Isar-Loisach Melting Soup

Schmelz-Suppe Isar-Loisach (Isar-Loisach Melting Soup) is a performative culinary work focusing on how human interaction with the subaquatic ecosystem of Lake Starnberg (Germany) is constituted.

The work revolves around a recipe for a fish soup and materializes in the soup itself, a limited edition of ceramic bowls and a drawing. Each bowl is paired with a stone from the lake, which is embedded in the bottom and during the performance is heated in order to keep the soup warm.
The soup consists of the heated stone, fish broth with water from the lake and a piece of white fish, a local species linked to the traditions of the region.

Far from being just a recipe, this work is a ritual and a sensory experience. It invites participants to reflect on their connection to the lake, not just as an external environment but as something they internalize and become one with. By consuming the soup, the lake symbolically and physically becomes part of them.

Taking reference from the glacier from which the lake originates, the stone, water and fish are more than ingredients: they are carriers of history, geology and biodiversity, and underline the role of the lake as a living entity that sustains human life and interacts with it.

Schmelz-Suppe Isar-Loisach is the result of collaboration with the Institut für Fischerei and the Huber fishing family, both of which are deeply rooted in the ecology and community of the lake.