"Sind wir Toast?" 
(Nancy Fraser)

Our Mission

The state of the world is making you salty? Your stomach is growling? You feel like dishing it out? Then you’ve cone to the right place! We want you & your microbiome as a starting culture for the fermentation of the conditions.

1% of the world's population own more than the other 99% combined and emits more Co2 than the poorer half combined on top of that. Let's face it: the demise of the planet is being accelerated by Porsche drivers who are eating us out of house and home.

PARA's proposal: Why don’t those who ensure that having access to bread is a privilege go eat themselves? Since we are permanently consuming our own livelihoods on this planet, PARA proposes to apply the principle of autophagia to the class struggle. The approach: change behavior and conditions through targeted hacking of the microbiome. Feed the anger about the system to those who profit most from it.

The artist collective PARA founds a temporary pop-up store of discomfort in Stuttgart's city centre that combines a sauerkraut production site with stories from the global food industry to investigate the distribution of comfort, turning the guts of the audience into collaborators of redistribution. PARA invites the community to collectively pickle cabbage and other vegetables that were previously saved from disposal. While kneading, the bacteria that inhabit our grumbling stomachs and influence our behaviour pass from the hand to the cabbage. Together with a pinch of salt, they set the process of lactic acid fermentation in motion. Product and consumer fall into one; discomfort is fed in as well.

This cross-species ritual is accompanied musically: In a murder ballad of the microbiome, we sing about 3.5 billion years of bacterial class struggle: from our own tummy aches in the workplace, to the antibiotic resistances occurring in factory farming, to the stomach ulcers of delivery service providers in late capitalism caused by Heliobacter Pylorii and chronic stress.

The fermenting Kraut becomes a carrier medium for social discomfort and can be picked up for free in the attached pop-up store. Now it's time to dish it out: Feed your friends and foes, your bosses and landlords and maybe even yourself. Spread the angry biome among the profiteers of the system. PARA's Sauer-Kraut is not only delicious; it also promises, if ingested regularly, harmless, socially productive states of unrest. Sauer-Kraut, that’s us! So let's eat ourselves. Let's feed the rich!Our

Team

Cennet Rüya Voss, Philipp Röding, Vannesa Amoah Opoku, Lina Brion, Josephine Hans, Amelie Neuman, Joy Weinberger, Kolja Vennewald, Jonas Fischer, Peter Behrbohm, Bastian Sistig

Production Assistance Stage Design: Philipp Rohé
Production: Tine Elbel
Graphic Design: Maximiliane Schmid