Keywords: fermentation, t4t, microbes
Abstract
This project statement and creative text is also a call for participation. In it I describe an ongoing artistic project that centers T4T conversations and intimacy with ourselves/ each other and our teeming consortia of microbial partners. Presenting possibilities for the metaphorical and material uses of fermentation, Transfermentation figures collaborative fermentation actions and vessels as microbial communication devices. Speculative possibilities for future iterations of Transfermentation will be informed by current and future participants and with future fermentive more-than-human co-collaborators.
Transfermentation is an ongoing documentary project with trans* people who sense a
connection between the multispecies social engagements of making and eating fermented
foods and embodied experiences of trans* belonging. I started Transfermentation (participants are called trans*fermenters) in 2021 through an interest in engaging with trans* people using food fermentation processes to generate speculative conversations about trans* identity. My own gender transition and fermentation journeys were ignited in tandem and during that time I became aware of the kinds of exploratory relationships that many trans* and queer people have with individual and collective fermentation practices. Transfermentation began as a desire for a shared ritual for belonging within enmeshed ecologies. Our collaborative fermentation projects for Transfermentation are openings into imagining our commensal and mutual bodily edges and spillages that multiply through nurturing practices.
Envisioning the raucous crew of microbes in fermentation jars can act as trans*fermenter conduits for excitement, joy, fervor, and effervescence. Under the right conditions, fermentation doesn’t hold back. Witnessing the moment a kombucha soda becomes bubbly or a sourdough starter leaps from the jar feels like permission to do the same- in private or among friends. Using ferments as a kind of model for method acting, can we ask questions and speak aloud what might be bottled up, begging to spill out? Transfermentation is a trans* space and occasion that asks for bubbling and spilling together.
What, then, about the process of fermenting might aid us in digesting trans* temporalities? What about being assisted by and being composed of microbes can speak to our gut feelings about being trans*? What is trans* becoming? Is transition ever over? When does it begin? Questions like these populate our fermentation jars after our fermentation sessions. The questions present a temporally layered methodology that gives us permission to rest with complex questions. As we allow time for our most pressing thoughts to meld, the microbial species present in our ferments are shifting and changing their populations and numbers; yeasts and bacteria are adding acids, gases, vitamins, and nutrients to our food. Through these processes of thinking with our microbes, and thinking about what they are up to, the crock, or vessel, can be a material container for sensitive and multisensory ecological communication between humans, plants, and microbes. The process cultivates trans* and queer time through meditating on the unknown— how will it smell, taste, or behave? How do I take care of it to yield the desired results? The ferment’s existence was sparked by water, soil, and seed, and emerged from interdependent processes helped by the labor of many beings. In a world of anti-trans violence where resistance is necessary, belonging of and to interdependent ecological and embodied processes is medicinal.
Practically, the project has taken shape primarily through video conferencing and messages, allowing for the widest range of participants based on location and access. Prospective trans*fermenters (anyone identifying as trans* who says they want to participate) have received an invitation with a request to provide information and details about what they would like to ferment, along with their personal information and access needs. To date, the fermentation project/ conversations have been between myself and one other person, though there are many options to expand the project to include group meetups and activities. By focusing on just one other person, I feel most available to be attentive and engage in intentional dialogue.
The original call for participation reads:
Transfermentation is a platform to explore and share trans* identities through a correspondence of fermentation processes. I am curious about the experiences of other trans fermenters and whether fermentation practice as self and community care becomes a personal aid for reflection, a salve, or a symbol of supportive relational networks. The crock is a cosmic microcosm that can hold the precarity of existence, emotion, and resilience in its small yet enormously interdependent space. Transfermentation is/ will become a multidimensional, multispecies artwork. In the realm of trans*fermentation, we are channeling trans* ecological actualities and possibilities of communication within and outside of familiar speech and language. It is a (likely) distant collaboration between us and the kin we are at home with.
This is an invitation to share processes, input, ingestion, and excitement about trans*fermenting embodiment. Practically, we will do this over a two-person (me and you) video call. You will lead our simultaneous making of the ferment in the first video call. When the ferment is done we will engage in a follow-up tasting call. In between, we can optionally play with sending media correspondence of any kind to document this trans* state of the ferment.
In the initial video call with trans*fermenters, we chat, chop, and/or mix our predetermined fermentation ingredients while discussing methods that are interwoven with memories and trans*fermentation cosmologies. Working with similar ingredients and methods, we complete the activity with ferments that resemble each other’s. Though they will ultimately be different, the ferments provide an initial, tactile way of being together when this is done remotely. If desired, questions asked in reflection are then taped to our jars (causing partners, roommates, or house guests to ask- what is this question doing on this ferment?1?!). We can then decide how long the ferment should take and whether we will come back to taste it together. While fermentation is underway, we might text or email updates, connections, and research.
Spatially, the kitchen presents a liminal and emergent place for trans*ecologies to unfold; it is often a place where one’s elders and ancestors can be acknowledged, remembered, or imagined through their recipes, words, senses, and rhythms. By immersing in sensory aspects of creating ferments, we can touch, see, smell, or otherwise sense across and with lines of difference and separation. Affective relations can be heightened through the act of fermenting. We can imagine biological relatives or transcestors of importance to us going through the motions of chopping, combining, and salting. Within a framework of remembering and imagining, we form lines of connection across geographical and temporal boundaries while we prepare for ingestion and changemaking processes spurred on by microbes.
Please contact the author at nash.se@gmail.com or visit @transfermenters on Instagram if you would like more information on participating in Transfermentation.
About the Artist
Sean Nash is an interdisciplinary visual artist of trans experience whose practice
includes embodied and social research with food and fermentation. Nash’s materially
diverse and participatory work has been exhibited nationally and he is a 2023 Charlotte
Street Foundation Visual Artist Award Fellow. His individual and collaborative writing
about fermentation and identity has appeared in Fermenting Feminism, Cuizine: The
Journal of Canadian Food Cultures, and Musings: the ABC’s of FFF.
Citation
Nash, Sean. 2024. “Transfermentation.” TSQ*Now, Transgender Studies Quarterly 11, no. 4. http://www.tsqnow.online/post/transfermentation
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