Artists and the Practice of Agriculture: Politics and Aesthetics of Food Sovereignty in Art since 1960 2023006122, 2023006123, 9780367200794, 9781032527208, 9780367200800

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Artists and the Practice of Agriculture

Artists and the Practice of Agriculture maps out examples of artistic practices that engage with the aesthetics and politics of gathering food, growing edible and medicinal plants, and interacting with non-human collaborators. In the hands of contemporary artists, farming and foraging become forms of visual and material language that convey personal and political meanings. This book provides a critical analysis of artistic practices that model alternative food systems. It presents rich academic insights as well as 16 conversations with practicing artists. The volume addresses pressing issues, such as the interconnectedness of human and other-than-human beings, the weight of industrial agriculture, the legacy of colonialism, and the promise of place-based and embodied pedagogies. Through participatory projects, the artists discussed here reflect on the links between past histories, present challenges, and future solutions for the food sovereignty of local and networked communities. The book is an easy-to-navigate resource for readers interested in food studies, visual and material cultures, contemporary art, ecocriticism, and the environmental humanities. Silvia Bottinelli (PhD University of Pisa) is Senior Lecturer and Chair of the Visual and Material Studies Department, School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Dr. Bottinelli’s scholarship focuses on contemporary foodbased art as well as twentieth and twenty-first-century Italian art. With Margherita d’Ayala Valva, she co-edited the volume The Taste of Art (2017) and a special issue of Public Art Dialogue on “Food and Activism in Contemporary Art” (2018). Dr. Bottinelli also co-edited Lead in Modern and Contemporary Art with Sharon Hecker (2021), and single-authored the book Double-Edged Comforts: Domestic Life in Modern Italian Art and Visual Culture (2021). Dr. Bottinelli’s research has been widely published in edited volumes and scholarly journals such as Art Journal, Modernism/modernity, Public Art Dialogues, Food Studies, Palinsesti, Predella, and Ricerche di Storia dell’Arte. Her scholarship was supported by grants of the Italian Art Society, the Center for Italian Modern Art, the American Philosophical Society, and the Tufts Tisch College Faculty Fellowship, among others. Dr. Bottinelli received an International Award for Excellence from the Food Studies Research Network.

Critical Food Studies Series editors Michael K. Goodman, University of Reading, UK Colin Sage, Independent Scholar

The study of food has seldom been more pressing or prescient. From the intensifying globalization of food, a worldwide food crisis and the continuing inequalities of its production and consumption, to food’s exploding media presence, and its growing reconnections to places and people through “alternative food movements,” this series promotes critical explorations of contemporary food cultures and politics. Building on previous but disparate scholarship, its overall aims are to develop innovative and theoretical lenses and empirical material in order to contribute to—but also begin to more fully delineate—the confines and confluences of an agenda of critical food research and writing. Of particular concern are original theoretical and empirical treatments of the materializations of food politics, meanings and representations, the shifting political economies and ecologies of food production and consumption and the growing transgressions between alternative and corporatist food networks. Food and Cooking on Early Television in Europe Impact on Postwar Foodways Edited by Ana Tominc Hunger and Postcolonial Writing Muzna Rahman Food Sovereignty and Urban Agriculture Concepts, Politics, and Practice in South Africa Anne Siebert The Rhetorical Construction of Vegetarianism Edited by Cristina Hanganu-Bresch Artists and the Practice of Agriculture Politics and Aesthetics of Food Sovereignty in Art since 1960 Silvia Bottinelli For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/CriticalFood-Studies/book-series/CFS

Artists and the Practice of Agriculture Politics and Aesthetics of Food Sovereignty in Art since 1960 Silvia Bottinelli

