Gasthaus - Fermentation and Bacteria
(2016)

Maya Minder, Gasthaus: Fermentation and Bacteria, 2016, Installation, Happenings, Relational Aesthetics Formation: Temporary structure, kitchen, platform, on the possibility of a temporary community Assemblage: cooking, eating, fermenting, curating, discussing, talks, workshops Meta-level: politics, hospitality, potlatch, safe zone, community, multitude, creative industry, temporary use. The idea of creating a temporary food stall with a mobile kitchen and a semi-enclosed place to stay at the Degree Show. I want to be the perfect host. Visitors will be offered delicacies such as kimchee hot dogs, empanadas, kefir, kombucha, spicy rice cakes and more. Friends are invited to cook. Inside the stand there is a mobile kitchen with a large table for meeting and exchanging ideas. Guests are invited to talks about escapism vs. accelerationism, community vs. commune, collaborations and multitudes, gentrification and the city, interim use vs. occupation, feminism and gender roles and to generate an awareness of their own class, the creative class. For me it is the first time combining cooking, curating and art and fermentations in one project. I went to see an old friend in April, who is doing permaculture in the countryside of Italy, Calabria and inside the discussion about what I could do as final project for degree and thinking of what I really love doing, we came up with this idea of creating a place of cooking, also a safe zone to talk about current issues inside the creative class. I also brought home a Waterkefir culture form this trip and since then are rigorously handling all kinds of fermentation stuffs and bacterials. Recently I received a sourdough from a friend and researching on your webpage I was with triggered seeing sourdough text: From the beginning we have been working with cooking as activator for our thinking. Fermentation processes and especially the production of sourdough became main anchors in our activities. As in the cultivation of sourdough (a dough made of a starter, flour and water), curating is a way of letting ideas grow, across disciplines and distances. In the past, sharing sourdough literally meant sharing a culture. Triggered because I am looking for a way to combine the fermentation processes into a socio-political debate about what is happening here and now. There are many strings of thoughts and I see a metaphorical parallel between the current social transformations and the process of a good fermentation process with all its bacterias. The Gasthaus therefor is an experimental kitchen laboratory in both directions, first for the social fermentation and second for the food fermentation. Things can go bad, but mostly with good care, well tempered atmosphere and proper hygiene it will work out fine. Hospitality is the friendly attitude shown to a visitor by their host when they are accommodated, hosted and entertained. Hospitality is reciprocal, you give and take. My thesis is to create a place with the guesthouse where the expectation is not to receive the same attention in material values, but to share ideologies, knowledge and practices with the guesthouse and, above all, to exchange them. The nature of reciprocity is less focused on a measurable value, but is conceived as a holistic approach. With the sharing of knowledge, food and time, something is set in motion that further decomposes the act of exchange in the process. Fermentations take time and literally cultures are shared and bacteria are passed on in people's heads and bellies, which can lead to a change in thinking.