BB Can you tell us a bit about the background of your project? How did you come up with the idea? What brought you together?
SHC & IR & MS We are two designers from Switzerland and Maki Suzuki, collective Åbäke, from the UK. Maki used to teach at our school which is HEAD Geneva. In 2011, Ingrid met Maki for the first time during a workshop called Le Magnifique Avventure, then she did an internship at Åbäke’s studio in 2014. Shu-Hua and Ingrid met each other during their Master studies in Geneva as well.
The Taste of The Brain was created in 2015 between 12 students and 3 teachers from Basel, Zurich and Geneva. Last June, we have organized a lecture-dinner called The Taste of The Brain which was a part of Cumulus design conference in Milan and related to Milan Universal Expo’s topic ‘Feeding the Planet’. Since we all enjoy the eating moment with people, we gathered thirty people working in the field of design, and created a moment for people to share their life stories at a dinner table. Maki and we decided to go further and to develop our process into different events linked to design. In fact, we are very happy to take part in the Brno Biennial and to present our second edition. This year, we are going to gather around a hundred guests, from both the audience visitors and from the Biennial designers and lecturers.

BB The participants in your project conceive together tableware for a communal meal. Have you realized this project before and how does it influence its following iterations?
SHC & IR & MS You know, we think that people don’t use to be attentive to all the small details from their daily life. We believe that food is not the only content on the dining table, also cutlery makes a large part of this beautiful cultural landscape, and that’s why we ask each other and our guests to bring their favorite tableware, to tell the stories behind it and present it as a museum collection. In this way, each Taste of the Brain event becomes an exhibition in itself.
In 2015, we organized the first edition at the restaurant Centro Svizzero in Milano. This year, The Taste of The Brain 2  is going to take place at the Moravian Gallery in Brno. Furthermore, we intend to break the common rules of a formal restaurant or exhibition cafeteria dinner. Going to a dinner is not only to get something but also to give something back. As we have proposed a nice collection of ceramics as tableware, we ask back to each of our guests to design their own ceramics for the next event that we are going to organize. This year, we bring to Brno some pieces that we did last year in Switzerland and Italy; our goal now is to organize several breakfasts and lunches in order to share and to conceive new pieces. At the end of the Biennial, we are going to have a beautiful collection of ceramics made by the public and designers. We propose to the designers to continue a piece that someone from the public started to make, as the ceramic work itself becomes a part of the conversation over the table. We also like the idea of blurring the signatures on the pieces.

BB How does the project you have prepared for the Off Programme fit into the larger context of your practice? Are you working on something related?
SHC & IR & MS Maki, from Åbäke, had worked around the link between food and design. He organized an evening dinner called Trattoria Circolare in 2013 with Martino Gamper and Alex Rich; he published the book Artists’ Cocktails in 2013 for the artist Ryan Gander, and he also did an exhibition called  Avant la faim et après: Jumeaux  ( Before and After Hunger: twins) in 2014 in collaboration with the ‘Musée de la danse’  in Rennes, curated by Boris Charmatz.
As a product designer from Taiwan, Shu-Hua already worked around the question of tools or cutlery. For her, The Taste of the Brain is a great opportunity to go further and to have a more global view of all the different elements presented on the table.
For Ingrid, even if her participation in the project is essential, it was her first project directly linked with food. However, she really likes to organize collaborative events with different people who need to engage to make it work. Design is something to share and not only to visualize, we are surrounded by amazing things and we just need to be more attentive about them. The Taste of the Brain is a project in which we believe and we are planning to organize some other venues in Europe and overseas for different events relating to gastronomy and design.

BB This edition of the Brno Biennial responds to the metamorphoses and the state of contemporary graphic design; its multitude, variety, vagueness and apparent superficiality. Can you identify some of the basic parameters, current themes or motivations of contemporary graphic design?
SHC & IR & MS Let’s grab a glass of wine, have a seat around this table and talk about it!