Jul 18, 2020
4-6PM
Workshop
What do fermenting and protest have in common?
Today, amidst a crisis of injustice, activists have rallied together in the pursuit of equity and change. Against suppression and algorithmic oppression, we have had to use ingenuity and creativity to amplify our voices in ways that are both visible and unseen. Strategies of covert gathering and organizing are not new to this movement. For decades, people have designed ways to connect and mobilize outside the gaze of oppressors. For activists of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, gathering around food, fermentation, and the act of swapping recipes was a convenient guise, providing the opportunity to secretly organize in plain sight. In a pandemic that has been peppered with a growing enthusiasm for creating sourdough starters, it seems fitting to begin to unveil the long linked history between food, revolution, and technology.
Join new media artist Ashley Jane Lewis to learn how to ferment a sourdough starter while cognitively fermenting on the swift, strategic, and seldom known history of food as a conduit to revolution. During the first workshop, we will begin a roundtable discussion on protest and our role as activists. Each day, participants will be provided feeding instructions for their starter, historical references to digest, and introspective questions to chew on and respond to. We will collectively track our progression digitally and regroup on the last day of the festival to share findings, new revelations, and of course recipes. The hope is that this exercise creates a space for self-development, reenergizes participants with the momentum needed to sustain this movement, provides the knowledge needed to create a living bio culture, and helps to reclaim the feminist and black activist history of food and technology.
Instructed by:
Ashley Jane Lewis