Spore & Pollen

The front of the postcard offered to the guests of the dinner, combining spores and pollen in one pedagogical drawing.

Answering to the invitation of contemporary art museum Palais de Tokyo, The Soft Protest Digest took part of “Le Banquet”, a dinner introducing the museum's exhibition Futur, ancien, fugitif, dedicated to the “french art scene”. Taking place on November 20th 2019, the collective served an entremets and a dessert to the 150 guests of the dinner, titled respectively “Spore” and “Pollen”.

Each of the two dishes served as the illustration of a problematic related to the impact of small, often disregarded, organisms on the environment.

To that end, “Spore” aimed to address the various invisible uses of fungi and yeast in the production of food, as well as its prevalence and effects on our planet's ecosystems (🔗click here for more info). “Pollen”, on the other hand, focused on the current collapse of pollinators biodiversity through the prism of the bee (🔗click here for more info). This dish led the collective to meet and work with beekeeper Julien Perrin, as well as biologist and researcher Fanny Rybak. Both were featured in a podcast recorded for the occasion.

Dishes

• “Spore” (Sourdough brioche, cheese and crystallised sage platter)
• “Pollen” (Chebakias, fake-vanilla honey cream and roasted grapes)

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Listen to the project

• 🔊 An open-source bee for a poisonous environment

  An interview with beekeeper and biologist Julien Perrin
  Podcast (~35min) 🇬🇧🇫🇷

• 🔊 Umwelt of the bee

  (English version: N. Salaun | French version: G. Kim)
  Sound piece, from the point of view of the bee. (~3mins) 🇬🇧🇫🇷

Take a sneek peak

• 🎞 Behind the scenes of the project — Mini-documentary (~2min)

Pedagogical drawings

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Related images

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Special thanks

• Claire Moulène
• Fanny Héneault
• Chloé Fricout
• Liza Maignan
• Garance Kim
• Raoul Audouin
• Christian —
• Nolwenn Salaün