CYFEST 14: Ferment

Dates

September 17–27, 2021

Venue

Dartington Estate

Totnes, Devon,

TQ9 6EL, UK

Curators

Anna Frants, CYLAND MediaArtLab

Natasha Rivett-Carnac, Dartington Trust

Victoria Ilyushkina, CYLAND Video Archive

Artists

Tanya Akhmetgalieva, Vasilii Bakanov, Alexander Bochkov, Alexandra Dementieva, Francesca Fini, Anna Frants, Alexey Grachev, Elena Gubanova & Ivan Govorkov, Victoria Ilyushkina, Boris Kazakov, Sergey Komarov, Alexandra Lerman, Dana Levy, Oleg Malenok, Maya Popova, Andrew Strokov, Alena Tereshko, Anya Tsyrlina, Wouter Van Veldhoven, Evgeny Yufit

CYFEST-14: Ferment explored the theme of fermentation through the interconnected lenses of art and ecology. Through exhibitions, installations, workshops, talks, and screenings, the festival examined fermentation as both a biological process and a broader metaphor for transformation, exchange, and change.

Presented in collaboration with The Dartington Trust—a centre for learning, arts, ecology, and social justice set within a 1,200-acre estate near Totnes, Devon—the festival unfolded across the landscape, with experimental installations situated throughout the grounds for the full ten days. Visitors were also invited to take part in talks and workshops on fermentation, film screenings, shared meals, music performances, and public discussions.

Fermentation

In its conventional sense, fermentation is a technological process fundamental to food production. Yet, in a broader sense, nearly everything that changes over time—living organisms, material objects, and human relationships alike—can be understood through the metaphor of fermentation.

Wine transforms from ripe grapes into beverages of varying sweetness and strength. Human relationships, too, "ferment" over the years, evolving in intensity and maturing from something young and raw into something more nuanced and enduring.

Culinary traditions around the world are deeply rooted in fermentation: pickled vegetables and mushrooms, beer, salted fish in northern regions, air-dried meats and fruits, and fermented fish sauces found throughout Mediterranean cuisine all bear witness to this ancient process.

Even the beauty industry is, in its own way, engaged in a struggle against fermentation, seeking to halt or slow the visible transformations brought by time.

Yet these metamorphoses are not merely inevitable—they are often fascinating, visually compelling, and even sonorous. They have long inspired artists around the world. The works presented in CYFEST-14: Ferment engage with processes of transformation in living and non-living matter alike, exploring shifts in colour, smell, sound, materiality, and perception.

— Anna Frants, Artist, Curator, CYLAND MediaArtLab

Digital Fermentation

Video program

The CYLAND Video Archive presents ‘Digital Fermentation’, a video art program of 9 works, from the first films by underground Saint Petersburg filmmakers of the 1990s to contemporary artists working with digital video and the transformation of various media genres: found footage, animation, installation, dance, etc. The program demonstrates experiments by artists to shift the boundaries of perceiving reality, and to examine the 'human' and 'non-human' through the use of new digital technologies.

Curated by Victoria Ilyushkina

Boris Kazakov

Nestlings of the Sea

1996, 05:39

Evgeny Yufit

Woodcutter

1985, 06:00

Anya Tsyrlina

All other things equal

2020, 19:32

Vika Ilyushkina & Maya Popova

Acrobatic Sketch

2012, 07:29

Tanya Akhmetgalieva

Disappearing Staircases

2015, 04:28

Dana Levy

Emerging From the Swamp

2016, 04:00

Francesca Fini

Skinned

2018, 07:24

Alexandra Lerman

The Return of the Return of the Giant Hogweed

2019, 04:00

Alena Tereshko

Field

2015, 05:44

Vasilii Bakanov

Slow Burning

intermedia installation, 2020 Three fruits are contained inside a white cube. In artificially created and regularly maintained conditions, the fruits pass through three chemical reactions — caramelization, the Maillard reaction and the enzymatic browning. Usually, these processes take place within minutes in cooking. Here they are intentionally prolonged in time. Inside the brightly lit thermally insulated box, constant humidity and a temperature of 60°С are maintained, thus killing bacteria which cause decay. In the ideal and constantly controlled conditions, the fruits preserve their form, and burn up inside from day to day. The process is shown in real-time on YouTube. The picture looks static. At first and second glance, nothing is changing. The slowly burning still life is online all the time and displayed for public view, but the essence of the process remains hidden. The main activity takes place at the molecular level. Its tangible manifestation is a monotonous soundtrack performed by the fruits themselves. Information about the external appearance of each fruit is converted into an RGB parameter, which is then transformed into an audio track. It is an open question as to whether everything will go according to plan, and the process will end in the way it was intended to. Every effort has been made to achieve this — all we can do is to wait and see what will happen next. (Text: Lydia Griaznova)

