Ruchama Noorda’s bio-based landscape interventions are rooted in a centuries-old underground tradition that links medieval occult practices/fermentation processes to the early C20th back-to-nature Lebensreform Movement, the ‘60s and ‘70s Land Art/hippy counterculture and contemporary anti-growth environmentalism. For the DDW Noorda presents a further iteration of Tumulus, a one-room meditation hermit hut erected on a wild growth garden mound that currently sits in front of the Sluisdeurenloods at the Mediamatic Biotope in central Amsterdam.
As with the earlier work, the installation in the Hara Hachi Bu Village foregrounds fermentation as a living microorganic agent in the brewing of the glazes Noorda uses to coat the ceramic works clustered round the repurposed garden shed. The glaze ombines the four composite ingredients- sugar, yeast, flour and water- that stand at the beginning of agrarian civilization and today may augur its downfall. For thousands of years through the magic of mutual contamination the ebullient sugar/yeast/flour/water brew has facilitated the explosive.
Ferment
From Latin fermentare "to leaven, cause to rise or ferment" from fermentum "substance causing fermentation, leaven, drink made of fermented barley" perhaps contracted from fervimentum, from root of fervere "to boil, seethe" (from the root bhreu-to boil, bubble, effervesce, burn). Figurative sense of “anger, passion, commotion” in English from the 1670s. The Online Dictionary of Etymology.