The Fermentation Station — Dutch Design Week ‘22

A living part of my graduation work shown in the exhibition “New Now”

Have you ever gone on safari in your own kitchen?

No? That is not so strange. We have bigger and more important things to do, right?

With climate change seemingly approaching a peak, the solution seems to lay in conserving the “wild” and far away corners of the nature world. In the disappearing jungles, oceans full of plastic, and dying soil.
Yet at the same time, in the human world, we do everything to protect ourselves from the unexpected and wild. Kitchens have never been so clean, food never so indestructible. Fear of molds and bacteria caused by lack of knowledge. Plastic packaging is taking over the supermarket filled with perfect vegetables. Our kitchens are specialized in keeping us safe from anything wild, while we struggle to keep the wild safe from us. Protecting seems to be the motto of this human focused century. Keep, save, preserve, conserve.

However, more and more people seem to discover that this attitude of “keeping safe” is the first problem to solve on our way toward a more sustainable future. So, let’s go on safari in our own kitchens! Lower your eye level to just above the kitchen counter in search for something wild.

The Fermentation Experimentation Station
At the Fermentation Station, we were researching the art of fermentation. Fermentation is one of the ancient ways of keeping, that embraces wild bacteria and yeasts instead of killing them off. And therefore is a way of keeping with a future. Among others, Jip Roelmaat, Marika Groen, and Tessa Straver worked there on bubbly, smelly but tasty things! And I was there to talk and learn about it too.