Landscape, soil, cheese and me: Difference between revisions

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==A 1 month performance==
==A 1 month performance==
<i>Written at first person as Robin</i>
For one month in the region of Limburg, I entangled myself in a network of beings, mutualism and trophic relationships of decay to produce cheese. By doing so, my ambition was to depict and project in other humans the network in which our primates’ life are tied in — whatever we make — and that makes “us” broader than only-humans.
===Landscape===
===Landscape===
This web constituted by a space of ±50km2 area for a time of 30 days, tied me up with 4 Dutch and Belgian farmers that I have found through the landscape they live in. This same landscape provides pastures for their domesticated animals (cows and goats) to graze plants that they digest and transform into the milk that I purchased. On my way to each one of the 4 farms, I described the landscape. The landscape is the addition of living beings growing, hunting, socialising and working in the surroundings of the road network from home to farms (fields, buzards, sheds, trees, goose, ponds, crows, etc.)
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===Soil===
===Soil===
I also extracted a small piece of soil from the pastures I got milk from. Along the purchased milk, this soil sample brought back home was “visited” with a microscope to look for living beings in these soils, reflecting on the decomposers’ primal activity to decay and recycle organic matter, the changes threatening their mutualism, and its analogy with the way microbe societies make cheeses.
<br>Soil analysis of milk providers: 1 hectare grassland next to the farm's main barn. Microscopic fungi and animals, macroscopic insects crawling in samples. Trowel sampling: 16 small 10cm deep samples
Pitfall trap: one 365mL jar in the center of the pasture Baermann funnel.
Robin Bantigny’s ambition is to depict and project in other humans the network in which our primates’ life are tied in — whatever we make, food or other goods — and that makes “us” broader than only-humans.
[[Microscopic observation archives |all the soil samples explored in different ways]]
[[Microscopic observation archives |all the soil samples explored in different ways]]
===Cheese===
===Cheese===
<br>The cheeses were made with raw goat and/or cow milk from 4 farms in an area of ø40km around Maastricht. They were curdled with rennet to make uncooked soft cheeses. Half of the cheeses were ripened with various ferments (G. candidum, P. camemberti, P. roqueforti) and the other half developed the milks’ “wild” biota. They were aged for 1 week to 1.5 month in a cold moist room without any energy input.
[[Cheese production archives#April 2021 — Ardennes cheeses in Maastricht|the dedicated page for every cheese made during the performance]]
[[Cheese production archives#April 2021 — Ardennes cheeses in Maastricht|the dedicated page for every cheese made during the performance]]
<br>[[Cheese production archives#June 2021 — Four horizons of Ardennes’ milks|an experiment on designing an cheese that illustrates the local landscape]]
<br>[[Cheese production archives#June 2021 — Four horizons of Ardennes’ milks|an experiment on designing an cheese that illustrates the local landscape]]