spill the beans!
2025 - ong.
2025 - ong.
This lecture-performance
grows out of Alexandra Baumgartner’s long-term project How like a leaf I am, shifting focus to a curated collection
of legumes – fava, lupin, peas, lentils, lablab, and more. Legumes, members of
the Fabaceae family, are known for producing pods – single-chambered capsules
that contain their seeds. In many cases, it is the seeds – often simply
referred to as beans, rather than the whole fruit – that we eat. Celebrated for
their ability to fix nitrogen and support climate-resilient farming, legumes
are key to the future of food, yet remain underappreciated in Switzerland.
Anticipating a plant-protein revolution, Baumgartner stages an encounter with these remarkable plants. In an intimate gathering, the collection comes alive in a lecture-performance, where seeds become storytellers – evoking ancestral knowledge, colonial entanglements, scientific perspectives, and emergent farming practices. At it’s heart spill the beans! is a conversation between seeds, farmers, researchers, and the public.
The first phase of research for this ongoing project was carried out in collaboration with Adèle Pautrat of the Brussels-based organization Seeds4All , with the support of foodculture days . This research centered on an in-depth examination of the place of legumes in Switzerland, beginning with their history, particularly in mountain regions where the work of Sortengarten Erschmatt has been indispensable. Baumgartner and Pautrat explored the potential of ancient faba varieties and the revitalization of their cultivation in Valais. Later, their attention turned to specific farming techniques for legumes, leading them to the fields of Gerald Huber in Aubonne – who over the years has refined methods of direct seeding and mixed cropping with faba beans – and to Bruno Graf in Payerne, a Swiss pioneer of vegan agriculture. In parallel, Baumgartner investigated what her own gardening practice and expanding seed collection could reveal, tracing the journeys of the seeds she had received from fellow seed keepers, along with the stories and fragments of knowledge that did – or did not – accompany them.
Anticipating a plant-protein revolution, Baumgartner stages an encounter with these remarkable plants. In an intimate gathering, the collection comes alive in a lecture-performance, where seeds become storytellers – evoking ancestral knowledge, colonial entanglements, scientific perspectives, and emergent farming practices. At it’s heart spill the beans! is a conversation between seeds, farmers, researchers, and the public.
The first phase of research for this ongoing project was carried out in collaboration with Adèle Pautrat of the Brussels-based organization Seeds4All , with the support of foodculture days . This research centered on an in-depth examination of the place of legumes in Switzerland, beginning with their history, particularly in mountain regions where the work of Sortengarten Erschmatt has been indispensable. Baumgartner and Pautrat explored the potential of ancient faba varieties and the revitalization of their cultivation in Valais. Later, their attention turned to specific farming techniques for legumes, leading them to the fields of Gerald Huber in Aubonne – who over the years has refined methods of direct seeding and mixed cropping with faba beans – and to Bruno Graf in Payerne, a Swiss pioneer of vegan agriculture. In parallel, Baumgartner investigated what her own gardening practice and expanding seed collection could reveal, tracing the journeys of the seeds she had received from fellow seed keepers, along with the stories and fragments of knowledge that did – or did not – accompany them.
Filed under: artistic research, lecture performance, collaboration
Images: 1-3 Alexandra Baumgartner, 4-5 Benedetta Stefani for foodculture days.
︎︎︎ In the context of the foodculture days biennial 2025 , the artistic research project spill the beans! cross-pollinated with several others—namely Grace Denis’ ecopedagogy program An Ecology of Encounters with the school Plan Dessus, the culinary propositions of Grace Denis and artisan Aziadé Cirlini, and the Musée du Jeu in La Tour-de-Peilz, in connection with their exhibition on games and agriculture, where a workshop on the seed-based mancala game was held during the biennial.
︎︎︎ Find the report of the collaborative research with Seeds4All here (part 1/part 2).