Series of live workshops // April 29 – June 10, 2021 @ BioTehna + Vivarium, Likozarjeva 1, Ljubljana
The set of mycelium cultivation workshops is led by the Gobnjak initiative for urban mushrooming and consists of 7 parts. Each part lasts from one to three hours, taking place every Thursday at 17:00h at the Kersnikova Institute laboratories. At the end of the seven-week set, participants will learn how to grow a fresh mushroom themselves and make a mycelium plate.
At the introductory workshop, participants will learn about the lifecycle of fungi, as well as the basics of their nutrition and reproduction. They will have the opportunity to study the preparation and sterilisation of agar and liquid cultures as well as the inoculation of Petri dishes, liquid cultures, and cereals.
The second workshop will introduce details about suitable substrates for mycelial growth, including the optimal rations of nutrients and tips for substrates sterilisation. The third workshop will address mycelium as a commonly-used material (e.g., food, packaging, building material). The fourth workshop will be devoted to discussing a variety of ways to make moulds for mycelial plates, their production, and the transfer of the partially incubated substrate into moulds.
In the fifth workshop, participants will address the conditions that mushrooms need in the cultivation phase, creating a mini cultivation chamber that will provide suitable conditions for growth. The final workshop will compare the growth of mushrooms on different substrates to be prepared by workshop participants, and discuss possible improvements in procedures. The workshop will conclude with the production of plates from mycelium and discuss the potential of further processing and the plates’ use.
The workshop series will be conducted under the mentorship of Rok Zalar and Bojana Rudovič Žvanut from Kersnikova’s partner organisation Gobnjak, an initiative for urban mushrooming.
Together with Gobnjak and through follow-up research and artistic interventions of various artists, such as Martin Howse and Mary Magic, participants will delve deeper into the world of fungi, organisms that represent a possible revolution in the field of new biomaterials.
The workshop on mycelium cultivation, research, and artistic intervention will be carried out as part of the program called ‘MyCoBiont’ at the Kersnikova Institute laboratories, Likozarjeva 1, Ljubljana.
