Making Effervescent Encounters

Food Art Research Network and State of Concept in Athens, host a workshop that explores processes of collective fermentation.

Over two hours we engaged in a collective inquiry led by artist Grace Gloria Denis into microbial transformation, examining it as a generous model for contemplating flux and the porousness of collective bodies.

Processes of fermentation are contingent upon shifting conditions and spontaneous encounters. The process catalyzes reflections on transformative processes and their innate relationship to reciprocity, care and mess. Ferments are saturated with speculations of microbial economies of exchange.

The workshop takes Lauren Fournier’s proposals about fermentation as a material practice and metaphor through which to approach transnational feminisms, thinking about ways in which “feminisms might be reenergized– through symbiotic cultures of feminisms, fermentation prompts fizzy change with the simultaneity of preservation and transformation, futurity and decay.”

The workshop explores the collective as a fermenting body, an organism that possesses the capacity to digest matter, contend with difference, and witness transformation. Beginning with a listening exercise that followed a process of fermenting mezcal we lay in the midst of an exhibition by the artist Ahmet Ohgut and felt the connection between the bacterias in the mezcal and the wild ferments that live in our own bodies. We used lacto fermentation techniques to process our own ferments on the terrace of the gallery, and shared stories of all of the diverse practices of  people we met.