Promiscuity with Matter: The Postures of Bread-Making
Edited by Barney Pau.
This is the first essay in Denise di Summa’s series ‘Promiscuity with Matter’.
Posture is generally defined as the bodily adaptation of an individual to their physical, psychological, and emotional environment. Physically, it involves opposing the force of gravity with one's body, but going deeper it becomes a composite relationship of someone’s constant interaction with their surrounding environment. It is far from fixed or static.
Cognitive studies focussing on embodied cognition demonstrate how the relationship between our body and the environment is inherently ecological. We may not realise it, but we constantly occupy a space filled with sensory stimuli that translate into a corresponding posture. Even breathing can be understood in this sense. So what about breadmaking?
Seen from this perspective, bread-making becomes a process of attunement that forces physical promiscuity with matter: human and non-human; visible and invisible; mind and body; technique and improvisation. While bread-making, the boundaries of individuality can be reduced by opening up to the integrity of the manifold agents involved, and positioning oneself as part of this composite multi-species whole.
Bread is matter, relationship, process, creation, time, truth, nourishment. While bread-making, I am part of—and complicit in—the multiplicity contained within a crispy loaf, in the same way I am part of/complicit in the world I am experiencing. Bread is made when flour, water, and yeast take shape. Far from being a simple assembly of ingredients, it is a conscious ability to transform matter into sustenance.
During yeast’s slow action in the fermentation process, human action, will, and control are reduced. This brings them strongly into question: for if breadmaking is matter undergoing the action of yeast and microorganisms; human action becomes both complies and corresponds. In developing interspecies relationships, bread-making is ecological.
Certainly, one can manipulate the whole process by adjusting variables such as water and temperature. However, success can never truly be controlled or predicted. The uncertainty of the outcome translates into observation and careful, conscious action each time. It is an ecological exercise of attunement with the unpredictability that often dictates an environment.
My first attempt at making bread was the beginning of an intangible dialogue between my body and senses, and matter. Ever since I first refreshed the sourdough starter, the yeasts and bacteria have become my silent companion species. The nourishment I give them in flour is returned to me in the form of bread, in a reciprocal relationship that holds together the vital element of nourishment, and the mortal element of decay.
This balance is never resolved in favour of one or the other; a lesson which teaches me to the ecological wisdom of coexistence. The repetitive gestures involved in shaping a loaf are my adaptive ability to respond to the ever-changing matter, and atmospheric conditions which affect it even in the most subtle ways. Thus, through this personal bodily practice I engage with matter, and my actions resonate attentively and intuitively with the world. Bread becomes synonymous with situating my truth in time and space, returning as animated and animating nourishment. Bread-making is ecological.
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References
Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Durham: Duke University Press.
Ingold, T. (2013) Making: Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. London: Routledge.
Malafouris, L. (2019) “Thinking as ‘thinging’: Psychology with things,” Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29(1), pp. 3–8. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721419873349.
Perullo, N. (2020) Estetica Ecologica: Percepire Saggio, Vivere Corrispondente. Milano: Mimesis.
Varela, F.J., Thompson, E. and Rosch, E. (1991) The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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This article is a contribution from one of the participants of The Gramounce Food & Art Alternative MA 2024-25. Their writing is inspired by one of our seminars, or responds to a similar field of interest within food & art.