Join the Cohort!

Fermenting Antifascism is a cohort-based learning series that explores modes of resisting the present through fermentation, microbial life, and other ecological playgrounds.

Building on last year’s Fermentation and Anti-Fascist Living, Teresa Borasino deepens the inquiry in continued collaboration with BAK Basecamp. For this Spring Series across three workshops, we turn to fermentation and other earth-based practices—such as foraging, germination, and walking inquiry—to learn with living systems about how transformation unfolds. We explore how these processes might inform social movement strategy, collective organising, and political practice under conditions of collapse and authoritarian drift.

In a time marked by the rise of extreme right, white supremacy, militarisation, and ongoing colonial violence, fermentation offers a language—and a practice—for resisting otherwise. And a counter-logic to fascist ideology:

Where fascism suppresses life, fermentation multiplies it.
Where fascism fears difference, fermentation thrives on it.
Where fascism clings to purity and rigid identity, fermentation cultivates symbiosis, contamination, interdependence, and queer temporalities.

Research Questions
What might it mean to work through small, situated gestures—shifts in attention, relation, action, and care—as part of antifascist practice?
What can we learn from microbial systems about resilient, attuned, symbiotic cultures of resistance?

Practical Details
This series is designed as a continuous, cohort-based process. Like fermentation, collective un/learning takes time, attention, and mutual care. Please register for the full series and commit to attending all three sessions and the public sharing moment. We understand that unforeseen circumstances may arise, if something prevents you from attending.

Dates & Time
Friday March 13, 14:00–18:00
Friday April 24, 14:00–18:00
Friday May 22, 14:00–18:00, followed by shared dinner
June 19 — Public sharing (time TBA)

Where
BAK Basecamp—Pauwstraat 13a, Utrecht

Registration
Places are limited. To secure your spot, please email joining@bakonline.org with a short note about your interest in the series. To keep participation accessible, this series is offered on a suggested donation basis, with €8–€20 per session as a guideline.

Across the sessions, we will engage in:
Hands-on fermentation practices
Embodied and relational exercises —walking inquiry, foraging, somatics, ritual, shared food
Collective study, reading and conversation
Reflection on organising, facilitation, and movement cultures

Fermentation is not proposed as a political tool in itself. Rather, we learn with microbial companions—bacteria, yeast, fungi—as teachers of symbiotic cooperation, transformation, and survival within hostile conditions.