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A*LIVE 2026: The Kitchen Network. Episode 4

A*LIVE 2026: The Kitchen Network. Episode 4

Kitchen Network y Luiza Prado

The Kitchen Network. Episode 4 by Luiza Prado
Antic Teatre, Barcelona
Date: 24/3/2026, 8 pm
Tickets 5 €, available here

Welcome to The Kitchen Network!
The Fourth episode takes place in Barcelona!

Unfolding as an episode in the last reality TV food competition on earth, this performance uses humour to examine the divide between online food cultures and their disconnection to wider issues of class, gender and geography. 

In this episode we step into a future where the European Union has dissolved, climate policy has failed, and old trade agreements have fractured. The promises of the European Green Deal remain unfinished across a continent marked by material scarcity, even as digital culture continues to project images of abundance.

Across Spain, farmland competes with data centers built to sustain cloud computing and AI. Water is diverted between crops and cooling systems; rural regions strain, cities expand, and digital infrastructure reshapes the landscape. In the absence of coordinated governance, spectacle becomes policy.

Food distribution is now governed by the Eurovision Exchange Agreement (EEA): each year, the country that wins Eurovision gains temporary authority over continental food allocation. Spain, the most recent winner, occupies a precarious position of relative abundance within an unequal and unstable Europe.

Water is tightly controlled, commodified, and unevenly distributed. This episode is sponsored by Blue Reserve, a premium hydration brand. Each contestant receives just two bottles to last the competition, as the AI host reminds viewers: “Because Not Everyone Gets a Second Pour.”

With elderly residents from the surrounding neighborhood serving as judges, The Kitchen Network stages cooking as performance in a time of scarcity, reflecting on inequality, digital expansion, and the politics of food in a fragmented Europe.

Jas Rault, Luiza Prado, Helen Pritchard, T.L. Cowan, The Kitchen Network: Anti-Fascism and Plants. Conversation and performance at transmediale 2024, HKW. Photo by Laura Fiorio. CC BY-NC-SA

About the The Kitchen Network & Luiza Prado

The Kitchen Network is a theatrical performance that continues Luiza Prado’s ongoing investigation of the necropolitical infrastructures around reproduction, nourishment, and planetary collapse.

The event taking place at Antic Teatre in Barcelona on March 24, 2026 corresponds to the fourth episode of the series, which continues and completes the research developed by the artist while adapting to each specific context. The first episode, presented within the framework of Transmediale in Berlin (January 2024), emphasized the technological aspects of the project. The second, held in Nottingham (April 2024), focused on the kitchens of migrant communities. The third, presented at the restaurant of the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin (October 2024), addressed labor and movement through the universe of the sandwich—a food associated with work rhythms and whose culinary origins point to non-native traditions.

In The Network Kitchen. Episode 4
Concept and direction: Luiza Prado
Master of Ceremonies: Albert Sánchez
Cook # 1: Monica Escudero
Cook # 2: Agnes Essonti Luque
Cook # 3:Irene Arcas
Jury: Old ladies from the community of the Antic Teatre

The Kitchen Network. Episode 4 is a produced by A*DESK and Antic Teatre.

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