We are excited to announce the European launch of Fermenting Feminism, an international, multi-disciplinary project that takes the form of a publication and site-specific exhibitions, screenings, and events.
Fermenting Feminism, a limited edition artist’s book curated by Lauren Fournier and published by the Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology. Design by Zille Bostinius.
Limited copies of the Fermenting Feminism publication will be available.
The video art screening features work by:
WhiteFeather Hunter (Canada)
Rubina Martini (USA)
Zoë Schneiderder (Canada)
Nicki Green (USA)
The Unstitute (Spain)
Leila Christine Nadir and Cary Peppermint (USA)
Listening session of "We Are A Plot Device" by Regina De Miguel and Lucrecia Dalt (Spain, Colombia, Berlin). The artists will be in attendance.
Running time of the screening and listening session: 55 minutes
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Fermenting Feminism brings together artists whose work responds to what it means to bring fermentation and feminism into the same critical space. These are works that approach fermentation through intersectional and trans-inclusive feminist frameworks, and works that approach feminisms through the metaphor and material practice of fermentation. As both a metaphor and a physical process, fermentation embodies bioavailability and accessibility, preservation and transformation, inter-species symbiosis and coevolution, biodiversity and futurity, harm reduction and care.
Fermentation as a process of transformation becomes both a metaphor and a material practice through which to explore important issues for feminist artists and researchers, from the politics of labour, affect, survival, and care to colonialism, food, indigeneity, and the land. Is “feminism,” with its etymological roots in the feminine, something worth preserving? In what ways might it be preserved? In what ways might it be transformed? Is feminism a relic of the past, something that has soured? Or is feminism still a vital imperative? fermenting feminism positions fermentation as a potentially vital and viable space to re-conceive of feminism’s past, present, and futures.
Spanning the speculative and the literal, the embodied and the ephemeral, the artists in fermenting feminism reinvigorate questions of health, materiality, canonicity, community, consumption, ritual, and tradition. The works in this publication obscure the line between illness and well-being, between science and witchcraft, between human and non-human, and between sentient and non-sentient to flesh out pressing political, theoretical, aesthetic, and ethical questions in the present.
Working across the disciplines of art and science, Fermenting Feminism makes space for multi-disciplinary experimentation, including engagements with new materialisms, food studies, critical disability and mad studies, sexual diversity studies, and trans-inclusive intersectional feminist theory and practice. In addition to this beautiful publication made possible in collaboration between myself and the Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology — a kind of speculative workbook capable of growing and changing with the passing of time — fermenting feminism comprises a constellation of exhibitions, screenings, and programming taking place internationally. Given the site-specificity and importance of material and cultural context to fermentation practices, we are interested in having the exhibition and screenings of fermenting feminism evolve over the course of its tour, engaging with local artists and communities through performances, workshops, screenings, and experimental programming.
- Lauren Fournier, Curator
Full list of contributors:
Agustine Zegers (Chile, Dubai)
Clementine Morrigan (Canada)
Eirini Kartsaki (UK)
Farida Yesmin (Bangladesh, UK)
Hannah Regel (UK)
Hazel Meyer (Canada)
Ida Bencke & Dea Antonsen (Copenhagen, Berlin)
Jade Io Mars (UK)
Jessica Bebenek (Canada)
Julia Polyck-O'Neill (Canada)
Leila Nadir and Cary Peppermint (US)
Miles Forrester and Jen Macdonald (Canada)
Maya Hey (Canada)
Nicci Peet (UK)
Nicki Green (US)
Regina de Miguel and Lucrecia Dalt (Colombia, Spain, Berlin)
Robin Zabiegalski (US)
Rubina Martini (US)
SE Nash and Stephanie Maroney (US)
Sarah Nasby (Canada)
The Unstitute (UK)
Alice Vandeleur-Boorer and Tereza Valentová (Czech, UK)
WhiteFeather Hunter (Canada)
Zayaan Khan (South Africa)
Zoë Schneider (Canada)