Start the Spread – Xinyi Lim

Art Project / Bread / Community / Words

Start
THE SPREAD

This piece was written to accompany sachets of dried sourdough mailed around Australia. It was part of an initiative during the pandemic in 2020 to connect the disconnected, and reclaim bread production from the capitalist forces that have come to control our food supply chains.

Despite what you’re hearing today, the spread of spores through our population doesn’t have to be a dangerous thing.

Over 750 packets of starter have been mailed around Australia as part of a widespread reclamation of bread and its powers of production. This initiative to share sourdough around Australia is part of my ongoing work to gather and connect people through food, however segregated we may be as a result of the pandemic. I join a movement instigated by New York-based community art project, Bread On Earth, to map the evolution and diffusion of this benevolent culture worldwide. With this package, you too can help start the spread.

Over 1000 packets of starter have been mailed worldwide through New York-based community art project, Bread on Earth. I am happy to be a vector for this benevolent spread in Australia, as part of my ongoing work to gather and connect people through food, however remote we may now be. I join a small but global army of volunteers supporting Bread on Earth and its goal to map the evolution and diffusion of this culture worldwide. With this package, you too, can help start the spread.

Why bread, why sourdough, now? With commodity markets grinding to a halt, supply chains splintering, and the status quo upturned, we are experiencing a renewed urgency for self-sufficiency, security and comfort, and a need to reacquaint ourselves with forgotten means of sustenance and survival. As we settle uncomfortably into the disquiet of isolation and quarantine, bread becomes something we can turn to, not just for fuel, but as something tangible, productive, humbly powerful. This movement to spread starter - and with it, the fortifying practice of baking bread - arises as we seek solidarity through alternative ways of connecting to dispel the pervading sense of alienation and inertia.

Sourdough requires just three ingredients: flour, water and time - with time not so long ago in scarce supply, and now hopelessly bountiful. Fortunately, this is what it’s about: an alternative approach to time, a letting-go of your itinerary, not just because you want to, but because you can and need to, for something as simple and enduring as bread. It is about allowing your days to be dictated by periods of fermentation, and pausing, physically and mentally, to feed your starter and turn your dough.

Welcome the reminder of how much is and isn't in your control.

This peculiar time demands breaking from the relentless pursuit of excellence that has come to our dominate our capitalist mindset.

Welcome the reminder of how much is and isn't in your control.

And further, yes, this is about sourdough, driven by a surge in home baking and curiously, dwindling supplies of commercial yeast. More broadly however, the intent is a conscious readjustment, a collective shift away from despondency and despair; it’s about cultivating an abundance mindset in a time when everyone, including our instincts, is telling us to reduce, retreat, distance. Consider - what else can be shared? What else can we do to necessarily affirm and deepen channels of community and solidarity between us all?

In the meantime - join the resurgence. Make bread and immerse yourself in the process. Welcome the reminder of how much is and isn’t in your control. And perhaps, you might get a nice looking boule out of it.