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In November 2022, Geger, Indra, and Jayu, participants of the ‘The World is Our Household!’ Fellowship programme, organized a chocolate workshop at Bumi Pemuda Rahayu, a center for art, architecture and ecology in Munthuk, Imogiri, Yogyakarta, where Indra works. Together, the Fellows made a mini recipe book and a series of videos, including a tutorial and a short documentary.
The idea for the chocolate workshop started from Indra’s personal experience growing up in Munthuk, where cocoa plants are abundant, but where people do not possess the knowledge to make or process cocoa beans into chocolate. As Geger has been experimenting with different methods of chocolate making since 2021, they decided to combine their skills, expertise and interests. Jayu joined the team to study together and visuale the process through her illustration work.
During the workshop, which was joined by youngsters from Munthuk, they called memories of local plants and tried out different local food technologies such as a blender and a frying pan, thereby distancing themselves from the large and specialized equipment used in industrial chocolate making. Their research highlighted the fraught history of the cocoa tree, which is currently one of Indonesia’s main agrarian export products, which has been farmed in plantations since the colonial period, with colonizers cutting off access to local knowledge previously attached to the plant. In the workshop, we learned how to reclaim this lost knowledge and bring it back to those in whose company the plant grows.
Geger, Indra and Jayu invite you to watch the videos, read the mini recipe book (download the PDF at the top of this page!), and, if you live with cocoa trees, get started on making your own chocolate!
Video Tutorial: “How to Make Your Own Chocolate” (1’ 15”)
Short Documentary (9’ 26”)
Photo by: Benny Widyo
