ROT GARDEN

How can we rethink the living arts through the living? More generally, how can we rethink and rearrange our links between living beings (humans, fungi, plants, etc.)? Is every encounter a form of contamination? These are the questions that are constantly occupying artist Sara Manente, who is currently focusing her creative process on the mycelium. This subterranean network essential to the forest (from which mushrooms grow) serves as an object of study, a construction material and a metaphor. Like the mycelium, she is multiplying collaborations in order to reach new grounds and invent collective practices, to which she invites specialists from French-speaking Switzerland as well as the audience at far°.

The result of a glossy publication, the ROT GARDEN is a multidisciplinary and polymorphous space. It's an installation to visit, a queer performance and a series of convivial, colourful events.

 

 RUINED is an installation that combines materials to multiply our relationship with time. Columns of stone and mycelium face each other: past and future coexist in the present of decomposition. Intertwined grasses form objects in the making, while fabrics change colour as they are superimposed. RUINED, the installation invites us to slow down, to watch JELLYING (video), to slip into laziness and reverie, or to indulge in the pleasure of reading thanks to The ROT GARDEN Library.

JELLING: Jelling is an ancient technique for preserving food in a transparent and somewhat elastic semi-solid substance. Working with materials in different states (fresh, decomposed, cooked, fermented, rotten) and the human body in movement, the video plays with a possible perceptual confusion between the organic and the inorganic, the adapted and the maladapted, the wild and the domesticated, the living arts and living cultures.

The ROT GARDEN library: Prepared by Sara Manente in collaboration with La love machine, The ROT GARDEN library offers a series of books and a fanzine produced for the occasion. It's an invitation to browse through, pick through or immerse yourself in the research material that fuelled the project.

 

 On Friday 11 August, Sara Manente, Deborah Robbiano and Sébastien Tripod present ROT#1 (the magazine) at the Vernissage over an ApéROT fermenté, and then talk about the genesis of the Nyon stage of ROT GARDEN, in particular the making of the mycelium columns inspired by the Roman ruins on the Esplanade des Marronniers in Nyon. Discussions take place over an ApéROT fermenté. The most important characteristic of fermentation is that it preserves food without using energy. Acidity, salt and sometimes sugar create a microcosm inside the jar, with transformations taking place slowly and preserving the food.

 

 Mycelium is one of the most promising natural materials of the future. It can feed on waste from various industries, filter polluted water and regenerate soil. Today, myco-materials are booming. But what exactly is mycelium? And how do you grow it? Sarria JC Floyd, Sara Manente and Sébastien Tripod, who have chosen to join forces with mycelium, will be sharing their experiences with the public. 

 

 Manucure x lecture, ou Quand le nail art affecte la théorie invites you to relax and think outside the box. On August 12, the performance will be hosted by the Love Machine collective. A fanzine has been produced by the collective for the occasion, and will be available in the ROT GARDEN from August 12.

  

 With Pour en finir finalement avec moi-même (work in progress), Santiago Ribelles Zorita oscillates between dance, the visual arts and performance.

• credits