Some check out YouTube for silly catmovies for sensless pasttime. Others choose Russian dashcam crashes or ‘idiots at work’. Our guilty pleasure is to look at the HELL’S KITCHEN-videos in which head chef Gordon Ramsay perpetually visits local restaurants on the brink of ruin. These movies all follow the same outline: Gordon comes in as a guest, orders a meal, sends everything back to the kitchen, because it all tastes like shit, goes to the pantry, opens cupboards and refrigerators, yells at owners, cooks and managers and closes the kitchen because of danger to public health. Then he takes charge himself and transforms the lost fame into a modern alluring restaurant. So far the routine. So far the benign pursuit.

​

Sometimes things run a little different for Gordon, like in 'Gordon meets his match' in Malaysia, in which he travels on a culinary periplus through Asia and his first discovery is that for the best, most exciting and authentic Malaysian cuisine, one shouldn’t go to the fancy expensive restaurants, with their high brow head chefs, but to the local familyrestaurants run by the ‘aunties’. One of those restaurants, with a very vibrant aunty in charge, is well known for its delicious Rendang. Gordon asks if he may join her in the kitchen to assist her in making this famous dish. That’s fine, aunty says, as long as Gordon is willing to obey her orders. ‘I’m used to that’ Gordon replies and he follows her to the kitchen. There he gets a crash-course Malaysian cooking that makes him sweat and he asks her about everything: how much of this ingredient, how much of that, how long should this cook, how long should that, because he wants to ‘mentally write down the recipe’.

​

‘AGA AGA’ she responds everytime: ‘I don’t know, it’s up to you’. Aga Aga, it turns out, means something like ‘any amount’ or ‘whatever suits you’. What it boils down to is that you need to (in this case:) cook with a combination of KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE, SENSITIVITY and CREATIVITY. ‘Gordon is a precise chef, I am an Aga Aga-cook’, aunty explains and Gordon realizes that cooking is more than the west-european way of following recipes, with lists of ingredients and prescriptions: you also need a healthy dose of ‘AGA AGA’

​

For us ‘AGA AGA’ is therefor equivilant to WILFULNESS, letting your choises depend on what’s required, with your own wishes and taste as your driving force, based on knowledge, experience, appraisal and creativity.

​

Whoever is searching here for cursory labour, following fixed outlines is at the wrong place.

​

‘AGA AGA’ raises the free will of arbitrary to the level of Art: rules are written to be bent or broken.

To those that feel attracted to this way of thinking, the doors to our studio are wide open.