Bodies of Knowledge
How might ferments foment you?
Exhibition text by Barney Pau, for a show by him and Bint Mbareh titled Bodies of Knowledge at The Royal College of Art, London, for Curating Contemporary Art ‘24.
Aliment is, in essence, elemental. From the solar to the cellular, all organisms require nutriment; it is a rudiment of life. How organisms find this food is myriad, but for many, this is through an alimentary canal which connects the organism to its nourishment. What is issued from this canal could then also be considered elemental. The rudiments of sound-making are, for instance, integral to many organism’s existences, and whence guttural sounds come.
The ferments in Bodies of Knowledge are not meant for human consumption. In this simple fact, they gain agency from anthropocentric alignments, becoming subject instead of object. Connecting their most elemental alimentation, to the elemental sounds that issue from the human alimentary canal is an exercise in renegotiating our relationships with the world around us. The installation invites us to mentally metabolise existing thinking around the more-than-human and ferment it into something new. Placing them on our level and opening them up to our modes of communication, invites humans to see the non-human anew.
Fermentation is a mystery to most. Bubbling surfaces, changing forms, shifting textures; its inexplicable reactions occur on scales only science can see. So, historically, we’ve surmised, devising our own explanations for its magical work. Indeed, had ferments not leavened our bread, brewed our booze, or preserved our produce, they might have been seen as demonic for the visceral life they possess.
We now know more of their workings. Sort of… Scientifically, fermentation is an enzymatic metabolic process which chemically alters organic matter. It is, in other words, how microbes eat, and has been suggested1—and contested2—as the oldest metabolic act on earth. Biochemists’ disagreements aside, fermentation is more ancient than we can comprehend. As they ferment, microbes de- and reconstruct matter. For them, this is how they thrive. For us, it unlocks food’s bioavailability, preserves it, and makes it tastier.
Yet despite these awesome tendencies, our understanding belies fermentation’s infinite complexity. We reduce it to chemical or culinary processes, refining its inherent diversity with our notional conformity. Conceptually, fermentation embodies the knowledge to complexify, pollute, decompose and build thinking. They are ready to foment us.
What follows, then, is a theoretical ferment. Nonlinear in trajectory, nonsensical in elaboration, at times over-brewed, sometimes undeveloped; what you read is a fizzy, sticky mess. Thoughts combine, decompose, are reimagined and reconstructed. The only theoretical framework within which we metabolise thinking is disorder. It may seem contradictory to convey through chaos, but it is in their familiarity that recognised systems of communication become culturally codified. In this maelstrom of mentalisation thoughts become elemental. Stripped of context and construct, these notional ailments can nourish new thinking. Confused? As am I, but confusion isn’t bad. In fact, it liberates in its lack of certainty, opening our minds to alternate ways of thinking. Here, ferments become analogous, for they are adaptation incarnate; the very embodiment of decentralised thought.
In fact, ferments have influenced our thinking for aeons, and were perhaps even instrumental in our species’ evolution. The anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss suggests fermentation marks humans’ shift from nature to culture. He distinguishes ‘natural’ humans consuming honey and rainwater found fermenting in a hollow tree; from ‘cultural’ humans placing honey and water in a hollowed tree to ferment.3
Though his ideas remain pertinent, Levi-Strauss’ dualism is somewhat outdated, for it upholds the nature-culture divide. Historically, this has been used to demarcate safe from unsafe, known from unknown, controlled from uncontrolled; as is evidenced in culture’s etymology. From the Latin colere, meaning to ‘tend, or cultivate,’ the term is rooted in farming, defining human culture by our penchant for ploughing. Semantic trickery that ferments are also called ‘cultures,’ when they far outdate the existence of the plants for which we plough. Indeed, considering the elemental nature of these cultures’ alimentation, it’s somewhat presumptuous of us to term them after our tendency to tend fields.
The term ‘culture’ finds some redemption in an Ancient Roman use, when orator Cicero suggested cultura anima—‘cultivation of the soul’—as the highest form of philosophical thought.4 As a study of the existential, it’s perhaps apt for ferments to share this definition, for, as Levi-Strauss suggested, it’s in their consumption that we evolved to even have such critical inquiries. If anything, they cultivated us.
Despite being called ‘cultures,’ ferments are its notional antithesis. Defined as ‘ideas, customs, and social behaviour,’5 ‘culture’ maintains normativity. In his Fermentation as Metaphor, Sandor Ellix Katz describes fermentation as an engine of social change, “transforming what was into what’s next.”6 Just as a single microbe can ferment a substrate; a single idea foments change in the norm. In this, ferments elicit ‘abjection:’ defined by philosopher Julia Kristeva as a reaction to the breakdown of meaning, leading to a loss of distinction between subject and object; self and other.7 Ferments embody this breakdown, corrupting and polluting—i.e. diversifying—existing matter into something new.
Corruption and pollution have a bad rep. They indicate a shift from pure to impure; something often seen as negative. But is not ‘pollute the mind’ synonymous with ‘diversified thinking’? Such reconsiderations change our perceptions of ferments from objects to subjects. Mycologist Merlin Sheldrake suggests reconsidering perception might understand other species better, for “speaking might not always require a mouth, hearing might not always require ears”.8 In their subjectivity, ferments escape our jars to pollute our minds, lifting them beyond our label of leavener. So, to end with an opening, go forth and question your perceptions, and wonder: How might ferments foment you?
Tobin, A., Dusheck, J. (2005). Asking about life (3rd ed.). Pacific Grove, Calif.: Brooks/Cole. 389.
Lane, N., Allen, J. F., Martin, W. (27/01/10). "How did LUCA make a living? Chemiosmosis in the origin of life". BioEssays. 32 (4): 271–280.
Levi-Strauss, C. (1973) From Honey to Ashes. New York: Harper & Row. 473.
Cicéron, Marcus Tullius Cicero; Bouhier, Jean (1812). Tusculanes (in French). Nismes: J. Gaude. p. 273.
‘Culture’. Apple Dictionary. (2024). Oxford Dictionary of English. [Mobile application software]. Accessed 08/06/24.
Katz, S. E., (2020). Fermentation as Metaphor. Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing.
Kristeva, J., (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia.
Sheldrake, M. (2020). Entangled life. London: Penguin. 46.