Renaissance 3.0
· exhibition
Fermenting Futures was shown at ZKM in Karlsruhe as part of Renaissance 3.0, a major exhibition on new relationships between art and science.
Fermenting Futures and the related work The BioArchaeology of Yeast were included in Renaissance 3.0 at ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany. Running from 25 March 2023 to 7 January 2024, the exhibition brought together artists whose work opened up new relationships between art, science, and technical research, with a particular focus on artistic laboratory practice and collaborative forms of knowledge.
In that setting, Fermenting Futures contributed a bio-digital perspective on yeast biotechnology, environmental repair, and material transformation. Rather than treating laboratory processes as abstract research, the work gives them sculptural and public form, making visible how modified living systems can become part of a wider cultural conversation about industry, ecology, and care.
The exhibition also sharpened how May’s work sits within a broader field of art-science practice. What matters here is not technology as display, but technology as a way of testing how knowledge is shaped, stored, and shared. Seen within Renaissance 3.0, the project extended his wider concern with how technical systems alter what can be preserved, changed, or imagined.