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Silvia Bottinelli The right of Silvia Bottinelli to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Title: Artists and the practice of agriculture : [politics and aesthetics of food sovereignty in art since 1960] / Silvia Bottinelli. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. | Series: Critical food studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023006122 (print) | LCCN 2023006123 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367200794 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032527208 (pbk) | ISBN 9780367200800 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Agriculture and the arts. | Food sovereignty. | Artists and community. | Art and social action. | Sustainable agriculture. Classification: LCC NX180.A354 B68 2023 (print) | LCC NX180.A354 (ebook) | DDC 704.9/43--dc23/eng/20230505 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023006122 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023006123 ISBN: 978-0-367-20079-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-52720-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-20080-0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9780367200800 Typeset in Times New Roman by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

To Bonnie, Danielle, Fernanda, Marco, and Roberto, whom I will never forget.

Contents

List of Figures Framing the Field: An Introduction

xi 1

The Matter of Artists and the Practice of Agriculture 1 The Visual and Material Language of Agriculture as Art: The Example of Hunger by Ghada Amer  2 Contributions, Scope, and Disciplinary Perspective of This Book  5 Chapters’ Overview, Author Positionality, and Writing Process 9 Acknowledgments 10 Notes 11 SECTION I

13

1 Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection through Agriculture in Contemporary Art

15

Preparing the Terrain: Historical Contexts and Theoretical Lens  15 Becoming Plant: Giuseppe Penone  18 Energy Flows and Non-Hierarchical Interactions: Bonnie Ora Sherk 19 The Healing and Spiritual Power of Agriculture: Joseph Beuys 21 Agricultural Knowledges and Economies: Global Tools and Gianfranco Baruchello  22 Fluidity against Binaries: Fritz Haeg  26

viii Contents Beyond Utopia: Adaptation and Community for Kamin Lertchaiprasert and Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Artist as Family  28 Place-Based Knowledges and Interconnectedness in Contemporary Indigenous Art: Jolene Rickard and Elizabeth James-Perry 32

Conversation with Bonnie Ora Sherk

37

Conversation with Fritz Haeg

45

Conversation with Artist as Family

56

Conversation with Jolene Rickard

64

Notes for Section I

71

SECTION II

79

2 Confronting Technology in the Field: Reimagining Agriculture for Food Sovereignty and Environmental Remediation 81 Dialectics, Tautology, and Paradox: Agnes Denes  81 DIY Technology and the Power of Agribusiness: Critical Art Ensemble 84 Biopolitics, Biopiracy, and Sexuality: Ines Doujak  88 The Agency of Plants: Li Shan, Natalie Doonan, and Maria Thereza Alves  91 Climate Change Adaptation, Historical Technologies, and Gardens: The Harrisons and Nida Sinnokrot  94

Conversation with Maria Thereza Alves

99

Conversation with Natalie Doonan

109

Conversation with Nida Sinnokrot

116

Notes for Section II

125

Contents  ix SECTION III

3 Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art: Labor, Memory, and Healing

131

133

Extraction, Exploitation, and Colonial Trades  133 Honoring Diversity through Plants and Food in Australia: Lauren Berkowitz  135 Colonial Histories and Today’s African Diasporas: Binta Diaw  136 Connecting Cuba, China, West Africa, and North America: Edible and Medicinal Plants in María Magdalena Campos-Pons’s Practice  142 Food Security and Artistic Cross-Pollination at Yinka Shonibare’s Ecology Green Farm in Nigeria  147 Abolition, Imagination, and Community Gardening in the United States: jackie sumell and Seitu Jones  149 The Politics of Urban Agriculture in Hong Kong. HK FARM 153

Conversation with Lauren Berkowitz

157

Conversation with María Magdalena Campos-Pons

165

Conversation with jackie sumell

173

Conversation with Seitu Jones

179

Notes for Section III

187

SECTION IV

4 Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming: Health, Nutrition, and Sense of Place Awareness and Social Equity through Food-based Pedagogy: A Theoretical Framework  197 Hydroponic Systems and Community Care in Response to the AIDS Crisis: Haha  200 Cycles of Learning: Sensorial and Spiritual Resilience in Tattfoo Tan’s Experience  201

