our spirit word
mottainai.
the art of not wasting
One day, while looking up how to repair a broken cup with kintsugi, we stumbled upon the Japanese word mottainai.
It clicked instantly — our spirit-word. Mottainai, meaning “what a waste,” carries a deep sense of regret when something valuable is discarded. To us it encapsulates everything we have been practicing for the past 15 years, and everything we hope to continue doing:
inviting others to be curious about the art of not wasting — food, energy, water, resources, traditions and time.
Mottainai Labs, then, is a mental, physical and virtual space where we can play with projects that are durable, regenerative and long-lasting. Like any good lab, whether in the kitchen or the darkroom, Mottainai Labs offers us the right conditions for responding to questions that can transform our photography, cooking, and other, collaborative projects into ways of attuning to the art of not wasting.
Our curiosities guide our imaginative process. We love to shape stories focusing on food, social justice, cultural preservation and our shared environment. Emphasizing sounds and images that captivate us, our works aim to evoke the experiences and passions of our subjects, while being as durable and waste free as possible. Through poetic reportage, our compositions can be defined as meditative, empathetic and evocative.
Jennifer
I grew up as a wild child on a farm, always outside building huts and baking mud cakes. I guess my love for the outdoors sprouted then, but later got lost between the concrete weeds when I moved to the city. But I kept cooking. Besides being a graphic designer I’m a zero waste chef and cookbook author at emptythefridge.be. The wild side in me bloomed once again on a warm summer morning when I awoke, curled out of my tent and stood barefoot in the grass picking some brambles off a bush in the French Pyrenees. Since then I’ve been exploring how to bring nature back into my graphic and culinary creativity, and simultaneously how to bring them back to nature. The results have been food-oriented content creation, foraging workshops, food preservations classes and a lively kitchen laboratory of ferments, pickles and foraged finds.
tools in my lab: Graphic & web design | Recipe Development | Food Design & Events | Cookbook Design | Zero waste cooking | Foraging
Joseph
Like many other travelers, I picked up a camera as a tool for telling my story. But it quickly became clear it could be an even more powerful tool: one for bearing witness and attending to others. I quickly gravitated toward documentary work, following artists, monks and travelers amongst others. But when Jennifer and I met, something felt amiss. While she was foraging seasonal flora and turning it into a sort of alchemy, I was documenting what she was cooking. Gradually, I began feeling detached. Witnessing was no longer enough. I realized, I wanted to be an alchemist too. I began researching the possibilities for using foraged plant materials for analog film development. This has led my practice into a whole new direction. Today my camera has magically transmuted again: it’s an alibi for going out into the wild, searching for botanical materials for food and for film. I work with both still and moving images with my rolleiflex and 16mm Bolex cinema camera.
tools in my lab: Analog & digital photography & film | Plant-based film development | Screenplay Development | Academic & grant writing | Storytelling