Fuzzy Earth: Fermented Futures
As part of Trafó 25 festivities, we will empty the pantry!
Installation by Fuzzy Earth: Tekla Gedeon and Sebastian Gschanes in collaboration with Zsófia Szonja Illés, Sándor Guba and szabadonbalaton (Diána Berecz and Dániel Bozzai)
Fermented Futures reconnects visitors with places of food production and highlights urgent challenges through sharing knowledge, ecological narratives, and food in the form of a reimagined pantry installation. The pantry is a space of caretaking; it raises awareness of seasonal changes and local ecologies; it gives an alternative to globalized wasteful consumption habits; it contains personal memories and delights made with devotion from present communities to the future. In Hungarian, ‘éléskamra’ is a safe-keeping storage unit that conserves seasonal goods and provides exclusive bites for celebratory occasions, while in English the word pantry has additional meaning as a staging area to entertain guests and as a food bank to communally share resources.
As part of Trafó 25 festivities, we will empty the pantry! We will feed on the land, look into the future, and form new collectives. Fermented Futures welcomes visitors to explore, taste, and re-imagine rural Hungarian landscapes with three tasting sessions hosted by the artists.
Entrance is free but subject to registration. Please register in person at the box office or send a mail to jegypenztar@trafo.hu.
Zsófia Szonja Illés and Sándor Guba: Weatherfish Cabbage: Recipe for floodmeadow habitat restoration
17:00 - 17:30 Tasting session 1 for 15 persons
17:30 - 18:00 Tasting session 2 for 15 persons
Few people are familiar with the once traditional Hungarian carnival and lent fish-dish, the ‘Weatherfish Cabbage’. It is due to the weatherfish loosing habitat and becoming protected with the regulation of rivers and the draining of marshes and wetlands. Through the story of the Weatherfish Cabbage, the project explores the underlying processes and contributing causes of habitat loss and discusses the importance of floodplain water retention. The performative tasting will include a contemporary reinterpretation of the Weatherfish Cabbage.
(The dish is not vegan/vegetarian: it contains fish and meat ingredients.)
Zsófia Szonja Illés is a multidisciplinary artist and designer with an environmentally and socially engaged practice. She got her masters degree from The Glasgow School of Art, and was selected for the “socially engaged artist residency” programme at the Center of Contemporary Art (CCI: Glasgow) between 2019-2020. She currently is a land researcher at IASK (Kőszeg) and a doctoral candidate at MOME (Budapest), where her research topic is ‘More-than-human Placemaking’. She is developing sensory methods to capture and describe traditional ecological knowledge on flood landscapes.
Sándor Guba is the co-founder of GUBAHÁMORI Architecture Studio and currently, he is a DLA candidate at the Moholy-Nagy University of Arts and Design (MOME) Budapest. His practice focuses on the correlation between the natural and the non-natural environment through urban and architectural design projects. Transdisciplinary collaboration between forest ecologists and visual artists is typical for their work. As part of the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale, they exhibited their Sacred Species project in the Polish pavilion.
szabadonbalaton (Diána Berecz - Dániel Bozzai): Fruit of the pool
18:00 - 18:20 Tasting session 1 for 15 persons
18:20 - 18:40 Tasting session 2 for 15 persons
18:40 - 19:00 Tasting session 3 for 15 persons
szabadonbalaton’s Fruit of the Pool confronts visitors with the rapidly changing landscapes of Balaton Uplands by questioning contemporary urban planning approaches that aim to quantify, categorize, systemize, and measure the natural world. Recreational and luxury uses of the land are often concealed beneath agricultural activities and titles. The project highlights one such example: the rapidly emerging pools and offers it up for a taste.
szabadonbalaton (“free Balaton”) is an ecological art initiative and cross-sectoral collaboration of artists and scientists, with the aim to draw attention to the ecological needs and risks of Lake Balaton. szabadonbalaton believes residents and tourists need to adapt to the lake instead of artificially adapting the lake to perceived human needs. Their key format involves hosting conceptual food and drink events to enhance the sensory understanding of complex ecological issues.
Fuzzy Earth: Feeding on Earth’s Crust
19:00 - 19:20 Tasting session 1 for 15 persons
19:20 - 19:40 Tasting session 2 for 15 persons
19:40 - 19:00 Tasting session 3 for 15 persons
Fuzzy Earth traced the journey of a desert rock from its origin, from below the dunes of the Sahara, across the belly of steel containerships, and through the ocean, infiltrating, poisoning, and nourishing the land along the way. The rock was eventually found reborn in the laboratory, now preserved as a taste of fertility.
Fuzzy Earth is a research-based creative practice formed by Tekla Gedeon and Sebastian Gschanes. They operate at the intersection of architecture, design, art, agriculture, horticulture, and technology, while their mediums go beyond these categories. They create spaces, objects, and events that explore our relationship with nature and technology. Fuzzy Earth builds alternative worlds and reveals unseen layers of entanglements across species in the era of climate crises to inspire a more inclusive and resilient future.
Trafó Kabin
The installation will be open on 13 October from 17h-20h, on 14 October from 16h-19h and on 15 October from 19h-20h.