195

197

x Contents Floating Ecosystems: Mary Mattingly  204 Civic Fruit and Public Art: Participation for Fallen Fruit and Lisa Kyung Gross  207 Being with Bees: Juan William Chávez’s Creative Pedagogy Against Racist Histories  211 Queer Ecologies and Cross-Species Interaction: Eli Brown  212 Making with Fungi: Urbonas Studio and Mycelium  214 Ever-Changing Traditions: Unlearning and Experimenting for the Scuola delle Agriculture  216

Conversation with Haha (Richard House, Wendy Jacob, Laurie Palmer, John Ploof)

220

Conversation with Tattfoo Tan

228

Conversation with Lisa Kyung Gross

236

Conversation with Juan William Chávez

243

Conversation with Eli Brown

249

Notes for Section IV

255

Index 261

Figures

0.1

1.1 1.2

1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 2.1

2.2

Ghada Amer, Hunger, 2013. Earthwork. Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor, Enid Haupt Garden, National Museum of African Art (April 22, 2013-February 23, 2014), Photo Franko Khoury, Smithsonian Institution. Giuseppe Penone, Zucche (Gourds), 1978–79. Bronze. Photographic documentation of the making process. Garessio, Italy. Photo © Archivio Penone. Gianfranco Baruchello, Nascita e Morte del Pane (Bread’s Birth and Death), 1981. Installation (metal cases, soil from Agricola Cornelia, bread, and tools), 40 × 60 × 14 centimeters. Courtesy Archivio Baruchello. The Land. The Land, Sanpatong, Thailand. Courtesy The Land Foundation. Elizabeth James-Perry, A Garden for Boston: Raven Reshapes Boston, 2021. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Photo Elizabeth James-Perry. Bonnie Ora Sherk, Original Proposal for Crossroads Community: The Farm, 1974. Drawing/Collage. Fritz Haeg, Salmon Creek Farm, 2014–ongoing. Aerial view. Courtesy of the artist. Artist as Family, Wheel of Ecological Culture, 2012. Courtesy of the artists. Jolene Rickard, Ah-Theuh-Nyeh-Hah: The Planting Moon, 2016. Tobacco, sunflowers, corn, squash, beans, soil. Cornell University, Botanical Gardens. Agnes Denes, Wheatfield—A Confrontation: Battery Park Landfill, Downtown Manhattan, with Agnes Denes standing in the field, photographic documentation, 1982. Creative Commons. Critical Art Ensemble, Beatriz da Costa and Claire Pentecost, Molecular Invasion, 2002. Roundup Ready corn, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Public domain. Courtesy Steve Kurtz.

