Soufflée au KEK

Thomas Levine and Elona Shatri
March 2017

Kosovo runs on two power plants, of which the oldest, Kosovo A Power Station, is said to be the worst single-point source of pollution in Europe. Plans to build a cleaner and more efficient power plant date back to the early 2000s, but they have been altered along the way and construction was postponed constantly. Like its predecessors, the new plant, Kosovo C, would burn lignite, coal’s crumbly brown, toxic, poor cousin. For cleaner energy has gotten so much cheaper in recent years, building an eventually not-so-efficient and dirty new power plant instead of wind farms and solar panels seems absurd. The whole case is an unfathomable boscage of private and public interest, in which the soon-to-be-privatised Kosovo Energy Corporation (KEK), politicians, investors and the World Bank are entangled.

Soufflée au KEK depicts the absurdity of the situation in a data dish and a performance.

Three chocolate soufflés together with the three coffees represent the three power plants, existing Kosovo A and B and the future plant C.

The size of the soufflés is proportional to the power plants’ electricity production –– and well, there is some difference, but not so much in the end.

The chocolate inside is proportional to the dust pollution, and that varies dramatically, since plant A is a massive polluter. But because they all run on coal or lignite, they all pollute – which you can see from the smoke produced by burning tea on the soufflés’ top.

The coffee-making performance follows a strict script, in which the two performers make contradictory statements about the three power plants.

Created at

Data Cuisine Workshop Pristina

Other dishes from this workshop: