Shelf Life. Ferment-Activity and Nurturing Materials

Organizers: Alwin Cubasch, Maxime Le Calvé & Anna Heitger (Food4Future)

Fermentation is a complex set of techniques bridging food substances, microbes, and the environment, which makes us question the distinction between decay and flourishing. Inherently a filtering activity, fermentation relies on the long-standing relationship of yeast and bacteria to nutrients and the elements. Through practices of food transformation, preservation and consumption, the newly woven symbiotic entities emerge from fermentation processes and enter into a different ecosystem – that of the human body, itself a multi-organism entity. These entities are directly in correspondence with our microbiome: fermented food has, in a way, already stepped into the human digestive system before it is ingested.

The historic effort toward pasteurization and sterilization of edible substances speaks to modern desires to stabilize and fix materials in a certain moment of time, impacting local ecosystems and living bodies. Centuries-old practices of fermentation at the interface between human entities and food materials became displaced by the dominance of these novel techniques, yet have not disappeared. In this workshop, we explored »ferment activity« and the interface of microbes, human organisms and their shared environments, and the ways in which dynamic stability is achieved not through inactivating but through selective care of naturally occurring processes.

Drawing on anthropological and historical perspectives, we also aimed to examine pockets of resistance against industrialization - communities still practicing ferment activity - while framing them in a broader picture of modern food-ways, understanding this phenomenon as a »Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen«. We seeked to re-enchant the supposedly simple task of cooking with the concept of »nurturing materials«: a feminist ecological approach in which we recognize the two-way nurturing and caring processes that are sustained between bodies human and non-human, and within it, a new understanding of ourselves as part of symbiotic ecologies.

Program

09:30-10:00
Welcome by Claudia Mareis and Introduction by the Organizers

Session 1 – Iteration (Routines)

Chair: Petra Löffler (Matters of Activity, HU Berlin, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg)

10:00–10:40
Maxime Le Calvé, Iva Rešetar, Bastian Beyer & Skander Hathroubi (Matters of Activity, HU Berlin):
»Kombucha Lab: Through the Looking-Glass«

10:40–11:00
Discussion

11:00–11:30
Jamie Allen (IXDM Basel):
»Cycles, Soil and Sustenance«

11:30–11:50
Discussion

11:50–12:30
Break

Session 2 – Mediation (Motherhood)

Chair: Jörg Niewöhner (Integrative Research Institute THESys & Matters of Activity, HU Berlin)

12:30–13:30
Matthäus Rest (Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History) & Salla Sariola (University of Helsinki):
»How does your mother smell today? A hands-on Bread Workshop«

13:30–14:00
Discussion

14:00–15:00
Break

Session 3 – Transubstantiation (Tales)

Chair: Maxime Le Calvé (Matters of Activity, HU Berlin)

15:00–15:15
Yoonha Kim (Matters of Activity, HU Berlin)
»Rub it together: Visual Ethnography of the »Kimjang« Korean Domestic Seasonal Routine«

15:15–15:30
Alwin Cubasch (Matters of Activity, HU Berlin)
»Space Food: Dreams of Eternal Shelf Life in Artificial Environments«

15:30–15:45
Beth Rogers (University of Iceland)
»Whey Back When: Cheesy Vikings and The Culture of Skyr«

15:45–16:00
Discussion

16:00-16:15
Break

16:30-16:45
Sabine Biedermann, (TU Berlin)
»Popular Health Hacks: Sensing the Liveliness of Ferments«

16:45-17:00
Laurence Douny & Skander Hathroubi (Matters of Activity, HU Berlin)
»›Fermented‹ Mud: An Exploration into West African Dyeing Techniques.«

17:00-17:15
Discussion

17:15-17:30
Conclusion