Understanding the extent of the fermentation process is an inherently sensuous endeavor, one that’s rich with noisy bursts, fantastical growths, and textures that range from stringy and slimy to pleasingly crunchy. These indications mark a (hopefully) planned change in the original product and help us register that the once clean, mellow juice is now a funky cider or that the crock of salted cabbage has become pungent sauerkraut. The auditory aspects of fermentation alone, though, provide a unique rubric for evaluating the stage of the edible matter. Signs like the effervescent puff, produced by pulling the top off of a bottle of kombucha or beer, reveal the stored material has reached an appropriate level of preparedness, for example.

As a metabolic process, fermentation occurs when the enzymes of microorganisms break down molecules like glucose anaerobically, or in the absence of air. This undertaking produces a diverse blend of microbial populations and pH levels, and it’s these cumulative differences that provide the health benefits probiotics and fermented foods are known for.

In recent years, though, fermentation has extended beyond its dietary relevance into the realm of art and politics. Writer, curator, and artist Lauren Fournier explains in her pioneering, multi-disciplinary project Fermenting Feminism that “as both a metaphor and a physical process, fermentation embodies bio-availability and accessibility, preservation and transformation, inter-species symbiosis and coevolution, biodiversity and futurity, harm reduction and care.” This critical framework, which feels increasingly relevant as we collectively struggle with capitalism gone awry, a contentious political landscape, and a planet that is perpetually on fire and under siege, grounds much of Fournier’s work and offers a lens for interpretation that’s bubbling with possibility—famed American food writer and DIY devotee Sandor Ellix Katz has published a book and spoken on the topic, as well. Fermentation, in essence, both embodies and is a catalyst for further change, and it’s when we hear the fizzing and gurgling of a pressurized substance that we perceive transformation is underway. Speaking metaphorically, when centuries-long, structural issues bubble up into mainstream discourse, it’s apparent that change, albeit sometimes slow and incremental, is in motion.

It’s a stunning parallel that one of the greatest upheavals of our lifetimes—one in which we were physically contained within our homes with a host of pressures from a global pandemic to social uprisings to grappling with every facet of our existences—sparked a flurry of home fermentations. At the onset of COVID-19, Instagram posts, Tik Toks, and think pieces abounded, with some detailing the finicky manipulations necessary for baking a perfect batch of bread and others attempting to assuage endless anxieties. The time the privileged among us spent listening to the crackle of sourdough air pockets as they burst or plopping a SCOBY into a full jar were acts of slow, intentional care, both for the matter itself and for our future bodies who would consume what we brought forth. Because of the symbiotic properties of fermentation—the feeding, protecting, and consuming from both parties—the literal and metaphorical layers of change are seemingly endless.

This framework of care, preservation, and transformation extends into a variety of multi-disciplinary artistic and curatorial practices. Take Rubina Martini’s “Fermentation: Reflection,” for example. Originally part of a noise seminar at Place PDX Gallery in Portland, Martini literally submerged herself in a 75-gallon tank as a way of embodying and living the fermentation process. “Things usually get to the end of (their) life and decompose. I was and am still fascinated how fermentation prevents this end by creating new life out of old life. In my work, it is my past, my trauma and the choices I have made from a place of trauma that I ruminate on and then turn into art, much like a kombucha SCOBY would take sugars and process them to probiotics, etc,” she writes about the project. It’s through bursting bubbles and sloshing liquid enveloping Martini’s body that such transformation occurs.

There’s also Arden Surdam’s “ Scrubber (Bioreactor III).” Born in 2020, this tabletop vessel contains spirogyra, a type of green algae, that utilizes the fermentation process to “decrease the potency of harmful algae blooms.” The piece was included in a poignant, speaking-focused exhibition, Seating Chart for a Fall Dinner Party in a Pandemic. Helmed by Kendra Jayne Patrick, the group show paired artworks with an imagined conversation topic, a curatorial endeavor that strategically plumbs physical changes present in pieces like Surdam’s, in addition to the monumental shifts in relationships spurred by the ongoing pandemic. While “Scrubber” is not sound-focused in its material components, although the gurgling and frothing of the natural matter surely were occurring as it aged, it maintains an embedded conceptual relevance: the literal fermentation process serves as a site for change through auditory methods of connection, i.e. the dinner party, which deal with a world in flux and the altered relations between supposed conversationalists. As with home baking and brewing, it’s the human intervention, whether Surdam’s placing the algae within the acrylic bioreactor or Patrick’s prompts, that sparks the transformative process, a physical transition that’s evoked in the broader goal of preserving connection while conceptualizing newly formed social relations.

Similarly using fermentation as a starting point is Emeka Ogboh’s “Sufferhead,” “a craft beer project inspired by the food tastes and experiences of Africans living in Europe. It makes it possible to explore certain preconceived ideas and a priori assumptions about immigration and integration policies that are generally associated with the destinies of expatriates,” a statement says. In the infomercial teaser alone, we hear the crack of the bottle top and the immediate release of pressure before the frothy foam rushes to the top and bubbles over the glass in an effervescent glug. This diffusion, with all of its fizzy, energetic sounds, serves as a metaphorical place-maker for letting go of tension and imagining an alternate, empathetic world.

Despite their wildly different mediums, these artworks all hearken back to Fournier’s original conceptions. As with her declaration that fermentation embodies “preservation and transformation,” the locus of these projects and others in a similar vein—Fermenting Feminism is ripe with examples across disciplines— is that they evoke the chemical process and strive to retain what’s useful (the beneficial aspects of the algae in Surdam’s case) and alter the rest (i.e. Martini’s painful trauma or the still liquid of Ogboh’s beer). In doing so, the projects simultaneously undergo a material alteration and establish a site for inspiring broader change, two variations we understand are underway through the literal and symbolic fizzing, bubbling sounds they produce.

While drawing on natural processes to conceptualize artistic endeavors is not new, there’s been increased attention on doing so to envision a more equitable and just world that doesn’t destroy the planet or fellow beings in the process. As Fournier writes, “fermentation prompts fizzy change with the simultaneity of preservation and transformation, futurity and decay.” In many ways, the last two years have stimulated a profound alteration that asks us what’s worth protecting and maintaining about our ways of life and what requires alteration. As we continue to navigate an increasingly pressurized environment replete with deep-seated, structural issues that are constantly bubbling up and bursting, it feels particularly apt to utilize the metaphor of fermentation: how can we embody the effervescent mutability so inherent to the process? What happens when we tune into this symbiotic relationship of mutual care? In doing so, we might find ourselves in an ever-changing world fizzing with the vitality of kombucha, rich with the diversity and health of microbial populations, and capable of the life-giving renewals of a millennia-old sourdough starter.