Fermenting Futures exhibition at Kunstlerhaus Vienna

Fermenting Futures was exhibited at Kunstlerhaus Wien in Vienna from 3 to 22 March 2022. The exhibition brought Alex May and Anna Dumitriu’s collaborative project into a public gallery setting, following earlier research and development with Professor Diethard Mattanovich, Professor Michael Sauer, Dr Ozge Ata, and Dr Martin Altvater at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna.

The project explores yeast biotechnology from cultural, historical, and aesthetic perspectives. In the exhibition, living process, sculptural form, and scientific research were held together in a way that made the questions of carbon capture, material production, and environmental change physically present rather than abstract. The work asked how biotechnology might be understood not only as a technical field, but as a site of imagination, responsibility, and transformation.

This exhibition was an important early public moment for the work. It showed how May’s practice can move between digital and biological systems while staying focused on what is carried forward, what is altered, and what forms of knowledge technology makes visible. At Kunstlerhaus Wien, those concerns took on a distinctly material form through fermentation, containment, and metabolic change.