Kombucha workshop by Vivien Roussel, artist, biodesigner and researcher
As part of Treize’Estival, festival of cultural venues in the 13th arrondissement.
Kombucha is a naturally fermented drink, prepared with a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast immersed in a sweet tea solution. It is also a dried kombucha starter (a mushroom) with singular properties: more or less thick and elastic, this material is full of promise. During this theoretical and practical workshop, Vivien Roussel invites you to explore the secrets of this material made by combining mycelia and bacteries, an opportunity to ask questions with him about the scarcity of resources, energy saving or the sustainability of “desirables futures”.
Vivien Roussel
Vivien Roussel is an artist, biodesigner and researcher. He explores myths that expose the links we have with technological tools and how these narratives shape forms of individuality. Around 2008, he became interested in the figure of Robinson Crusoe in order to question our modernity and later ventured into the world of makers, co-founding makerspaces and fablabs. Between 2011 and 2018, he developed pedagogical research, co-invented tools and community practices – discovered the Chinese industry and making or did “insertion through digital” in the neighbourhoods on his return. Following these human and technical adventures, he turned to the living from biohacking as an ambivalent artefact, carrying new collective meaning to be built. Since 2017, he has been making living materials in companionship with mycelia and bacteria, questioning with them the scarcity of resources, the energy economy or the sustainability of “desirable futures”. Vivien Roussel also collaborates on the design of complex prototypes mixing biomaterials, electronics and digital fabrication with different people and collective.
In partnership with la Mairie du 13e arrondissement.
