Indonesia raises a glass, HONF creates

They turned up at la Gaîté lyrique with their bottles, their fruits, their computers, their ideas. On the 7th floor of the white building, four Indonesians are bustling about cutting, fiddling, stirring and screwing. They will ferment kilos of cherries, pineapples, apples and ginger with a specific process and an installation which will soon blow bubbles and make sounds, so that, in about ten days, a first vintage of their fruit wine – in reference to the most popular Indonesian alcohol made from green papaya and called "wine" – will be ready for tasting.

This biological-art project, called Intelligent Bacteria Saccharomyces cerevisiae, was conceived last year by the Indonesian collective HONF (House of natural fiber) in response to a government measure which increased the alcohol taxes in their country. Result: people turned to the very cheap local alcohols, the fermentation of which is dubious. Irène Agrivina, known as 'Ira', co-founder of HONF, explains: "These alcohols are very dangerous because people use methanol instead of ethanol for fermentation. These mixes have already killed a few people!", she reminds us before adding that in Indonesia, alcohol production and consumption are traditional and very common, despite a majority of people practicing the Islamic religion and the rise of the Islamic fundamentalists.