Lauren Fournier

News

This spring (2024) I was invited to Brown University's Department of English to present at a conference on first-person writing in the age of fictionalized fact.

My Substack First-Gen Student Club is now live. You can subscribe here.

Last year (2023) I was a guest lecturer in NYU's XE: Experimental Humanities and Social Engagement graduate program, where I worked with students on a project related to microbial ecologies and interdisciplinary methodologies. Thank you to Dr. Mustafa Saifuddin for this invitation!

Last fall I was invited to lead a writer's workshop in Bolzano, Italy. Thank you to Eau&Gaz for this beautiful invitation, and for hosting this workshop. I spent three days with six wonderful writers and artists, walking on the land exploring different ways to write autotheoretically and autofictionally.

My film The Truck Guys premiered at Vtape in Toronto last spring and has since screened across Canada. The film is featured on the cover of the most recent issue of Blackflash Magazine, winter 2023, alongside a commissioned piece of writing on parafictional storytelling in a post-truth world. Content warning: discussion of structural racism, Islamophobia, and white supremacy.

{image 2}

I was invited by editor Clem Macleod to contribute to Issue 5 Worms Magazine, which is now available for purchase through Printed Matter in NYC. Madelyne Beckles and I collaborated on a piece about artists' relationships to "self care" after the pandemic. I am honored to be featured alongside writers I admire, including Saidiya Hartman who is featured on the cover.

Autotheory as Feminist Practice

Reviews & Press for Autotheory as Feminist Practice (The MIT Press, 2021):

Rayna Berggren, the editor in chief of The Columbia Journal of Literary Criticism out of Columbia University (NYC) interviewed me about autotheory and related ideas. 2022.

Dr. Marissa Vigneault reviewed my book for CAA Reviews, 2022.

María Gil Ulldemolins reviewed my Autotheory book for Project Passage, the first autotheoretical journal, out of Belgium's Hasselt University School of the Arts & Architecture, 2021.

Chicago's Seminary Co-Op Books listed my Autotheory book in their List of Notable Books of 2021: books that changed the way we think.

Clem Macleod, the editor of the London UK magazine for feminist and non-binary writers Worms called my Autotheory book the "the best book I read in 2021."

"This book is captivating—reading it is an experience akin to the first moment venturing into Judith Butler's Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity."
- Woman's Art Journal

"A comprehensive monograph that poses a real range of considerations for both artistic and literary autotheory scholarship and practice."
- Contemporary Women's Writing

"Anyone interested in contemporary feminist art and writing practices would benefit from reading Fournier's book about this exciting new way of infiltrating theory that has hitherto been dominated by a patriarchal, Eurocentric elite."
- BookArts

“What makes [the book] such an integral and appealing work is Fournier's acknowledgement of her own background... Fournier's honesty is especially striking... [The book] is more than merely an academic text legitimizing practices that have previously been dismissed. Rather, it is a call to foster community building across disciplines and outside of hierarchical systems, a call for accountability and placing care and community before the individual as philosopher."
- Journal of Curatorial Studies

"Rather than being a dense theoretical tome, the text is populated with a number of sensuous, defiant, provocative film stills and photographs of multivalent artworks. Among the most evocative aspects of the text is a general aim at decentring. Fournier gives considerable attention to inverting margins, both structurally and conceptually."
- The Humber Literary Review

"Autotheory as Feminist Practice, then, excels as a 'here we are now' grounding; a nervy, contemporary feminist art history syllabus."
- Hyperallergic

"A useful intellectual history of the 'autotheoretical impulse.'"
- Art in America

"A welcome new addition to the efforts at defining this relatively new genre."
- Los Angeles Review of Books

"a great tool for discussion and exchange, and not simply a guide. It is a wonderfully rich source, and surely an essential contribution not only to those interested in autotheory."
- Project Passage (Faculty of Architecture and Arts, Hasselt University, Belgium)

Critical Booch

Riffing on the specificities of Vancouver, one of the first places to have kombucha on tap, this latest iteration of Lauren Fournier's Fermenting Feminism project brings with it a new publication—Critical Booch! Sour and effervescent, ambivalent and refreshing, multi-sensorial and potentially explosive, Critical Booch taps into the fizzy currents in critical and creative feminist practices today.

