PLUMP AND PLIANT

2018

Plump and Pliant was a collaborative research project developed by WhiteFeather and Courtney Books that investigates the treatment and preservation of SCOBY-derived bacterial cellulose within contemporary art. Developed at the intersection of bioart and conservation science, the project examines how living or once-living materials can be stabilized without erasing the conditions that define them.

Focusing on bacterial cellulose cultivated through fermentation, the research addresses the material’s responsiveness to environmental conditions, including its susceptibility to dehydration, deformation, and microbial reactivation. Preservation strategies are approached as negotiated processes that account for the material’s ongoing relationship to moisture, temperature, and time.

The project challenges conventional conservation and art gallery frameworks, which are typically designed for inert materials, by proposing alternative approaches that consider care, maintenance, and material contingency. Rather than seeking permanence, Plump and Pliant brings attention to the instability of living matter as a defining characteristic, reframing degradation and transformation as integral to the work’s meaning.

Developed as the major component of Books' Master's thesis work, the research was hosted through the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology at Concordia University through a collaborative partnership with Queens University, facilitated by WhiteFeather. The work was later published in Living Matter: The Preservation of Biological Materials in Contemporary Art by the Getty Conservation Institute, in the chapter “Plump and Pliant: The Preservation of Bacterial Cellulose in Textile Bioart” (Books). Read the chapter here: https://www.getty.edu/publications/living-matter/snapshots/05/

WhiteFeather carried this research forward into its practical and material application through her subsequent collaboration with Tagny Duff on Wastelands. The work has also been featured in articles authored by Books and by Duff for the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts Quarterly, Q21: Material Futures, guest edited by WhiteFeather.​