Cultivating Conversations. The Rogue Academy Treatment III: Night and Day Werribee Treatment Plant 2023.
For Treatment III, The Rogue Academy moved in, decorated and activated the once humming with social events and town meeting, Cocoroc Town Hall. Reflecting on 24 hour cycles and drawing parallels between the processing of human waste, digestion, food and gut health we hosted a series of conversational meals and events. Rogue Academy collaborated with artists, fermenters, researchers, farmers, heritage advisors, MWTP management and Treatment III audience in this multifaceted work.
Treatment lll at the Western Treatment Plant – curated by the Public Art Commission, Deakin University
The Rogue Academy collective encourages conversations through art and food, to challenge preconceived notions and inspire new ways of thinking. Our latest project delves into the parallels between the Western Treatment Plant network, the human digestive system, vermicomposting, fermentation and celebrating the crucial role that decomposition microbes play in creating fertile soil and generating new life. For Treatment III, we invites guests to sit, eat, consume and process.
Collaborating faculty include Sharon Flynn of The Fermentary, honourable Melbourne Water dinner guests and Hong Kong-based artist Gai Ya Qi will help challenge the stigma surrounding waste by highlighting its beauty and transformative potential. Cultivating Conversations is informed by key ideas around corn-, waste processing and systems of digestion and transformation through worms, food, bacteria and stories.
*PARTS OF CULTIVATING CONVERSATIONS
The Rogue Academy and collaborators*
For Treatment III, The Rogue Academy activated the once Cocoroc Town Hall, thinking about 24 hour cycles and drawing parallels between the processing of human waste, digestion, food and gut health through a series of conversational meals and events. Rogue Academy collaborated with artists, fermenters, researchers, farmers, heritage advisors, MWTP management and Treatment III audience in this multifaceted work.
Lacto - Fermenting Corn.
Collaborating with Sharon Flynn from The Fermentary, visitors to Cultivating Conversations were offered a piece of corn in early stages of lacto - fermentation, an ancient method of preserving corn. The fields of animal fodder corn surrounding Cocoroc are grown in MWTP processed waste water are not for human consumption do to possible harmful bacteria. Could fermentation mimic the digestive process of the cattle that eats the corn, and similarly, make it safe for humans?
Blue food dye muffins and links to the #bluepoopchallange
The Zoe Institute supports individuals to learn about their health and gut biome by measuring their gut transit time via the Blue Poop Challenge. During Cultivating Conversations 124 lucky ticket winners were given a blue muffin and instructions to join the blue poop challenge. Most people accepted, and to this day the Rouge Academy still receive a suprising number of detailed reports from participants.
SoilFeeder. Markus Wernli
A film by Markus Wernli was showing in the hall that documened his 'two-year long, homemaking research, human ecology was explored on the most intimate level. Starting with minimal gardening expertise, returning human ‘waste’ sensitively back to the soil entailed foremost adeptness in the negotiations with campus facility management, environmental scientists, marginalised knowledges, and fellow student gardeners. The processes involved radically subjected personal life routines to seasonal rhythms, interexistent intuition, and fermentation successions of the Terra Preta cultivation method.' http://markuswernli.org
An Ode To An Annelid. Worm meditation
As the sun set over Cocoroc in the final hours of the project, Rogue Academy screened a mediation video based on earthworms to a room full of Treatment III audience. Hong Kong based artist and worm enthusiast Ya-Qi creates ‘vermi-meditations’ in response to vermi-composting - the use of worms for making compost, and highlighting the similarities between human and worm digestive systems.
In the 2 part film, Ya-Qi introduced herself and her artwork, and through her ‘vermi-meditation’ invites a type of ecological atonement, guiding our focus onto worms and encouraging us to reflect on their indelible impact on our biosphere.
24 Hour Food Diary. Data Collection
Treatment Audience were invited to partake in a survey, listing their last meal 24 hours before arriving at Western Treatment Plant. Captured and displayed in the toilets of Cocoroc.
With many thanks to : Sharyn Flynn and The Fermentary crew, Michael O’Brien, Markus Wernli, Peter Kissonergis, Paul Balassone, Ken McDonald, Cam Bishop, David Cross and Deakin PAC.
We conducted an intriguing survey as part of an artwork that delves into the relationship between diet, digestion, and the human body. The project involved showcasing participants’ digestive contents on a scrolling film, where they were invited you to take part by sharing information about their dietary habits before attending the Western Treatment Plant’s Night + Day Treatment III event on April 21st and 22nd, 2023.
Treatment III: Night and Day.
Celebrating a day in the life of the plant and responding to the extraordinary landscape, technologies and community surrounding Melbourne’s oldest and largest waste treatment facility, TIII: Night + Day will bring the site alive through live music, sculpture, film and performance works from sunset on Friday 21 April and sunrise on Saturday 22 April.
https://www.treatment3.org.au/night-and-day/