Feminist Forum/ Confenerence 2025
Fermentation is explored here as a living archive — one that holds traces of seasonal availability, local ecologies, cultural memory, and domestic labor. Drawing on **Jane Bennett’s** theory of *vibrant matter* and her reading of the *pickle as assemblage*, I frame fermentation as a collaborative material process where human and nonhuman actors (vegetables, brine, bacteria, time, and sonic tools) co-produce meaning and form. **Astrida Neimanis’s** *Bodies of Water* further guides my thinking on fluidity and relationality, particularly in framing water — including the saline tears of the body — as a carrier of both memory and transformation. Her metaphor of tears helps reframe brine not just as a medium of preservation, but as an emotional, feminist material archive.
The project bridges listening as an embodied archival method with fermentation as a metabolic and political gesture: preserving the floral canvas of place, amplifying microbial agency, and tracing the tensions of what gets saved, forgotten, or consumed. Through community engagement and seasonal practice, I question what we choose to preserve, and who we are when we listen to what ferments beneath the surface.
The Video documentation: Presentation on the Feminist Forum 2025, Tbilisi, Georgia - organised, funded and currated by Women Initiative Supporting Group / WISG.
Fermented Scobi/ Kombucha
Berlin, Summer 2025