Background and question

The Meta Media brief asked us to present bacteria within us as sovereign entities but left the medium open. We used sauerkraut, passports and flags to connect a living material process with a fictional identity system.

The process

Making the cultures

Each of us prepared and hand-mixed one jar of sauerkraut, treating our own bacteria as part of the batch. We documented preparation and fermentation, then presented each jar with a fictitious passport and flags.

Two hands mixing shredded cabbage in a white bowl beside a glass jar.
Hand mixing was part of preparing the individual sauerkraut batches

Giving each jar an identity

Each passport represented a distinct identity, role and personality, and a matching flag carried it into the display. Each of us ate only the sauerkraut from the jar we had made.

Arranging the installation

We placed jars, booklets and small flags in bowls on classroom tables alongside other master’s teams’ work, then guided visitors through the project. Visitors saw fermented cabbage beside the passports and flags framing each jar as a sovereign entity.

Outcome

The classroom installation presented fermented food beside fictional documents. Together, they framed the bacteria within us as sovereign entities.

Close detail of sauerkraut jars, passports and small flags arranged in white bowls.
Detail from the classroom display
Classroom display of sauerkraut jars, passports, bowls and small flags on tables.
View of the classroom installation

Limitations and next steps

The country theme proved difficult to depict because it required engaging with the problematic notion of borders and countries as human-made concepts. It also raised the question of how unnatural it is for an identity to be merely a representation of any one of them or of all of them together. In a future iteration, we would develop it into a workshop in which everybody prepares their own sauerkraut jar, as we did for this installation.