The first batch of Ferment Utrecht (Fermentum Ultrajectinum) was drunk as a shared toast to new forms of communal production, not only between people but also other urban life forms.
The performance was held on Sunday 26 February andmarked the close of the Grand Domestic Revolution exhibition at Casco, Utrecht.
The recipe consisted of fermented honey, tree sap and yeast gleaned from the urban environment of Utrecht. The preparation of the recipe unearthed some of the invisible relations between ecological, economic, medical and social trajectories of the city. These historical and metabolic flows converge and ferment into an inebriating beverage. The first batch was drunk between an audience of some 30 people. A sequence of 4 toasts read by Wietske Maas formed a manifest to the digestive ecology of the city. Â First toast was to the indestructible sweetness of the nectar regurgitated by bees; honey. Second toast was to the animacula of the atmosphere; yeast and other microbes. Third toast was to the medicinal root of City avens,Geum urbanum. Fourth toast was to the sap milked from the city’s linden trees. The text of the 4 toasts will be published as part of the Grand Domestic Revolution catalogue in late 2012.