Gurkencity

with
Fuzzy Earth
#cucumbercommons #materialmigration #ediblearchive

GURKENCITY is for cucumber lovers only. Obsessed with all things Gurke, we will smack, salt, ferment, taste, and listen as we trace the cucumber’s winding path through Vienna’s past and present.

Vienna is the Gurkenhauptstadt, pickled in tradition, layered in brine, and crisp with contradictions. To understand the city, we trace the journey of cucumbers across time and space, from their roots in Indian soils to Habsburgian orangeries, through imperial trade networks and into today’s struggles over land, food, and cultural identity. Cucumbers hydrate our bodies and skin, offering nourishment rich in vitamins while carrying the weight of political histories of migration, power, and ecological exploitation. Yet within their watery flesh, they may also hold seeds of resilience, blueprints for adaptation, and quiet gestures of sustenance.

In GURKENCITY, we will cook. We will recreate well-known cucumber recipes and experiment with new ones collectively using our hands, tongues, senses and memories. Here, recipes are more than instructions; they are archives of places shaped by soils, migration, and resilience. We will explore how a single ingredient can reveal other histories.

In GURKENCITY, we will carry bags and craft carrier bags—not just for cucumbers, but for recipes, stories, and knowledge collected along the way. We will assemble the toolkit for a travelling cucumber salad bar of nourishment and exchange.
In GURKENCITY, we will visit master growers, urbanists, chefs, and foragers who hold deep knowledge of Vienna’s edible landscapes, from its imperial past to its precarious present. Travelling with our cucumber salad bar, we will move through the city, cooking alongside experts, exchanging recipes, and uncovering new ways to taste, share, and understand Vienna—one cucumber at a time.

Fuzzy Earth is a research-driven creative practice founded by Tekla Gedeon and Sebastian Gschanes, operating at the intersection of architecture, design, art, agriculture, and technology. Rooted in material explorations and ecological storytelling, our work explores the entanglements of species, infrastructures, and landscapes in the era of climate crises. Through speculative design and spatial interventions, we reimagine human-nonhuman relationships, fostering alternative ways of inhabiting the world. Our practice moves fluidly across scales and disciplines—crafting spaces, objects, and events that challenge the roles of industrial landscapes, botanical institutions, and agricultural ecologies. From market halls to gardens, we engage with unexpected sites to cultivate new forms of kinship, resilience, and coexistence. Working closely with agricultural engineers, botanists, and farmers, we uncover overlooked materialities and hidden infrastructures within contemporary agricultural spaces.

Fuzzy Earth also engages in education and artistic research, shaping discourse through formal and informal teaching. We have led architectural design courses at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics and ecological art courses at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design while sharing our perspectives through lectures at institutions including the Architectural Association School of Architecture, Aarhus School of Architecture, Budapest Metropolitan University, Kingston University, and others. Tekla Gedeon trained as an architect at the AA School in London and is currently pursuing a PhD in practice at MOME, Budapest, investigating the role of food and narrative in ecological art. Sebastian Gschanes is a gardener, landscape architect, and horticultural researcher, exploring nature, ecology, and agriculture through both theory and practice. Together, we cultivate spaces of inquiry, collaboration, and care—where material flows, multispecies perspectives, and artistic research converge.

www.fuzzy.earth

︎︎︎ MEDIA: food, recipes, storytelling

︎︎︎LOCATION: central location + site visits to experts across Vienna

︎︎︎TEACHING LANGUAGE: english

︎︎︎WHAT TO BRING: your favourite cucumber recipe

︎︎︎REQUIREMENTS: hunger for cucumbers, and the stories they carry

︎︎︎MAXIMUM NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 5

Gurkencity

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