Slow Cooking with Rebecca Moradalizadeh – Episode 2
Hello, and welcome back to Slow Cooking.
For this episode, we travel to Porto, North of Portugal, to spend the day with artist Rebecca Moradalizadeh. Born in London, based in Porto and with Iranian ancestry, Rebecca’s multi-disciplinary work is deeply marked by her migratory experiences and often revolves around food and hosting practices.
Food-sharing is an act deeply connected to our ideas of home, nourishment and community. It activates memories, taking us to specific moments of our lives, good or bad. But perhaps there is a strong bond that we all have with food that we grew up with, which informs us of who we are, or where we want to be.
We start the day by going food shopping in the only shop in Porto that sells mainly Iranian produce, where we buy extra-long rice, a variety of spices and sweets, and a rare type of saffron which is more valuable than gold. We’re in for a treat!
From there, we travel at her house, in the South East side of Porto, Campanhã. Traditionally a deeply communal area, with small, decaying houses by people long forgotten by the local council, strong traditions and a deep connection with a slower and more gentle pace of living, it is an area rapidly changing by rabid gentrification. It is because of this that we eat inside, for the loud construction works and pollution have invaded the community, forever changing it and threatening everyone with uncertain futures.
But inside is a place of nurturing, of gentle connections and deep love for the memories we hold, and for possible futures. Together, we share space, experiences, practices and most importantly, food.
Bom apetite 👩🏼🍳
TEXT: Slow Cooking with Rebecca Moradalizadeh
VIDEO: Episode 2 – Rebecca Moradalizadeh
PODCAST:
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Created by Xavier de Sousa
With special participation by Rebecca Moradalizadeh
Narrative by Xavier de Sousa
Food creation and cooking by Rebecca Moradalizadeh
Filmed by Richard Warburton
Edited by Richard Warburton
Guests at the table: Daniel Pinheiro, Richard Warburton
Podcast editing by Olive Mondegreen
Strategic Producing & Consultancy by The Uncultured
Filmed on location in Porto, Portugal
Additional footage provided by the artist
Commissioned by Theatre in the Mill, performingborders and Migrant Actions Productions.
Additional funding by Arts Council England
BIOGRAPHIES
Rebecca Moradalizadeh (b.1989, London) is a Portuguese-Iranian visual artist, performer and art educator who lives and works in Porto, Portugal.
She is currently a PhD candidate in Fine Arts at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. Has a MA in Art Studies – Museum and Curatorial Studies, a degree in Fine Arts – Multimedia from the same institution and attended the Erasmus Program in Fine Arts Context and Practice at Sheffield Hallam University in Sheffield, UK.
Since 2010 she has been developing her artistic practice exploring performance art, video art, installation, photography, drawing and gastronomy, focusing on issues such as identity, gender, migration, territory, memory, family, archives and traces. In 2015 she began the ‘LandMarks Series’, an ongoing autobiographical research project related to her Iranian origins. As part of this project, in 2020 she received the Reclamar Tempo (1st edition) research grant and an artistic residency opportunity at the Paulo Cunha e Silva Campus promoted by the Teatro Municipal do Porto; in 2022 the photographic diptych ‘LandMarks #3. 1 – the process’ is selected by the Projeto Aquisições – PLÁKA to be part of Porto’s Municipal Collection of Contemporary Art and is presented in the exhibition ‘Derivas e Criaturas’ at the Municipal Gallery of Porto and that same year she presents ‘Behind the Veil’ a solo exhibition curated by Melissa Rodrigues at Rampa – Porto.
Between 2023 and 2024, the collaborative project ‘Seh Khak – Três Terras’, created with the artists Roxanna Albayati and Golara Khalilinejad, won and was supported by “Criatório”, a grant from the municipality of Porto for the creation and public presentation of a performance and exhibition at CRL-Central Elétrica and Espaço MIRA (Porto).
Xavier de Sousa
Xavier de Sousa (he/they) is an multidisciplinary performance maker and culture worker based between Portugal and the UK.
They co-curate the digital research and live art commissioning platform performingborders, and Citemor Festival (Portugal). Previously developed and co-curated performance events Queer Migrant Takeover and CUT Festival, as well as New Queers on the Block, Marlborough Productions’ Artist and Community Development programme. Their creative practice also encompasses writing, having published various creative, reflective and research-based texts for publications such as METAL, Penguin, Les Cahiers Luxembourgeois and Centre national de littérature – Lëtzebuerger Literaturarchiv. As a producer, they launched the free-resource space Producer Gathering together with Sally Rose, and worked on the development of the Producer Agreement, the first agreement of its kind in the sector for unions BECTU and ITC. Previously, they produced for independent artists such as Louise Orwin, jamie lewis hadley and Evangelia Kolyra, amongst many others.
Xavier’s performance works include Almost Xav (Southbank Centre), and the trilogy of collaborative shows about belonging and power structures, POST (Ovalhouse, international tour), Pós- (Teatro do Bairro Alto & CITEMOR) and REGNANT (HOME, LiveCollission). They have recently launched a performance-exhibition What Becomes… (METAL, East Street Arts) and a series of multi-media podcasts Slow Cooking. Previously, they collaborated with Tim Etchels, Rosana Cade, The Famous Lauren Barri-Holstein, Needless Alley Collective and presented work with Ovalhouse Theatre, HOME, East Street Arts, Latitude Festival, Tate Modern, METAL Culture, Southbank Centre, The Yard Theatre (UK), Untethered Magic (Kenya), Warehouse9 (DK), CITEMOR Festival, Teatro do Bairro Alto (Portugal), Operastate Festival (Italy), Onassis Culture Centre (Athens), IIT Gujarat (India), Kalamata Dance Festival (Greece), Más Allá Del Muro Festival (Mexico), amongst others.
Xavier is a founder of Migrants in Culture and is a member of BECTU and ITC – Independent Theatre Council.
Website: www.xavierdesousa.co.uk | Twitter: @Xavinisms | Instagram: @Xavinisms
Olive Mondegreen
Olive Mondegreen is an escapee from the music industry. After releasing ten albums in ten years and touring Europe multiple times, she moved into using her music to support choreographers. Her third full length score debuts November 2024 for the show “Juice” in Heilbronn, Germany. Since the pandemic, Olive has also worked as a podcast editor and producer for multiple shows including the weekly anti-hustle careers show “What The Hell Is My Job” and the modern history “My Queer Museum”. She enjoys having no social media.
