If I am what I eat, then what do I want to eat?

Individual and collective identities are shaped to a great extent by food and eating: as we all know, we are what we eat. Taste, being amongst the major contributors to culinary identity negotiation, is in all its complexity constantly subject to change throughout everyday life and experiences. The vastest range of imaginable stimuli, conveyed through a multitude of channels of information, impacts why we eat what we eat. Thus, in a highly globalized and mediated world, constructions of taste and identity are open to seemingly unlimited diversification alongside the circulation of culinary goods and flows of knowledge around food, and its preparation and consumption.

The way we prepare and consume edible matter is substantially shaped by us: we are culinary practitioners of everyday life, performing engagements with food in our own day-to-day contexts. In our hands, mouths and bodies, edible matter is constantly in a state of becoming. We apply preparation techniques as culinary languages to transform raw ingredients into nourishing and palatable food. Tracing back these languages means tracing back history and cultures: different ways of preparing raw ingredients and processed products have formed their own contexts. Within these cultures of food preparation, the transformative actions of microbes, e.g. fermentation, have been part of culinary techniques since ancient times, shaping tastes and identities through their potential ability to create complex flavor and aroma profiles that rely on climate- and environment-specific microorganisms.

Nowadays, cultures (of microbes) and the knowledge around them are being globally exchanged between cultures (of humans). Microbial cultures are travelling and encountering each other. Techniques for transformative processes find their way into new environments and form new lifecycles. Fixed categories are being extended, challenged, and questioned. Colonies of bacteria, yeasts, and molds merge into new culinary contexts, impacting aesthetics of taste and negotiations of culinary identities. Culinary practitioners, amateurs and professionals alike, are exploring the possibilities and boundaries of the edible and how it may be transformed, in search of finding deliciousness and nutritiousness through the encounters of different microbes.

But what actually happens within these processes of transformation? What does it mean when these microbes encounter each other and we encounter ourselves? What relationships can they form towards each other, and towards us? What environments and lifecycles can they enter? How do they shape our identities and those of themselves? How to make sense of microbes in the broader context of culinary cultures and their underlying aesthetics of taste?

Furthermore, what are their contributions within our food systems and what is their potential for environmental ethics within these systems? And, in the most practical way: how do microbes make things delicious and nutritious?

In his workshop, Peter Chan will introduce the transformative processes that microbes can enact in edible matter. He will elaborate on the techniques, principles and aesthetics of fermentation practices and products. Chan will show concrete practical applications for creating microbe-driven edibles, and offer his fermentation cultures to participants to encourage engagement with these lifecycles themselves. The workshop includes a tasting of a variety of products in different states of their transformation.

What if microbes could transform the edible solids you are most familiar with into an unrecognizable liquid? What if they could change the most familiar of beverages into an unrecognizable solid? And what state lies between?