Wild Rituals: A Sensory Cookbook as Artistic Practice

By Beata Skorek

In my current MA project, I explore how food, memory, and embodied ritual can become artistic material. Wild Rituals is not a cookbook in the traditional sense – it is a sensory field guide, an archive of domestic magic, a feminist and ecological reflection on nourishment, care, and transformation.

Rooted in both Slavic and Welsh traditions of foraging and folk healing, the book reclaims wildness as something intimate, grounded, and relational. It invites the reader to taste, touch, smell, and remember.

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The Concept

This project positions the cookbook as a poetic and tactile object. Through recipes, rituals, and personal recollection, I explore how wild plants, fungi, and trees can act as companions in both art-making and life-making.

Food becomes more than sustenance – it becomes a practice of slowness, reciprocity, and cultural memory. Each chapter unfolds through the seasons and senses, with embodied storytelling at its core.

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Theoretical Foundations

The project is grounded in a diverse theoretical framework, including:

• Pierre Bourdieu – taste as cultural capital and a tool of distinction

• Richard Shusterman – somaesthetics and the body as a site of aesthetic cultivation

• Michel Foucault – biopower, domestic ritual, and the disciplining of the feminine body

• Michael Pollan – food ethics, ecology, and the cultural complexity of eating

• Phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty) – embodied perception and sensory knowledge

• Material Feminism (Alaimo, Barad) – porous bodies, plant agency

• Ritual Theory (van Gennep, Mary Douglas) – domestic thresholds and symbolic transitions

• Research with Dr Joanna Chłopicka on synaesthetic memory and sensory experience

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Structure of the Book

The book is divided into five parts, each one rooted in a specific symbolic register:

1. Fungal Grounding – mushrooms as quiet teachers and ancestral guides

2. Fruits of Memory – wild berries and the taste of loss, joy, and childhood

3. Herbs of Care – soft medicine, touch, and seasonal healing

4. Arboreal Rites – trees as thresholds, memory holders, and protectors

5. Wild Practice – sensory rituals: taste, scent, silence, creation

Each section includes poetic reflections, recipes, micro-gestures, and ritual prompts.

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Methodology & Materials

My approach is autobiographical, embodied, and intuitive. I work slowly – fermenting, dyeing, electroforming, and writing in dialogue with the seasons.

The page is treated as a forest. The recipe becomes a map. Touch is knowledge. Silence is a gesture.

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Artefacts and Exhibition

The book is accompanied by a set of handcrafted artefacts, including:

• Naturally dyed textiles

• Framed moss and organic materials

• Electroformed botanical objects

• Ritual salts, vinegars, infusions, and herbal oils

These will be part of a sensory installation in August 2025: a ritual table, soft light, quiet sound, scent, and participatory gestures. Visitors will not be told what to do – they will be invited to listen with their bodies.

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Research & Influences

In addition to academic theory, the project is influenced by:

• Conversations with Dr Joanna Chłopicka (on synaesthesia and memory)

• Consultations with Prof. Bożena Muszyńska (on medicinal fungi)

• The writings of Robin Wall Kimmerer, Anne-Marie Culhane, and Michael Pollan

• My own archive of research on beataskorek.art

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Where the Project Stands Now

• 📖 Parts I–IV of the book are complete and edited

• ✍️ Part V is actively in development – three out of five chapters are finished

• 🖼️ Installation planning is underway

• 🎯 Exhibition launch is scheduled for ~10 August 2025

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Closing Reflection

“To taste is to remember. To gather is to care. To write is to root.”

This is not a cookbook.

It is an invitation to come back to the body.

To learn from what grows near your feet.

To write from the tongue, the soil, and the breath.