2 19

25 28 35 42 51 56 67

82

86

xii Figures 2.3 2.4 2.5

2.6 2.7

3.1 3.2

3.3 3.4

3.5

3.6 3.7

Ines Doujak, Victory Gardens, 2007. Installation, documenta 12, Kassel, Germany. Courtesy of the artist. 89 Li Shan, Smear, 2017. Modified rice and corn. Power Station of Art. Shanghai. 91 Maria Thereza Alves, Return of a Lake, 2012. dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel, Germany. Photo Lüllitz. Courtesy of the artist. The installation is inspired by the community-based work of Alves, in collaboration with the Valle de Xico Community Museum, in Mexico (2009–12). A chinampa was re-created as part of the project. 102 Natalie Doonan, Milkweed with Monarchs, 2017. Digital Drawing and Collage. Courtesy of the artist. 111 Nida Sinnokrot, compost center with cement mixer modified by the artist to function as compost machine, 2016. Sakiya at the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah, Palestine. Courtesy of the artist. 118 Binta Diaw, Dïà s p o r a, 2022, detail. Artificial extension hair, soil, millet. KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 12th Berlin Biennale. Photo Silvia Bottinelli. Courtesy of the artist. 137 Eduardo Laplante, Ingenio St. José de La Angosta. Print published in Justo Cantero, Los Ingenios: Colección de Vistas de los Principales Ingenios de Azúcar de la Isla de Cuba (Habana, Cuba: Litografía de Luis Marquier, 1857). Reprint (Aranjuez, Spain: Ediciones Doce Calles, 2005), 245. 143 Free-range chicken at Yinka Shonibare’s Ecology Green Farm, 2020–ongoing. Ikise, Ijebu Ode, Nigeria. Courtesy Yinka Shonibare Foundation. 148 The HK FARMers’ Almanac, 2014–2015. Photo Michael Leung. Founded in April 2012, HK Farm is an organization of Hong Kong farmers, artists, and designers led by Glenn Eugen Ellingsen, Michael Leung, and Anthony Ko. After a one-year residency at Spring in 2014–15, their collaborations with local and Chinese agricultural initiatives and activists culminated in a collection of zines entitled The HK FARMers’ Almanac. 155 Lauren Berkowitz, Physic Garden, 2013–14. Medicinal and edible plants, 2 × 3.45 × 0.7 meters. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Photo: Selina Ou. Courtesy of the artist, copyright 2020. 158 María Magdalena Campos-Pons, The Herbalist’s Tools, 1993–94. Mixed-media installation, shown as installed at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Courtesy of the artist. 167 jackie sumell, Solitary Gardens in Charlottesville, VA, 2021–22. In collaboration with the artist-run gallery and studio space Visible Records. Photo Eze Amos. 173

Figures  xiii 3.8 4.1 4.2

4.3

4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8

4.9

Frogtown Park and Farm, co-founded by Seitu Jones, 2013–ongoing. Detail of Harvest. St. Paul, Minnesota. Courtesy of the artist. Mary Mattingly, Swale, 2017. Concrete Plant Park, Bronx, New York. Courtesy of the artist. Fallen Fruit, Public Fruit Map, 2004. Silverlake, Los Angeles, California, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artists. This is the first public fruit map created by the artist collective. Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration originally conceived in 2004 by David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young. Since 2013, David and Austin have continued the collaborative work. Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, Psychotropic House: Zooetics Pavilion of Ballardian Technologies, 2015, detail. XII Baltic Triennial, CAC Vilnius. Photo: Giedrius Ilgunas. Courtesy of the artists. Luigi Coppola and Free Home University, Scuola di Agricolture, 2018. Castiglione d’Otranto, Puglia, Italy. Courtesy Luigi Coppola. Haha, Flood, 1992–95. Hydroponic Garden. Rogers Park, Chicago. Courtesy John Ploof. Tattfoo Tan, SOS Mobile Classroom, 2010. Cargo bicycle: 93″ × 20″ × 40″. The French Institute Alliance Française’s Crossing the Line Festival. Photo Tattfoo Tan. Lisa Kyung Gross, Seal of The Boston Tree Party, 2011. Courtesy of the artist. Juan William Chávez, Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary, 2012. A site-specific installation of beehives referencing the Pruitt-Igoe high-rise designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki. 20″ × 50″, 6′ × 1′ × 3′. Courtesy of the artist. Eli Brown, Transplants, 2014. Inkjet-printed zine, 5.5″ × 8.5″. Courtesy of the artist.