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Vasilii Bakanov, Slow Burning, intermedia installation, 2020, CYFEST 14

Vasilii Bakanov, Slow Burning, intermedia installation, 2020, CYFEST, Ph: Alexandra Dementieva

Vasilii Bakanov, Alexander Bochkov, Alexey Grachev, Oleg Malenok, Andrew Strokov

BPM — Blobs Per Minute

sound installation, 2021 BPM — Beats Per Minute — is one of the principal notions in modern music signifying rhythm and speed of the track in quarter beats. This parameter allows us to understand how fast the music is. BPM — Blobs Per Minute — is the principal parameter in beer brewing. It indicates the quantity of blobs per time unit, thus designating the process’ intensity. The blobs signal whether the process is underway, stopped or has never started. In this work, the artists continue the idea of studying random triggers of the environment and observing processes with the help of sound. Much like the barcode-reading devices at a cash register are tuned to different frequencies, here a different beer creates a different sound and intensity, which, on the one hand, creates an understanding as to what beer is in what state, and, on the other hand, it is a trigger for the external analog frequency synthesizer or drum module.

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Vasily Bakanov, Alexander Bochkov, Alexey Grachev, Oleg Malenok, Andrew Strokov, BPM — Blobs Per Minute, sound installation, 2021, CYFEST 14, Ph: Alexandra Dementieva

Alexandra Dementieva

Source of Energy

Symbiosis Light sculpture with living entity, 2021 Kombucha SCOBY (a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) is an incredible creature. There are many different myths and legends about this. Even one concerns his extraterrestrial origin. Kombucha is also unique in that it cannot be accurately attributed to any biological kingdom, the bacteria present in it work with the body of the fungus in tandem only at the initial stage. Over time, they spliced their genome with the genome of the plant part, as a result of which Kombucha presumably initially functions as a symbiosis between a bacteria and a fungus, but then becomes a whole with a unique genetic structure of a fungus and bacteria. But, back to Earth — adding the culture of kombucha in a sweet tea broth allows bacterial growth in there. Sucrose is converted, biochemically, to fructose and glucose, and these to gluconic acid and acetic acid. Glucose is one of the most common sources of energy in living organisms on the planet.

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Alexandra Dementieva, Source of Energy, Symbiosis Light sculpture with living entity, 2021, CYFEST 14

Anna Frants

Artists Union. Sketching English Countryside

performance, 2021 From the series “Matter of Chance” Collaboration effort by robots and humans working together to make watercolor paintings based on horticulture at Dartington Estate. “Artist Union” is a reflection on the law of large numbers. Is it applicable in visual arts — to colors in painting, lines in graphics, forms in sculpture, and the image integrity in installations? The law of large numbers is a principle that describes the completion of the same experiment many times. According to this law, the joint action of a large number of random factors leads to a result almost independent of the chance. For example, in the XVI century the length of the English foot was defined, by a royal order, as the arithmetic average length of the foot of the first 16 people leaving the church on Sunday matins. Although the law of large numbers was not yet defined, it serves as the basis for the principle of arithmetic mean used in determining the length of a foot.

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Anna Frants, Artists Union. Sketching English Countryside, performance, 2021. From the series “Matter of Chance”, CYFEST 14

Alexey Grachev, Alexander Bochkov

Symphony for 2 Bicycles

performance, interactive sound installation, 2021 Cadence is the rotation speed of pedals by the cyclist. This parameter depends on the will and intentions of the cyclist, and the features of the bike and riding surface. In this project, cadence becomes a source of sound and rhythm. The rotation speed of the back wheel depends on the cadence and ratio of the sizes of the front chainring and rear sprocket. You can select them by using the mechanical shifters on the handlebars. The ratio of these two values is the basis of the musical composition created. The project creates the model of a collective orchestrated action, in which the intentions and aspirations of the participant acquire sonic expression.

