Emily, Week 5: Catalog (reflexive)

Catalog Entry

Feedings (09092012, 44d55'35"N 93d04'24"W)
2012, In Progress

Description

Fifty small boxes of sourdough starter, cultivated from scratch in my kitchen and carefully fed and grown over the course of three weeks, is given away to strangers. Participants can map and document their specimen as they care for it, bake with it, and subdivide it for other people to use. The natural yeast in my environment is spread through this traditional domestic practice, and slowly mixes and is overtaken by the bacteria in each of its new homes, creating microscopic ecologies that track the history of each sample.

Catalog Contributors

Kitchen Historian: to provide a historical basis for the custom of sourdough cultivation and gifting

Microbiologist: to explain the metabolic processes that create the sourdough, and the differences that exist between cultures based on regions

Slow Food Activist: to give an overview of the movement and how it's affecting our cultural perception of food sourcing

Naturist or Evolutionary Scientist: to provide insight into biological dispersion or the movement of species through space

Baker or gardener: to comment on the daily rituals of breakmaking/growing.