182 205

209

215 218 227 228 236

245 251

Framing the Field An Introduction

The Matter of Artists and the Practice of Agriculture This book reflects on artist-run farms, art installations, and performances that incorporate edible gardening, foraging, and farm animal rearing. Starting in the 1960s, the definition of art has expanded, and the boundaries of art and life have begun to blur. Being reframed as experience, art can hinge on connections with sites and communities and on the multisensorial perception of materials and environments. Within such a context, agriculture has offered opportunities to experiment with creative projects that defy classifications and shape forms of communication beyond traditional visual languages. Agriculture, for the purposes of this book, is broadly defined as food and medicine cultivation and gathering that depend on human and other-than-human interactions. Artists that engage with agriculture embrace it as a tool for both political critique and aesthetic expression. Their work deconstructs the inequality of food systems and proposes alternative agricultural models to achieve food sovereignty, in ways that echo case studies discussed by other books published in Routledge’s Critical Food Studies series.1 However, this volume presents a distinguished point of view as it elaborates on the practice of artists who approach agriculture with tools and goals that often differ from those of traditional farmers. The process of artists is often experimental and creative, and their work has conceptual and ethical motivations, which are inspired by critiques of power structures in the art world and the world in general. Artists involved with agriculture often do so to make a statement; they deconstruct current systems and imagine—enact, even—alternative ones. This book’s contribution is to cast light on the experiences of artists who model diverse and creative possibilities for the present and future of agriculture in a global landscape. Also, the volume provides frameworks to decode the artistic language of agriculture-based art projects, facilitating the reader’s appreciation of a plethora of case studies. Artistic practices that involve farming respond to art discourses by developing specific aesthetics. Through phenomenology and culture-specific visual and material vocabulary, artists work with agriculture to convey personal stories, react to historical, social, and environmental narratives, and embody theoretical shifts in art discourses. DOI: 10.4324/9780367200800-1

2  Framing the field

Figure 0.1 Ghada Amer, Hunger, 2013. Earthwork. Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor, Enid Haupt Garden, National Museum of African Art (April 22, 2013-February 23, 2014), Smithsonian Institution. Photo Franko Khoury.

The Visual and Material Language of Agriculture as Art: The Example of Hunger by Ghada Amer A taste of the complex language that is embedded in edible gardening can be gathered from an analysis of the work Hunger by Egyptian artist Ghada Amer. Hunger was created on the occasion of the exhibition Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa at the National Museum of African Art and Smithsonian Gardens in Washington D.C. in 2013.2 Sited just feet away from the USDA People’s Garden and Farmer’s Market, the work curates its public carefully to spread awareness on global and local food issues at multiple levels. Those who encounter the work in person range from citizens to tourists, museum visitors, consumers, and administrators who hold decisional power over agricultural policies in the United States. In the piece, patterns made by seeds and plants form letters in the soil and read as the word “hunger.” Thus, in this case—although not in every example covered by this book—the use of language literally points to verbal communication. The word “hunger” in Amer’s artwork is made of rice stalks for six months and winter kale for the remainder of the year.3 Why write with edible plants on the ground? Why create an artwork so large and immersive that visitors can experience it as a garden? The answers to these questions are layered and can help unpack not only Amer’s art but also some of the broader critical themes and disciplinary frameworks embedded in this volume. Ghada Amer began using gardening as an art form in 1997. When asked to create a piece for an outdoor space, she was presented with a new challenge: her previous work mostly used embroidery to leave marks on the canvas, a technique that allowed her to draw and paint with thread. The conservation of

