Bodies becoming in ferment: Pedagogies of support, collaboration and agitation

This article investigates climate aware creative practices through the Relational Ecologies Intensive , a two-day programme curated by the Climate Aware Creative Practices Network (CACP) with the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Naarm (Melbourne, Australia) from 20 to 22 February 2025. It was delivered in connection with the exhibition The Charge That Binds , ACCA, Naarm (Melbourne, Australia) from 7 December 2024 to 16 March 2025 (ACCA 2024) curated by Shelley McSpedden and Elyse Goldfinch. Drawing on situated and embodied approaches, including yarning circles, a watershop and collective mapping, the article contributes to the development of my conceptual methodology of fermentation, which I term fermentology . Here, fermentation is called upon as methodology, metaphor and teacher to foreground slowness, porosity, situatedness, collaboration and transformation in thinking, making and doing, through three bodily relations: support, collaboration and agitation. Drawing on my experience of the Relational Ecologies Intensive , I position my concept of ‘productive agitation’, which describes the generative disturbances that arise within collaborative learning contexts, as vital for cultivating pedagogical rhythms that sustain ecological urgency and nurture fermenting futures in the company of others. Rather than offering resolutions or solutions, the article argues for dwelling in states of becoming and thickening relational knowledge exchanges.