Eat Your Words: An Artful Neuroqueer Fermentation Experiment (Poster 11)

• In Event: Artful Inquiry in Qualitative Research: Philosophies and Enactments

Abstract

Objectives/Purposes
Fermentation is a method that involves curation (Fournier, 2020), patience, and the transformative collaborative potential of microorganisms (Katz, 2003). This session examines fermentation as a profound method of inquiry through the lenses of new materialisms and neuroqueer orientations. In this poster, the researcher/author/artist uses fermentation as an artful, intuitive, and embodied mode that lends itself to artful inquiry and non-normative understandings of time, subjectivity, and relationality. The poster outlines the process and its products (here, a new poem) and discusses how fermentation as artful inquiry can be used to deepen analysis and reflexivity.

Perspectives
This work draws upon scholars who engage fermentation as a creative (Tremblay, 2021) and curatorial (Fournier, 2020) to explore how fermentation can engage researcher subjectivity in accessible, sustainable, and artfully inventive ways. By adopting Manning’s (2016) concept of the artful as that which engages embodied knowledge across time, space, and discipline, fermentation is explored as a sustainable and accessible artful inquiry that enhances understanding of researcher identity and topics beyond conventional identity politics. This fermented inquiry allows for engagement with new materialist framings by assuming collaboration with microbial organisms (Katz, 2003; Modi, 2021). The author/artist draws upon neuroqueering (Walker, 2021; Yergeau, 2018) to push past normative understandings of relationship, value, sentience, repetition, and meaning-making.

Modes of Inquiry
The researcher/author/artist used fermentation to collect and curate objects and design a fermentation ritual that assumed engagement with microbial organisms and eventual transformation. The artful fermentation process used here employs a curation of old art, found objects, and neuroqueered ancestral ritual to create a recipe and ritual to digest and expose them to microbial processes and express them anew. Since the transformation of the bodymind (Price, 2015) is assumed in fermentation, the digestion and incubation process were foregrounded, while the researcher/author/artist attended to new ways in which embodiment was engaged. The poster concludes by sharing how attention to these processes produced a poem.

Conclusions and Significance
This inquiry resulted in an artful artifact that explores one angle of the complexity of identity and research without oversimplification, deepening researcher reflexivity. It highlighted the interplay between a teaching role and the medical model and engaged positionality in embodiment and materiality in unexpected ways. Understood as a creative, ancestral, and scholarly tradition that transcends time and space, fermentation enriches researcher reflexivity, embracing paradox and opacity and challenging the norms of traditional research. The non-human elements in fermentation deepen our connection to a broader, more-than-human context. Fermentation fosters a collaborative connection with the more-than-human and extends artful inquiry beyond traditional boundaries, influencing personal, familial, and societal narratives. Thus, it is a powerful tool for redefining our engagement with the world around us.
Furthermore, fermentation’s inclusivity and adaptability make it a sustainable research process accessible to a broader audience, reflecting Fournier's (2020) emphasis on sustainable practices. As such, it is a potent form of resistance against reductionist narratives and promotes a holistic, inclusive view of knowledge production.


[References omitted here due to word count (form lacks a separate field for references). See submission document.]

Author

• Meaghan Krazinski, Syracuse University