Edited by Lauren Fournier

Contributors: Shaina Agbayani/Jessica B Johns/Andrea Creamer/Tyler Bigchild/Jon Ruby

Edition of 300, original risograph print
Design: Catherine de Montreuil
Publisher: Access Gallery, 2019
Printed and bound in Vancouver by Moniker Press

Fermenting Feminism

Fermentation as a process of transformation becomes both a metaphor and a material practice through which to explore important issues for feminist artists and researchers, from the politics of labour, affect, survival, and care to colonialism, food, indigeneity, and the land. Is “feminism,” with its etymological roots in the feminine, something worth preserving? In what ways might it be preserved? In what ways might it be transformed? Is feminism a relic of the past, something that has soured? Or is feminism still a vital imperative? fermenting feminism positions fermentation as a potentially vital and viable space to re-conceive of global, transnational, and intersectional feminisms' past, present, and futures.

Edited by Lauren Fournier

Contributors: Agustine Zegers / Clementine Morrigan / Eirini Kartsaki / Farida Yesmin /Hannah Regel / Hazel Meyer / Ida Bencke & Dea Antonsen / Jade Io Mars / Jessica Bebenek / Julia Polyck-O'Neill / Leila Nadir and Cary Peppermint / Miles Forrester and Jen Macdonald / Maya Hey / Nicki Green / Regina de Miguel and Lucrecia Dalt / Robin Zabiegalski /Rubina Martini / SE Nash and Stephanie Maroney / Sarah Nasby / The Unstitute / Alice Vandeleur-Boorer and Tereza Valentová / WhiteFeather Hunter / Zayaan Khan / Zoë Schneider

116 pages, 21 x 30 cm
Design: Zille Bostinius
ISBN: 978-87-998667-1-7
Publisher: Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, 2017

Digitally archived through e-artexte in Montreal

Podcast interview with Ferment Radio

Featured in Cosmopolitan Korea in an article on artists cookbooks by Byungseo Yoo, 2023.

Short Fiction

Recent short fiction:

The Grateful Dad in Softpunk Magazine, edited by Charlie Lee, London UK, 2021.

Fermentation, Microbes, Guts

Alongside my ongoing, transnational project Fermenting Feminism, I have written extensively on the topics of fermentation, microbes, and guts, often in relation to art, sociality, and politics:

Currently in development: a collaboration between Lauren Fournier, Sean Nash, and Sandor Katz.

Ferments, Family, Kinship, Home. Curatorial essay for my screening programme at Images Festival on intergenerational knowledge-sharing through fermented foods. Toronto, 2022.

Fermentation as Synthesis for Terraforma Journal, Italy: Milan, 2022.

Indigenous Frybread and Fermentation: Embodying Critical Settler and Decolonial Practice on the Canadian Prairies for Canadian Theatre Review. Special issue on “Acts of Preservation,” co-edited by Ted Whittall and Kim McCleod. 2022.

Pickle Politics experimental text for Nourhan Maayouf & Margareta Klose's performance and exhibition at Volkertmarkt, Vienna, 2021. Originally published in English, and later translated to German by Margareta Klose for the book Banal Complexities, Berlin: philomena+, 2022.

Fermentation for the Spirit: Autotheoretical Reflections on the Rise of Sourdough Art for Peripheral Review, Vancouver. 2021. Co-authored with Greta Hamilton.
- Part 1
- Part 2
- Part 3

Fermenting Feminism as Methodology and Metaphor: Approaching Transnational Feminist Practices through Microbial Transformation for Environmental Humanities, Duke University, 2020.

Microbes, Bodies, Biomes, Borders: A Pandemic Ferment in Four Seasons in Cornelia Magazine. Edited by Nando Alvarez-Perez. New York: Buffalo & Rochester, 2020.

