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Becoming Succession
Keith Hartwig Hannah LeVasseur with contributions by Caroline Hu September 5, 2025 – April 30, 2026 OPENING RECEPTION Saturday, September 20, 2025 3-6p RELATED PROGRAMMING Participatory Co-creation Workshops September, 2025 October, 2025 November, 2025 December, 2025 January, 2026 February, 2026 March, 2026 April, 2026 For more info see Co-creation Workshops section below. Come visit Succession Fermentory at the historic A Man Full of Trouble Tavern (aMFoT), 127 Spruce St, Philadelphia, PA. Built in 1759, aMFoT is the only pre-revolutionary war tavern remaining in the city of Philadelphia. Closed to the public since 1996, it has now reopened as a 25 seat tasting room and bar where you can enjoy our full range of farmhouse beers and ferments on draft, cask and in bottle, alongside a highly curated selection of Pennsylvania’s wine and spirits. Please email us with any enquiries, for purchasing information, and to visit by appointment, including virtual visits. |
Becoming Succession is an exhibit about a farm, a brewery, and a community that are connected through shared ecological principles and acts of becoming — beginning to be, growing into, and experiencing place based change, together. Becoming Succession opens with an installation of narrative images, pulled from the label art for Succession Fermentory, that set the backdrop for an eight month exhibit and series of participatory events where visitors can explore nature and human relations through observation, reflection, and making. The installation will be co-created with the community during these monthly events that include workshops, nature meditations, and discussions which focus on the joyful actions we use to disrupt harmful societal patterns and prepare for succession, the transformation over time in an ecological community, setting the stage for our human and other-than-human successors.
As a permaculture homestead and ecologically minded farmhouse brewery, StellaLou Farm and Succession Fermentory, we are seated firmly in our awareness and criticisms of the status quo. On this land in southern Chester County, Pennsylvania, less than 4 miles from Street Road Artists Space, we actively make decisions to disrupt the habitual realities which do us and our environment harm. Specifically, we are contemplating our roles within hierarchy, monoculture, waste, binary thinking, and acceleration in our daily lives and society. In embracing our place in the network of nature, we are becoming the disruptions we need in order to heal. As a backdrop for our collaboration with visitors, Becoming Succession opens with an installation and a coming to life of the narrative images created for the brewery’s product labels. Throughout the span of the exhibition this space will evolve, becoming succession itself, accumulating objects, reflections, live fermentations, and other contributions, transforming Street Road Artists Space into a community workshop and immersive sensorium. Here, visitors can experience the intersections and interactions within nature and human relations and how we communicate these observations and reflections through making. The installation will be co-created with the community during monthly events including workshops, nature meditations, and discussions which focus on the joyful actions we use to disrupt our more harmful societal patterns. We invite you to become succession, with us. Keith Hartwig is an artist whose work envisions vibrant, resilient futures for food systems in a warming world—not through high-tech solutions, but by looking to traditional, sustainable culinary ways that have nourished human communities for thousands of years. His artwork is shaped through a process of public engagement, drawing on the experience and insight of communities and individuals situated in the complex nature-culture assemblages of food systems, and collaboration with domain specialists, including climate scientists, microbiologists, and food producers. Resulting installations, exhibitions, and public performances have appeared in Boston, Cambridge, Philadelphia, NYC, El Alto, Bolivia and Linz, Austria. In 2021, Keith co-founded Succession Fermentory in Cochranville, PA, a farmhouse fermentation business committed to supporting regional, sustainable, and ecologically conscious agricultural practices.
Succession Fermentory was established at StellaLou Farm in 2021, with the vision of growing the diversity of local agricultural practices and products. Through the ritual of fermentation, Succession crafts wild fermented ales, fruit wines, ciders, and meads that celebrate and honor our local terroir and ecology. Hannah LeVasseur is an educator, artist, and residential member of StellaLou Farm. With a background in art education, she aim to empower community members to produce and share food, experiences, beauty, and more at StellaLou Farm. Hannah's interest in permaculture and herbalism, and her practice of raising two children greatly inform her collaborations on the homestead and with Succession Fermentory on label design. StellaLou Farm is a homestead that provides physical, mental, and emotional sustenance for a family spanning three generations. With little prior farming experience, we all made our way to this land to invest more in the connection and support of the earth and of family. Our organic perennial and annual food systems, apiary, and poultry provide year-round healthy delicious food for the household and agricultural products to sell to the local community. Our homestead serves as an educational resource and research site for permaculture and regenerative design. Most importantly, we strive to understand how to care for the land and our natural resources so that they will provide abundance for present and future generations. Caroline Hu is an artist and educator with a PhD in biology and a love for visual storytelling. After years of spending her days at the lab bench and nights at the drawing desk, Caroline now joyfully dual wields both art and science as an assistant biology professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Caroline has collaborated with Succession Fermentory on label art and narrative images. Image (above): Caroline Hu, 'Phenology'. This panoramic image, illustrated by Caroline Hu, is inspired by Chinese handscroll landscape paintings, taking the viewer on a journey through space and time. The artwork depicts the cyclical patterns of nature from the scale of microbes to landscapes. In the foreground, saccharomyces yeast undergoes various forms of reproduction and transformation, responding to the environment and seasonal shifts depicted in the background. |
Co-creation WorkshopsIn September, see how the beer Tettix and the artwork for it describe our disruption of acceleration in our lives through the embracing of natural rhythms and seasons. We begin this journey together in a guided nature meditation and plant communication workshop.
In October, we investigate how the beer Prunus and its plum goose illustration narrates how seeking new connections and exploring the grey space can disrupt the habits of binary thinking. We explore this practice with participants, foraging wild yeast in the outdoor spaces of Street Road Artists Space, and using it to make sourdough culture. These yeasts will also be used to begin a fermentation inside the installation. Our November reflections about disrupting waste cycles will use the label art and beer making process of Levain, repurposing waste to shed ideas of scarcity and open our eyes to abundance. Turn old bread into new beer in a kvass making workshop to experience the celebration together. With Fera Fortuna and its beer label as a starting point, we take time in December to discuss the disruption of hierarchy through collaboration and co-creation. Throughout this month we will be collecting submissions for a community art piece to be presented in a science based conference. In January, we will share how the beer Shadows & Unicorns received its name and imagery as an introduction to exploring how we can disrupt hierarchy through attending to the feral and wild. Join us for a discussion about the feminist history of fermentation. Nebulae, and the brand-identifying image on its label are the jumping off point for our February investigation of how we disrupt habitual waste through preservation. Explore preservation with us further during February’s community event, Koji making. In March, explore the ways in which the beer Millefleur and its imagery speak to the disruption of monoculture through embracing diversity and polycultures. The interconnections between different species in an ecosystem will be explored through a hands-on herbalism workshop. As the last piece of contribution to the show in April, we will look at the beer and label Printemps to inspire conversations about disrupting monoculture through remixing rituals and narratives. Join us in a closing nature meditation, introducing a sit spot practice of observation. Reading ListJosephson, Marika. Keeping the “Farm” in “Farmhouse Beer”
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World Nurin, Tara. A Woman's Place Is in the Brewhouse: A Forgotten History of Alewives, Brewsters, Witches, and CEOs Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins Wulf, Andrea. The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World Exhibition guideComing soon.
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