Framing the field  3 sewn fabrics was threatened by an outdoor display; thus, the artist had to rethink her medium. Amer considered what she appreciated most about embroidery: its connection to women’s everyday life and creativity in the context of Islamic homes, as well as its ability to delineate shapes and figures like inks and paints do. Looking for a medium that could parallel embroidery in an outdoor environment, she decided to experiment with gardening, a practice that women were allowed to engage with in Muslim cultures, if only in the confined spaces of domestic yards.4 The story of Amer’s creative process underlines how gender conditions the ways people relate to other-than-human beings—a theme that emerges in the work of several artists that choose agriculture for their practice, as in the cases of Agnes Denes, Fritz Haeg, Binta Diaw, María Magdalena Campos Pons, Lisa Kyung Gross, and Eli Brown, among others discussed in this volume. Also, Amer’s work reminds us that religion can inform much of people’s connection with landscapes, an awareness that impacts the work of other artists addressed here, like Kamin Lertchaiprasert and Rirkrit Tiravanija, Tattfoo Tan, and many more. Ghada Amer has continued writing and drawing with gardens since the initial commission that made her reimagine her artistic vocabulary at the end of the 1990s, as shown by Hunger—which, as we have seen above, was created in 2013. In this artwork, the word “hunger” appears neatly right after the seeds are planted, but once the crops grow, the writing becomes harder to decipher. Thus, the piece illustrates how hunger can be erased by agriculture. While being very literal and experiential, the work also has a metaphorical and critical dimension, and as such it well exemplifies artworks created through agriculture in general. Amer wants to expose the public to a simple principle that some contemporary viewers might be disconnected from: food comes from the earth, and not from the supermarket. She hopes to bring urban dwellers closer to the source of what they eat, reenvisioning city–countryside dichotomies—a goal that is shared with many other artists involved with farming, including Bonnie Ora Sherk, Seitu Jones, HK FARM, Juan William Chávez, Fallen Fruit, and many more discussed in this book.5 Not only is Hunger specific to D.C. as a city environment that could be enlivened by urban agriculture, but also as a portal that opens up to national and geopolitical dynamics, which are deeply affected by food production and trade.6 In this sense, Hunger is aligned with the practice of other artists—such as Joseph Beuys, Gianfranco Baruchello, jackie sumell, Nida Sinnokrot, Yinka Shonibare—who see growing food as a political matter, one that responds to specific sites while being connected to broader scenarios. In particular, Amer is interested in pointing to issues that concern Egypt, the country where she was born and spent her childhood before moving to France. According to the artist, Hunger refers to “the fact that politicians in her native Egypt and elsewhere prey on the hungry by promising food in exchange for votes. Bags of rice and other edibles are therefore bartered for political support.”7 Corruption is one of the facets that pollute global dynamics in the field of agriculture, compromising access to resources and fair distribution of yields.

4  Framing the field As environmental scholar and activist Raj Patel denounces, hunger and starvation affect farmers themselves in India—as well as Sri Lanka, China, Peru, and more—where the promise of a “Green Revolution” introduced dependence on new crop varieties, fertilizers, pesticides, and mechanization in the 1960s and 1970s.8 In recent decades, the production and trade of genetically modified Organisms (GMOs) by multinational corporations has intensified the dependence on expensive technologies to increase yields. As shown by science and nature writer Tim Folger, there is much debate regarding the long-term effectiveness of GMOs in the fight against world hunger.9 According to Patel, farmers in India have taken on debt that becomes hard to repay in order to purchase GMO seeds, pesticides, fertilizers, and more; and sometimes, farmers’ inability to pay their debt back leads them to suicide and ruins entire families and communities.10 Indian artists respond to this widespread loss through multiple mediums. For example, Dharmendra Prasad researched and reintroduced pre-industrial agricultural knowledge in the project Carebiosphere (2020), where traditional tools and objects are woven with straw as a demonstration of care; and Dayananda Nagaraju’s Golden Seed (2019) represented the story of the artist’s mother by presenting rice seeds made of gold inside a bowl made of earth. The piece denounces the harsh working conditions and economic inequality that affect women farmers, who carry most of the labor and risks in many Indian farming communities.11 In addition to compromising the livelihoods of farmers, the induced reliance on monocropping and industrial agriculture has impoverished the soil and polluted watersheds, jeopardizing the health of entire ecosystems in an era in which the weight of capitalism and colonial legacies is preponderant, as encapsulated by terms like Anthropocene (Paul Crutzen), Capitalocene (Jason W. Moore), Plantationocene (Anna Tsing and Donna Haraway), and Chthulucene (Haraway).12 Colonial legacies and industrial extraction, corporate power, and geopolitical injustice are some of the challenges that impact global food systems today, and as such they are highlighted by many of the artists discussed in this volume, including Jolene Rickard, Elizabeth James-Perry, Critical Art Ensemble, and Maria Thereza Alves. Environmental complexities—beyond the simplistic dichotomies of culture and nature, North and South, developed and developing, industrial and rural—can be emphasized by a reconsideration of human and other-than-human relationships, and by casting light on the agency of other-than-human elements. Amer’s Hunger continues to well exemplify how art participates in such discourses. The work illustrates how working with organic matter, like live crops, implies a release of control and invites collaboration with plants and non-human animals. In fact, even though Amer’s concept predicted that rice and kale would be harvested to feed participants with a community meal, ducks and birds were faster and consumed the grains and leaves before people could gather them. Amer reacted with a smile13—perhaps, admittedly, allowed by the fact that the artist and her community’s sustenance did not depend on

