cut milk

This workshop proposes a space to think through the metaphorical and practical intersections between lactic ferments and creative practices. Paying attention to milk as a substance endowed with agency, and to the stranger aspects of its becoming in the human and more-than-human world, we will spend two days in La Escocesa’s kitchen, making cheese and yogurt, inhabiting and talking about secretions, magic, spirits, agriculture, bacteria and works of art. As we curdle milk and spin stories, we will take notes towards imagining a series of collective works. On the third day, Valeria Mata will join us to guide us through the process of turning our notes into works—textual, visual, or otherwise.

What will we curdle together, cut by the acids of our questions, inoculated with ideas, and cradled by the warmth of our company?

bio

Valeria Mata is a researcher and social anthropologist. Her research explores intersections between artistic practices and anthropology, the political and cultural dimensions of food, and critical reflections on the notion of displacement. She is interested in experimenting with an anthropology that takes both the visual and the textual into account, while also moving beyond the primacy of sight and semantic content to investigate other forms of relating to the world—ones that recognize sounds, gestures, smells, tastes, and touch as having an important epistemological status. She is the author of Plagie, copie, manipule, robe, reescriba este libro (2018) and Todo lo que se mueve (2021). In 2021, she edited Comer relaciona (y confronta) mundos, published by the Centro Cultural de España en México. Her current research explores the circulation of gifts.

Mercedes Villalba, Ph.D., is a writer and researcher. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology, History of Science, and Feminist Methodologies from the University of California, Davis. She is the author of Manifiesto ferviente (2019), A las Plantas (2022), the poetry books Colores and A los botánicos, as well as articles, poems, translations, and essays exploring the creation and decomposition of art and nature. Her Manifiesto Ferviente has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Kichwa, and is part of the permanent collections of Printed Matter, SAIC, and MACBA. Her forthcoming book, Triangulaciones, will be published by Cielo Santo at the end of 2026. She is currently working on a book about milk and another about ceramics.

Image credits

1) No Message (2016), Camille Henrot
2) Mothermilkcheese (1993), Ine Poppe
3) Rock painting from Karkur Talh (c. 4400–3300 BCE), in the Jebel Uweinat massif (Sudan).

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