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Alexey Grachev, Alexander Bochkov, Symphony for 2 Bicycles, performance, interactive sound installation, 2021, CYFEST 14, Ph: Alexandra Dementieva

Alexey Grachev, Alexander Bochkov, Symphony for 2 Bicycles, performance, interactive sound installation, 2021, CYFEST 14

Alexey Grachev, Sergey Komarov

Quantum

audio installation, 2017 for CYLAND Audio Archive One of directions in the collaboration of Aleksey Grachev and Sergey Komarov is the study of noises of the animate and inanimate nature. In this work, the artists conduct an analysis of time-space. Using scientific instruments, they register the noise of sand that trickles in an hourglass on the magnetic tape. Then this sound is analyzed using the regenerating-computing system, accurate to a grain, and the “quanta” of time get recounted. The work is stereophonic: sound reflects time and, in effect, it is time departing from one headphone channel and arriving in the opposite one, having flown through the space-listener. This installation is simultaneously a vocalization of time and an attempt to quantize and recount it.

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Alexey Grachev, Sergey Komarov

Subjectivization of Sound

performance, 2015 There are two technologies of sound synthesis: digital and analog. If we are to forego serial solutions for any given synthesizer, we can find an infinite number of options for creation of sound forms, from simple oscillators to complex generative algorithms. The path of the authors is the ambition to achieve a sound minimalism and a continuity of creative process during the creation of musical compositions and forms where the choice comes down to the subjective tendency of each one to a certain sounding.

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Alexey Grachev, Sergey Komarov, Subjectivization of Sound, performance, 2015, CYFEST 14

Elena Gubanova, Ivan Govorkov

Light That’s Been Shed

site-specific object, 2000 In 55 BC, Roman author Lucretius, who continued ideas of the early Greek atomist philosophers, wrote in his poem “On Nature of Things” that light and warmth of the sun consist of the tiniest moving particles. Fermentation is the transformation of one substance, image, notion, state, symbol, behaviour and such into another state, image and so forth. Our project is dedicated to the fermentation of sensations that we evoke by the transformation of an image. In this work, this is an image of “light”. A large lampshade (much larger than an ordinary one) hangs on a tree branch in a glade. The lightbulb in the lampshade does not shine. People usually associate a lampshade as a sign of inner space, comfort and light, like a symbol of the sun in the home. We shift it into an open space and thus change the sensation of the boundaries of the space. This is the first transformation. Under the lampshade is a pyramid of fallen leaves. Here we present the metaphor of light as particles, as a fragment of substance and material. Light is materialized, and its weight, materiality and mundanity is felt. This is the second “fermentation” of sensations. Inside these leaves we install piezoelectric speakers from which the soft crackle of incandescent lamps emanates, and sound is born from decay, the “death of light”.

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Elena Gubanova, Ivan Govorkov, Light That’s Been Shed, site-specific object, 2000, CYFEST 14, Ph: Alexandra Dementieva

Victoria Ilyushkina

The Process. Darnitsa Bread

audio-visual installation, 2021 (documentary filming was made in 2012) sound by Wouter Van Veldhoven “Darnitsa” is a unique factory for the production of bread, a monument of constructivist architecture. The round shape corresponded to its content. All production processes moved along a circular conveyor. This plant operated during the Siege of Leningrad and saved the lives of many people. Engineer Georgy Marsakov, in the late 1920s, developed a new type of mechanized bakery following the concept of production on the principle of a circular conveyor stage. The whole process of baking bread moved in a spiral of a circular constructivist building. Flour raised to the top was kneaded into dough, then baked in ring ovens, and the finished bread was unloaded along inclined slopes into the bakery. Now the Darnitsa plant has moved to a new building due to gentrification and is fully computerized. The installation provides an opportunity to view the old process of the unique production of black bread (documentary filming was made in 2012). The dynamics of the processes of fermentation and kneading of the dough, baking bread, the operation of the mechanisms of the circular conveyor is enhanced by the sound compositions of sampled magnetic tapes (one of the first ways to work with sound in electronic music) by the composer Wouter van Veldhoven.

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Victoria Ilyushkina, The Process. Darnitsa Bread, audio-visual installation, 2021, CYFEST 14, Ph: Alexandra Dementieva