Framing the field  5 this harvest. On the one hand, the unintended outcome emphasizes the theme of the artwork, that is challenges in food access. On the other, in terms of art process and participation, Amer appreciates that other-than-human animals sculpted the piece in unplanned ways and that they took an active part in the realization of the project. The interaction of human and other-than-human beings in the formation of Hunger can be interpreted through the lens of posthumanist philosophies—further described in Chapter 1—which inform my readings of the practice of Giuseppe Penone, Li Shan, and Natalie Doonan, among others discussed here. Contributions, Scope, and Disciplinary Perspective of This Book The analysis of Ghada Amer’s Hunger (2013) illustrates how agriculture, in the hands of artists, becomes a vehicle to convey multiple overlapping meanings and intersects a range of discourses. In the hands of artists, farming morphs into a language that communicates personal, spiritual, symbolic, historical, and political meanings through embodied experience. It allows artists to initiate discussions on a range of pressing topics, from hunger to public health, from colonial legacies to industrial agriculture, and from class, race, and gender discrimination to community building and placemaking. In some cases, the artworks are meant for gallery and museum spaces and remain short-lived; in others, the projects exist as working farms that produce food and medicine, offering sustenance and sovereignty for particular communities. Taken individually, farming-based artworks may seem small-scaled and relatively isolated; yet, this volume demonstrates that agriculture-based works form a constellation of practices that, if considered as a whole, have weight and impact. Not only do they affect the ecosystems and the social contexts of specific places, but they also critique extractive systems and propose alternative models of human interaction with land that emphasize care, diversity, relationality, and food sovereignty. They provide a repertoire of options and model what becomes possible when priority is given to food security, equity, interconnectedness, reparations after colonial trauma, and spiritual and environmental health. Thus, Artists and the Practice of Agriculture shows what can be done and is being done by artists in order to develop fairer food systems. Because, fortunately, farming-based art projects are numerous and thriving across the world, this volume cannot claim to be exhaustive. That said, it strives to be inclusive by discussing case studies from all continents and by representing the work of artists of different races, classes, and genders. By sketching a map of contemporary agriculture-based art practices, the book offers information and examples that can help artists, activists, and farmers form productive networks and cross-pollinate ideas. Indigenous scholar Elizabeth Hoover, whose research focuses on Indigenous food sovereignty in North America, has observed that connecting with Indigenous communities internationally and learning from one another has been a challenge due to language barriers.14

