Ronald Kolb
Post-Exhibitionary Practice

https://www.m1-hohenlockstedt.de/en/kuratieren/m1-kuratieren-202526/geschmacksbibliothek/

Taste Library – A living archive of local plants, preservers and flavours and shared knowledge
Part of Art as Ecological Practice (2025–26)
Curated by Ronald Kolb

A performative installation by Seraina Grupp.

On the first floor of M.1, Seraina Grupp’s Taste Library developed as a space for collecting, tasting and exchanging knowledge about the local foodscape. Its central question was simple: which flavours are hidden in our immediate surroundings, and how can they be preserved, shared and experienced together?

The library did not organise knowledge exclusively through written descriptions. Jars, recipes, plants, smells, textures and stories formed its material. Visitors could bring preserves, taste other contributions or speak about methods of drying, fermenting and pickling. Knowledge entered the archive through use and conversation.

Foraging and Preserving
During the Summer Assembly, Grupp led a foraging walk through Hohenlockstedt. Plants gathered along the route connected the installation to the landscapes outside M.1. Rather than treating the surroundings as a source from which materials could simply be extracted, the walk encouraged close attention to seasonality, location and the knowledge required to identify and prepare plants responsibly.

The project expanded during the Fall Assembly through exchanges led by Grupp and Tabea Möllgaard. Participants brought jars, recipes and memories, transforming the library into a meeting place. The preserves carried stories of gardens, family techniques, experiments and personal tastes that could not be separated from their ingredients.

A collaboration with Biohof Springhoe introduced surplus produce into the project. Together with Marle Rudolph, vegetables that might otherwise have remained unused were processed and preserved. An exchange shelf in the M.1 café allowed jars, ingredients and recipes to circulate beyond the scheduled Assembly weekends.

An Archive That Diminishes and Grows
Unlike a museum collection, the Taste Library changed whenever something was opened, eaten, exchanged or newly added. Consumption did not destroy the archive; it activated it. A preserve could disappear from a shelf while its recipe, flavour or technique continued through another person.

Regular meetings in September and October 2025 and January 2026 gave the installation a recurring social rhythm. At the end of the Winter Assembly, a collective tasting brought the year’s contributions together as an embodied form of reflection. The programme’s seasonal cycle could be experienced through flavours preserved from earlier months.

The Taste Library exemplified the expanded exhibitionary practice of Art as Ecological Practice. It was artwork, resource, meeting place and shared infrastructure at once. By combining local plants with preservation methods and collective memory, it showed that ecological knowledge is not only communicated through facts. It is also held in gestures, recipes, senses and relationships—and remains alive when it is passed on.