Walker Tufts
Pickles & Concrete
Pickles & Concrete is a time negotiating kitchen laboratory where players use bacteria to make pickles, grow & test bioconcrete and preserve food. Pickles & Concrete contrasts two human attempts to alter the flow of time. In the kitchen we freeze, dehydrate and pickle foods to remove them from their usual cycle of decay. In contrast, we freeze and thaw concrete to simulate the passage of entire seasons in a single day. Pickles & Concrete invites players to get tangled up in the time scales between food preservation, building materials, bacteria and geology in an attempt to re-story science. Pickles & Concrete is a research project and public workshops in collaboration with CEPA Gallery & Coalesce and will culminate in an exhibition at CEPA Gallery from August-October 2024. This project is supported by an artist’s grant from NYSCA.
Walker Tufts
Pickles & Concrete is a Kosmologym project with lead artists: Walker Tufts & Greg Stewart. Kosmologym is an art and game design collective. Our games challenge players to encounter more-than-human others and place human bodies in physical relationships to global systems. Kosmologym has created games for Franconia Sculpture Park, Shafer, MN, US; the Philadelphia Science Festival and Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia, US; Art Prospect Festival 2018 in Saint Petersburg, RF; the Kulturhavn Festival and VEGA Arts in Copenhagen, DK. We have performed our games in London and Leeds, UK; Copenhagen, Aalborg and Aarhus, DK; Philadelphia and New York City, USA.