“Fermenting Feminism in Kombucha Land" introduction to Critical Booch, edited by Lauren Fournier. Featuring commissions by Sha Agbayani, Jessica B. Johns, and Andrea Creamer. Vancouver: Access Gallery, 2019.

“Fermentation as Harm Reduction: Sour Sobriety—An Interview with Jon Ruby of Carlington Booch” In Critical Booch, edited by Lauren Fournier. Featuring commissions by Sha Agbayani, Jessica B. Johns, and Andrea Creamer. Vancouver: Access Gallery, 2019.

S.E. Nash: Krautsourcing. Commissioned catalogue essay for the artist S.E. Nash’s monographic exhibition at the Kniznick Gallery. Boston: Brandeis University. 2019.

V for Vessel in Musings: Journal of Food, Feminism, and Fermentation. Special Issue: The Alphabet of Fermentation: A Hope for Multi-Species Multitudes. Quebec: Concordia, 2019.

Critical Kombucha, Dirty Soap, and Beets. Catalogue essay for Fermenting Feminism group exhibition, curated by Lauren Fournier. Toronto: Critical Distance Centre for Curators, 2017.

Economics, Labor, Class

I have two books in development that take up themes of economics in the form of fiction and creative nonfiction. In addition, I have written about economics, labour, and class, often drawing from my own lived experience:

First-Generation Self-Identification: Class and Disclosure in the Scholarly Bio, in In The Spaces Provided: Career Narratives and Academic Womanhood. Edited by Lisa Ortiz-Vilarelle. Auto/Biography Series. New York: Routledge. In development.

Autotheory as Feminist Practice / What It Means To Grow Up Poor, a conversation with Hazel Meyer at the Dunlop Art Gallery in Saskatchewan, 2021.

Growing Up Pour [sic]: A Conversation with Hazel Meyer in Public Parking Journal. 2021.

Les Sons De La Classe Ouvrière Comme Je Les Entends (Working-Class Songs, As I Remember Them). Commissioned catalogue essay for Myriam Jacob-Allard: T’envoler. Montréal: Dazibao. 2019.

A Speculative Manifesto for the Feminist Art Fair International: An Interview with Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue of the Feminist Art Gallery in Toronto. Desire Change: Contemporary Feminist Art in Canada. Edited by Heather Davis. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017.

Ferments, Family, Kinship, Home

Ferments, Family, Kinship, Home  , curated for Images Festival, "Slow Edition" Toronto, 2022

This program explores family, kinship, and home via fermentation and other biochemical and microbial practices, like composting. Fermentation, or the process of transformation through microbes like bacteria and yeast, embodies both preservation and change simultaneously. This makes fermentation a ripe metaphor through which to approach concepts like family, history, and home in the present day.

Centred around contemporary artists’ explorations of fermentation traditions, from kimchi to kefir to kvass, and intergenerational knowledge sharing through such food and medicinal traditions, the works in this screening reimagine what constitutes family and belonging through queer kinship, multi-lingual community, and trans-species becoming.

Screening programme:

Kimberly Ho and Diana Bang, In Fermentation, 2020, 03:18, no sound

Samuel Kiehoon Lee, How To Make Kimchi According To My Kun-Umma, 2002, 18:11, colour and sound (Korean with English subtitles)

Ele Edreva, Cooking with Grandma, 2022, 05:26, no sound

Paul Wong, Mother’s Cupboard, 2019, 10:24, colour and sound (Toisanese, with English subtitles)

TJ Shin, M is for Memoir, 2020, 14:00, colour and sound (English subtitles)

Jamie Ross,There's Enough Room in Paradise 2022, 07:37, colour and sound (English)

Ele Edreva & Leo Williams, Family Jewels, 2018, 07:11, colour and sound (English)

Max Horwich, Ashley Jane Lewis, Katya Rozanova, and Emily Saltz, Bread Symphony: Sonified Sourdough, 2022, video documentation of performance installation at Slow Movement Computing and the New York City Electroacoustic Improvisation Summit

Image: from Paul Wong's series Mother's Cupboard.

