Coco, Community Manager
Coco Gagnet (she/her), is from and currently resides in Southwest Ohio, on the unceded lands of many Siouxian, Algonquin, and Iroquoian speaking peoples. Her parents have owned a restaurant most of her life, and she grew up immersed in the hospitality industry. Her undergrad is in Philosophy and her passion lies in food, wine, farming, collecting rocks, and road trips. Coco is the creative genius behind Come Again - an experiential philosophy project centering food and hospitality as a means to combat hostile, white supremacist, capitalism.
1. What is Come Again?
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Come Again is a philosophical framework for exercising Feminist Hospitality as utopian practice. Feminist Hospitality prioritizes embodied care, reciprocity, and play as means to perform the liberated futures we want, as well as ends in and of themselves. There's no set definition to the activities of Come Again- other than food based engagement. Events are emergent, ephemeral- driven by inspiration and philosophy rather than a prescribed set of offerings. I'm interested in facilitating spaces that nurture our utopian impulse to transformation- we know another world is possible- pleasure, play, and meaningful connection invoke that world. In some ways I know exactly what Come Again is, in others I have no idea. I'm doing my best to subvert commodification as a means to challenge, as best I can, the ways imperialism/settler-colonialism/racial capitalism, will inevitably reproduce themselves in my work. I don't want to sell experiences. I don't want to sell anything. I want to use my class privilege to give away whatever I can whenever I can because we all belong and no one really owns anything.
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2. What is your brand ethos?
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My brand ethos is slippery open-endedness. It is really important to me to resist objectification. To live expansively, to be intimately connected to the depths of our subjectivity and interdependence, we have to be willing to witness, to keep it all open. I think I feel some resistance to the language of a "brand" because I don't think about my work as a brand. It's all an earnest attempt to articulate Desire from the core of my being, and to invite others in to rest, co-create loving space, to be ourselves, to welcome one another.
3. What are you most passionate about?
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Sleeping outside and learning to live Beyond fear.
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4. What idea have you outgrown recently?
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No more either/or, only both/and. This shouldn't be conflated to paralyzing relativism, but to say that welcoming complexity creates more space for freedom. Taking it all has made life that much more illuminated, more round, more musical.
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5. Favorite recipe?
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Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce, with late summer tomatoes. I like to buzz buzz it in the blender.
