Kombucha Goddess

During the „Future of Life“ summer program in Karlsruhe, October 26-30, 2022, interdisciplinary speculative narratives emerged in collaboration with non-human actors and feminist practices. The project „Goddess“ focused less on the benefits of biological organisms for humans, but rather questioned the entanglements as well as their agency.

 

Feminist artistic, critical, and philosophical discourses situate fermentation as a queer site of contamination, collaboration, and transformation. „Goddess“ features a ritual in the form of an artistic performance that inverts power relations between humans and non-humans (in this case kombucha), aiming to reveal new perspectives and create space for discourse.

 

Brewing and drinking kombucha is meant to represent an act of self-care that improves gut health, suggesting that it is perhaps the truest way to understand fermentation. Fermentation should be understood not just as a metaphor, but as a naturally occurring process in which humans participate.

 

by Nadja Reifer / Dambi Kim / Claudia Zampella / Anna Baldassarre / Marlene Mautner / Gizem Sentürk / Anushree Goel