Fermenting Feminism, Vancouver

Fermenting Feminism. Access Gallery, Vancouver, BC. September 13 - October 26, 2019.

Group exhibition featuring work by Andrea Creamer, Eleonora Edreva & Leo Williams, Alanna Lynch, Sarah Nasby, Walter Scott, Christine Tien Wang.

Curated by Lauren Fournier

The curatorial essay "Fermenting Feminism in Kombucha Land" can be downloaded here.

The exhibition map can be accessed here.

Installation Views

Documentation by Rachel Topham Photography

Fermenting Feminism is an ongoing, site-responsive curatorial experiment led by artist-curator Lauren Fournier. The conceit of the project is that fermentation, or the process of microbial transformation, becomes a material practice and speculative metaphor through which to think through pressing issues related to feminisms. The project takes shape across media and forms, from exhibitions and screenings, performances and listening sessions, experimental colloquia and outreach programs, and publications. Fermenting Feminism began in 2016 as a publication made in collaboration with the Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, and has since bubbled up in Kansas City, Copenhagen, Toronto, Montréal, and Berlin. In fall 2019, Fermenting Feminism is bubbling up on the coastal, colonized lands of Vancouver, on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. The artists in the exhibition work through issues like harm reduction and intoxication cultures, settler-colonialisms and decolonial possibilities, queer family-making, inter-species communities, fraught symbiosis, labour and land, food and accessibility, and the omnipresent politics of health, wellness, and care. Bringing the project to Access Gallery, located where the Downtown Eastside neighborhood meets Chinatown, introduces a richly complicated environment for fermenting feminisms on the west coast. Riffing on the specificities of Vancouver, one of the first places to have kombucha on tap(!), this latest iteration of Fermenting Feminism brings with it a new publication: CRITICAL BOOCH. Sour and effervescent, ambivalent and refreshing, multi-sensorial and potentially explosive, Fermenting Feminism taps into the fizzy currents in critical and creative feminist practices today.

Adjacent programming and publications:

Curatorial Talk and Tour, 14 September 2019, Access Gallery at 222 East Georgia Street, Vancouver.

Photos: Access Gallery

Performance by Alanna Lynch, Gut Feelings, 23 October 2019. Access Gallery.

Alanna Lynch, Gut Feelings (gloves), sculpture made of kombucha SCOBYs, 2016-19.

Alanna Lynch, Gut Feelings (gloves), sculpture made of kombucha SCOBYs, 2016-19.

CRITICAL BOOCH, publication launch at the Vancouver Art Book Fair October 2019.

CRITICAL BOOCH

CRITICAL BOOCH is a limited-run risograph publication edited by Lauren Fournier and designed by Catherine de Montreuil. Featuring new commissions by Shaina Agbayani, Jessica B. Johns, and Andrea Creamer, and conversations with Tyler Bigchild of the DTES Drinker's Lounge and Jon Ruby of Carlington Booch.

September 2019

Autotheory in Canadian and Indigenous Artists' Video

Autotheory in Canadian and Indigenous Artists' Video. Video art screening at The Horse Hospital, London, England, UK. May 25, 2019.

A programme of short films that consider the ‘autotheoretical’ impulse of theorizing from
lived experience through feminist, queer, Indigenous/Two Spirit, and other critical frameworks.

Featuring: Hiba Ali, Madelyne Beckles, Thirza Cuthand, Andrew James Paterson, Evan Tyler, Allyson Michell and Deirdre Logue, and Martha Wilson.

Curated by Lauren Fournier

This screening is a co-presentation between The Horse Hospital (London), Ingrid Projects (London), and Vtape (Toronto), in conjunction with the Royal College of Art Writing programme's AUTO- conference.

Special thanks to Letitia Calin and Sholto Dobie.

Still from Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue, Hers is Still a Dank Cave: Crawling Towards a Queer Horizon, 2016.