Ronald Kolb
Post-Exhibitionary Practice

https://www.m1-hohenlockstedt.de/en/kuratieren/m1-kuratieren-202526/canteen-fermentation-social/

Fermentation as a Living Score for Collective Transformation
Part of Art as Ecological Practice (2025–26)
Curated by Ronald Kolb

An ongoing social sculpture by Byungseo Yoo.

Byungseo Yoo’s Canteen Fermentation Social transformed M.1 into a working culinary infrastructure. A dehydrator, fermentation chamber, refrigerator, open shelves, starter cultures and collectively developed instructions turned the exhibition space into a laboratory, kitchen and resource-sharing station.

The project connected artistic practice, climate justice and everyday knowledge through fermentation. Microorganisms were not simply the subject of the work; they were collaborators whose activity required time, suitable conditions and ongoing care. The installation changed as ingredients fermented, workshops introduced new techniques and participants contributed their own experiences.

Workshops as Infrastructure
The project developed through a sequence of hands-on workshops. Before the Summer Assembly, participants cultivated kombucha and prepared tempeh from legumes and grains. Ahead of the Fall Assembly, a koji workshop explored the Japanese mould Aspergillus oryzae as the basis for miso, shoyu, sake and other foods. Experiments with potato-peel koji connected fermentation to the reuse of materials commonly discarded as waste.

In Kimchi Manifesto—Hohenlockstedt, a format first developed at the Musée d’Art de Pully was adapted to locally available cabbage and techniques inspired by Japanese tsukemono. Recipes changed through ingredients, duration and collective decisions. Cultural knowledge was neither treated as fixed property nor detached from its histories; it was translated through practical negotiation.

These activities created a network of participants, tools, microbes and recipes. Manuals and cultures remained available so that processes could be continued beyond a single workshop. Yoo described the project as a “living score”: an open structure rewritten through every iteration.

Go-Go Sourdough Udon Dancing Platform
The most physical activation of the project took place during the Fall Assembly. For Go-Go Sourdough Udon Dancing Platform, participants prepared udon noodles by kneading dough with their feet. Energetic music organised the process into a collective choreography of stepping, rolling, cooking and serving.

The usual division between performer and audience dissolved into a distribution of tasks. Some people kneaded, while others cooked, hosted, watched or ate. Fresh noodles were served with kimchi prepared in an earlier workshop, connecting different moments of the project through the final meal.

Fermentation offered both method and metaphor. Transformation occurred slowly and could not be controlled by one author. It depended on hospitality, maintenance and favourable relationships between human and more-than-human actors. Through its combination of laboratory, social sculpture and communal meal, Canteen Fermentation Social made ecological interdependence tangible as something practised together.