basis of the concern expressed by the researcher herself: "By using systematization we would succeed in giving each dish an ID, but it could happen that somebody might regard this as intellectual property." To understand the consequences that this could lead to if it were allowed to go too far, she makes a comparison with the tax you have to pay when you purchase a USB storage device: "Let us assume that the French say that vichysoisse is theirs. So, as we are not going to pay for the patent on the dish, the French could say that the price of leeks has to be increased. And we are talking about a food." Salaberria warns that this risky attitude would in fact be a consequence of regarding gastronomy as an art.
About the author
Urkiri Salaberria-Gracia (Cádiz, Spain, 1975) is a graduate in Fine Arts, and has a diploma in advanced studies (subject: human sciences in the knowledge society). She wrote up her thesis under the supervision of Juan Luis Moraza-Pérez, a former lecturer at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), and currently tenured lecturer in the Department of Sculpture at the University of Vigo. She defended her thesis at the Department of Drawing of the UPV/EHU's Faculty of Fine Arts. She also did her research in collaboration with the restaurant Mugaritz. Today, Salaberria is an officer of the Behemendi Rural Development Association and has been the Chair of the Department of Plastic and Monumental Arts of Eusko Ikaskuntza (Basque Studies Society) since 2010.