Unplated: An Interview with Matías Lasen
At the intersection of theory, performance art, and fermentation, some real magic is unfolding
This conversation is part of the Unplated series, a collection of interviews with folks whose work intersects with food, but who work outside culinary spheres. My hope is that these conversations not only spark your curiosity, but help you think about how what you eat is connected to the world well beyond your plate.
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One of the things that makes me giddy about fermentation is the community that this practice attracts: I am ceaselessly amazed by the kind, multi-talented people who come into my life, brought together by a love of both the concept and practice of fermentation.
Case in point is Matías Lasen, a performing artist, creator of participatory community experiences, researcher and fellow fermentation enthusiast (among other things). Lasen is a kindred spirit, combining the act of creating with the generative, thoughtful, and research-heavy aspects of conceptualization alongside creation. Both of us sit at the intersection of many disciplines, and here we talk about what that looks like, now and in the future, for Lasen.
JS: To start out, can you tell me a bit about your work? How did you come to do what you do today?
ML: Yes, of course. My name is Matías Lasen, and I originally studied performing arts.
After college, I worked in theater and in visual arts, specifically collage. Later, I pursued studies in cultural management, which is when I started developing artistic and cultural projects with a community-oriented and participatory focus.
I believe my fascination with fermentation started right after college when I began experimenting with sourdough bread.Over the years, I have maintained an intermittent fermenting practice.
It wasn't until I read Sandor Katz's books that I started to grasp the social and cultural depths of the fermentation world, which led me to begin my ongoing practice and research.
During the pandemic, when all cultural spaces were closed, I started a project called "Queer Brews". Through this project, I sold my so-called queer beers, ginger beer and mead, which were brewed with medicinal herbs. The aim was to challenge the heteronormative paradigm of hopped beer.
In 2022, I launched the Fermentation Club: a recurring practice involving teaching and community development. Together with a self-organized group of people, we come together once a month to ferment, share, celebrate, and enjoy communal meals.
Simultaneously, I collaborated with María Landeta, a close friend who also happens to be an actress and fantastic fermenter. She has been exploring the intersection of art and fermentation in her professional practice, investigating the potential interconnection between the modes of existence of microorganisms and forms of life that dissent from heteronormativity.
Together, we conceptualized the Encuentro FAD - Fermentation, Arts, and Dissidences, a transdisciplinary gathering aiming to explore the possible convergence between these three fields and create a critical intersectional space.
By embracing the intersectional approach offered by fermentation, arts, and dissidences, our intention is to pose questions that enable us to critically engage with these practices in relation to one another and to cultivate a space for rethinking, reconfiguring, and transforming practices, themes, contingencies, and feminisms.
JS: You think a lot about how fermentation connects to our study of culture in general.
Why is food such an important consideration when we conduct cultural research, and why is fermentation in particular so important to your work?
ML: I believe that the theoretical framework offered by fermentation, both in its transformative nature and in the relationships we establish with other living beings, such as bacteria, yeast, and other microorganisms, provides a fascinating foundation for studying and analyzing our current, past, and future culture.
Personally, I find the transformative nature of fermentation to be an excellent point of reference when approaching creative projects. The fact that any fermentation process takes a significant amount of time to reach readiness helps shift our focus to the processes rather than fixating on the final product.
It is also a practice that challenges the concepts of purity and hygiene by blurring the boundaries between putrid and healthy, life and death, right and wrong, opening up a world full of possibilities.
Simultaneously, questions arise that can be applied to other creative practices: How long should a project ferment before it is considered finished? How do the initial ideas of a new project ferment?
What degradation processes are necessary to access meaning, nutrients, or other aspects more effectively in our work? Which parts and microorganisms perform specific functions, and how will they transform throughout the process?
On the other hand, the need to establish relationships with and care for non-human lives speaks to an ecology and co-dependency that exists both in the microcosm of yeast and bacteria and within our human-sized realm.
How do we establish these relationships? What kinds of lives are we nurturing (and which ones are we allowing to decay)? What microorganisms are souring our society? Which institutions have or have not been successfully preserved?
These are some of the questions that can arise from an interconnected consciousness between us and other microorganisms.
We may try to convince ourselves that humans are superior, all-powerful beings, but until we understand that we are part of a network of interrelationships on all scales and that we depend on other beings, other lives (human or non-human), we will remain stuck as a society in a model that is already in crisis.
In this sense, I believe that food should be at the center of all our conversations. Growing, cooking, and fermenting food to nourish our bodies, as well as those of our communities and loved ones, is one of the simplest and noblest tasks we can undertake today.
And yet, it is becoming increasingly marginalized. More and more people tell me how interesting, albeit challenging, they find fermentation, even without having tried it once. People are losing the skills that form the fabric of our communities, forgetting how to preserve abundance, and neglecting cultural processes that have been developing for centuries.
Therefore, fermentation, with its community-binding and transformative action, becomes a crucial agent in our social ecosystem. It is inherently cultural, and thus, a skill that we must promote and embrace rather than deprive ourselves of.
JS: In our past conversations, you've mentioned to me that you're just embarking on research connecting fermentation to art, queerness, and dissent.
What inspired you to do this work? Have you encountered any surprises as you've been exploring these ideas?
ML: Absolutely! I've been pondering for some time now how to connect fermentation with my creative practices and ideas. In recent years, fermentation has become a consistent practice and a growing interest that I want to dedicate more of my time to. That's why it felt only natural to reach a point where I would attempt to align this discipline with my other pursuits.
Following the establishment of the Fermentation Club and collaborating with María Landeta, we conceived the idea of creating an event where the practice of fermentation could be applied to various social, political, cultural, and sexual themes.
Thus, the Encuentro FAD (Fermentations, Arts, and Dissidences) project was born, aiming to explore the intersection between these three concepts and create a critical and intersectional space.
