This Is How I Say Potato is a participatory film and oral history project created by Jeffrey Allen Price and Juan López Espantaleón. Developed between 2016 and 2019 and continuing today, the current version of the film features more than 100 participants sharing over 65 different ways of saying, singing, and screaming the word “potato” in languages from around the world. Through humor, storytelling, and cultural exchange, the project explores language, identity, memory, and human connection through one of the world’s most familiar foods.
The project originated during the Jamaica Flux 2016 residency in Queens, New York, one of the most linguistically diverse communities in the world. Inspired by the extraordinary variety of languages spoken throughout the borough, Price began inviting participants to share how they say, sing, and scream the word “potato” in their native language. What began as a playful linguistic experiment quickly evolved into a broader exploration of personal stories, cultural traditions, foodways, popular culture, and the many meanings attached to one of the world’s most important crops.
Participants were invited to answer a series of questions about potatoes, including favorite recipes, family traditions, childhood memories, jokes, songs, dreams, works of art, films, and expressions involving potatoes. These conversations often moved far beyond food, revealing personal histories, cultural knowledge, and unexpected connections between people from different backgrounds. While the current film is approximately ten minutes in length, the larger project archive contains more than ten hours of recorded interviews, stories, songs, jokes, memories, and cultural observations collected throughout the production process.
Filming took place at Jamaica Flux 2016 in Queens, New York, as well as during additional recording sessions held in Brooklyn, Iona University in New Rochelle, NY, The Charles B. Wang Center at Stony Brook University, and other locations around Long Island. Participants ranged in age from young children to senior citizens and represented numerous countries, cultures, and languages. Together, these recordings form an ongoing archive documenting the many ways people relate to potatoes across languages, generations, and cultures.
The completed film brings together dozens of participants speaking, singing, and screaming the word “potato” in languages from around the world. Through rapid editing, humor, and repetition, the work transforms a single everyday word into a celebration of cultural diversity and shared humanity. Equally important are the personalities of the participants themselves, whose stories, humor, memories, and performances give the project its warmth and character.
A key visual component of the project is an accompanying poster series featuring participant portraits arranged in a grid alongside the word “potato” in each participant’s language. Together, the film and poster project create a collective portrait of a global community connected through language, memory, and the potato.
The current version of This Is How I Say Potato has been exhibited and screened at museums, galleries, and cultural institutions including the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, The Charles B. Wang Center, the Islip Art Museum, the Global Center for Latvian Art, the Bridgehampton Art Museum, and other exhibition venues in the United States and abroad.
Lopez and Price between takes, Iona University Art Studio, 2016. Photo courtesy of Hannah Park.
Combining participatory art, documentary practice, oral history, and cultural research, This Is How I Say Potato remains one of the most ambitious and far-reaching projects undertaken by the Think Potato Institute. By inviting people to share a single word, the project reveals the remarkable diversity of human experience while highlighting the unexpected ways in which potatoes connect people across languages, cultures, and generations.
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PARTICIPATE
This Is How I Say Potato remains an active and ongoing project. New languages, stories, songs, and participants are still being collected for future versions of the film and related exhibitions.
Would you like to participate?
Participants are invited to share how they say, sing, and scream the word “potato” in their language, along with stories, memories, jokes, songs, traditions, and other cultural references related to potatoes.
To learn more or contribute to the project, please contact the Think Potato Institute.
Film Coverage:
2025 — The Spud Has Its Day in the Sun — The East Hampton Star
2024 — MainPotRe during Vidzeme Innovation Week 2024— Interreg Baltic Sea Region
2019 — The Art of Collaboration — The Islip Bulletin [PDF]
Related Documentation:
→ Institute Chronicle: We Always Learn Something New About Potatoes
→ Institute Chronicle: 100 Participants and Counting