All three concepts hold equal power, transformation, and criticality, opening up boundless possibilities for creativity, philosophy, and encounters that served as guiding principles for this project.
By perceiving fermentation as a process of degradation that occurs with or without human intervention, interdependent on environmental conditions, and as a condition of existence contaminated by the dissolution of boundaries between life, death, body, and environment, we can understand art as a fermentation chamber or vessel of impulses, and dissidences as a reservoir of resistance against the sterilizing practices of other forms of existence.
During the process of shaping this project, I have been pleasantly surprised—although I had an inkling—by how fermentation practices resonate with the world of queerness and dissidences.
On one hand, fermentation practices establish themselves in our society as a dissenting space: producing ferments at home is an act of rebellion that occurs on the fringes of hegemonic norms, generating products, flavors, medicines, and dynamics that challenge the established and commonly accepted.
On the other hand, dissidences, which already inhabit and challenge the boundaries of the hegemonic and normative, find in fermentation the impressive transformative, resilient, and diverse power that has characterized us throughout history. In this case, fermentation offers concepts, methodologies, processes, and dynamics that can be easily embraced by queer theories and practices, adding layers of depth (umami theory?) and assisting in the ongoing decomposition of norms and hegemonies.
JS: You've just finished your latest project, Encuentro de Fermentos, Artes y Disidencias, and I'm so excited both by this encounter itself and its subject matter. What was this project? What did you hope people would take away from the experience?
Now that you're done with the event, did you encounter any surprises, or come away with any unexpected insights?
ML: Encuentro FAD was a great mystery from the moment of its conception until its occurrence. When we launched the open call and proposed a "transdisciplinary event exploring the potential intersection between fermentation, arts, and dissidences," we had no idea which projects, individuals, or themes would emerge through the call. Unconsciously, we created an event that required time to ferment so that we could comprehend what had transpired.
The intention behind the gathering was to pose questions that would generate tension among the three concepts: How can conceptualizing fermentative processes as methodologies of creation contribute? Can the practice of fermentation be applied to other social, political, cultural, and sexual themes? In what ways can they be transformed? Which ones are we interested in preserving to explore dissident and sensitive perspectives on the ecologies we inhabit? Are there practices, theories, habits, and customs that have soured?
The result was a kind of creative residency in which unfinished or ongoing projects were presented to the public.
The program encompassed various exhibits: an artist who explored the connection between their homosexual identity and degradation by performing drag with bovine skulls; an interspecies embroidery activity using square matrices generated from dried kombucha SCOBYs from native plants in southern Chile; a dance performance investigating the performers' relationship with spores and fungi; a social and permaculture project that linked the fermentation of a fruit from the algarrobo, a native tree, to the post-industrial history of the land they inhabited; an exhibition showcasing a fermentation workshop conducted during the pandemic, which continues to bubble to this day; an exhibition and tasting of different types of kimchi and other Korean products; and a somatic practice inspired by water.
Simultaneously, the participants of the FAD Encounter engaged in three mediation activities led by the philosopher and dancer Marie Bardet, who guided the "Cultural Broth" (Caldo de Cultivo) residency.
She proposed activities such as fermenting questions and "practices of consistency" to materialize everyone's thoughts into a collective action. Finally, all the meals served during the encounter were prepared by María and me, "encouraging" participants to consume sauerkraut, tempeh, milk kefir, spearmint beers, tart cherries mead, and other concoctions that kept them nourished and their stomachs and hearts bubbling.
Honestly, it was an extraordinary experience that we are still digesting to this day. Both the participants and the audience enjoyed the encounter and expressed how fascinating and innovative it is to create events of this nature, where the focus lies not on the outcomes (understood as artistic works or products) but on the processes and how they can be enriched by becoming infused with the perceptions of other bodies, individuals, and ideas.
JS: What's next for you? More research, events, something else?
ML: At the moment, we are in the final stages of wrapping up the first edition. Simultaneously, we are seeking funds to support the design and printing of a small magazine that will compile the material gathered from the FAD Encounter.
The aim is to give tangible form to the experience and create a repository of memories, interviews, perceptions, and ideas stemming from the first gathering of fermentations, arts, and dissidences. Our intention is to hold this event annually, and we will make every effort to organize a new edition in a location outside of Santiago, in order to decentralize the practices and reach a wider audience.
On a more personal level, I have plans to pursue a Master's program in cultural analysis to further explore the intersection between fermentative practices as methodologies of creation and their relationship with various disciplines and intellectual currents.
JS: Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?
ML: I would like to express my admiration for your book, "Our Fermented Lives". It has been a source of inspiration and a valuable resource in comprehending how fermentation can infiltrate diverse social realms and emerge as a powerful social unifier. The final chapter, in particular, serves as an outstanding bibliography and reference guide for those considering how to propel fermentation into the future.
Thank you immensely for your work. I hope that one day we can have the opportunity to meet in person, engage in conversation, share meals, and celebrate the wonders of fermentation!
Follow Lasen on social at @laserlaserlasen
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I'm sorry I missed so many of your newsletters! It's been a tough spring and this piece just sent me screaming to reading what I missed. wonderful
This was such a great read! I'm ALL about ushering in a more relational way of being, and I had never before thought of fermentation as such a beautiful model for this. I loved this paragraph:
"On the other hand, the need to establish relationships with and care for non-human lives speaks to an ecology and co-dependency that exists both in the microcosm of yeast and bacteria and within our human-sized realm.
How do we establish these relationships? What kinds of lives are we nurturing (and which ones are we allowing to decay)? What microorganisms are souring our society? Which institutions have or have not been successfully preserved?
These are some of the questions that can arise from an interconnected consciousness between us and other microorganisms."