6  Framing the field Perhaps, this study can disseminate information about creative farming practices that, through visual communication, can abate some of those barriers, so that people with similar concerns and goals can inspire one another. My research for this book stems from previous literature on similar topics that emerged from a range of disciplinary contexts. Studies on agriculture as an art form have flourished in contemporary art, architecture, and art history, especially within the discourses of participatory art, environmental art, and food-based art, as well as in cultural geography and anthropology scholarship that reflects on placemaking and counter-monuments. The book The Cultivated Landscape: An Exploration of Art and Agriculture15—published by artist Judith Nasby and agricultural policy professor Craig Pearson in 2008—looks at the topic from the perspectives of environmental studies and Western history. It traces a chronological narrative that represents the history of rural landscapes and built environments by using visual materials as sources. The authors choose to focus on European and North American histories and elaborate on the specifics of traditional and industrial agricultural techniques. Similarly, the more recent volume Rurality Re-imagined: Villagers, Farmers, Wanderers, Wild Things (2018), edited by architect Ben Stringer, examines case studies created for Western environments, especially in Britain.16 The book mirrors the interests and approaches of landscape design practitioners, and thus the majority of the contributions included in the volume are authored by designers, architects, and artists. Their texts communicate about their own projects, with the goal of redefining what rurality is at a time of planetary urbanization. The concept of rurality, as theorized by philosophers, anthropologists, and contemporary artists, is also examined by the anthology The Rural, edited by the European artist collective MyVillages.org (Kathrin Böhm, Wapke Feenstra, and Antje Schiffers) for MIT-Whitechaptel in 2019.17 The volume provides a theoretical and conceptual archive of analyses and questions the separation of urban and rural spaces. The selection of sources is made by practicing artists and reflects their involvement with community-based and collaborative projects in agricultural environments. Other disciplinary views are allowed by the volume Field to Palette. Dialogues on Soil and Art in the Anthropocene, edited by visual artist and environmental planner Alexandra Toland, landscape pedology professor Jay Stratton Noller, and soil physicist and painter Gerd Wessolek. The book involves scientists and art practitioners who discuss soil as a fundamental component for food production, while also playing broader ecological, economic, and cultural roles. Field to Palette incorporates interviews with artists, a format that has inspired part of Artists and the Practice of Agriculture’s structure. The recent book Art, Farming and Food for the Future: Transforming Agriculture, co-­ written by Barbara Benish and Nathalie Blanc and published in Routledge’s Explorations in Environmental Studies Series in 2022, is informed by the authors’ interdisciplinary collaborations and activities across art practice, science, urban geography, and farming.18 Despite some overlap with this volume,

Framing the field  7 Benish and Blanc’s research is often grounded in the analysis of European networks and elaborates on themes such as breadmaking and food processing. Combining the study of both volumes will expand the reader’s understanding of the diversity and abundance of art farming approaches and examples, ­amplifying the overall goals and arguments made by all authors. Case studies of artist-farmers or essays on agricultural practices are also analyzed as part of exhibition catalogs that discuss food-based art. Notable examples include Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art, the catalog of a groundbreaking exhibition curated by Stephanie Smith at Chicago’s Smart Museum in 2012,19 and FOOD: Bigger Than the Plate, the catalog of an extensive show curated by Catherine Flood and May Rosenthal Sloan at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London on display in 2019.20 Scholarly essays about experiments in art and farming also appear in two projects that I co-edited with art historian Margherita d’Ayala Valva: the volume The Taste of Art: Cooking, Food, and Counterculture in Contemporary Practices, published in 201721 and a special issue of the journal Public Art Dialogue on “Food and Activism in Contemporary Public Art.”22 In the context of all the publications above, either curatorial or scholarly, farming is analyzed as a vehicle for the phenomenological experience of the participant, as mechanisms of shared authorship, as a way to achieve food ethics, as an expression of gender, race, and class identity, and as a platform for creative forms of activism. Art farming is further examined in the context of Eco Art and environmental humanities publications. In these venues, authors look at artworks that employ agriculture in relation to landscape painting or as part of the genealogy of Land art and Earthworks. The scholarly book Landscape into Eco Art, by art historian Mark A. Cheetham, situates art farming projects like Wheatfield—A Confrontation by Agnes Denes—a work also analyzed here in Chapter 2— within site-specific Eco Art narratives that confront ideas of remoteness and ecological conservation. Rather than focusing on food systems, Cheetham’s discussion of Wheatfield pays attention to the work’s critique of unsustainable financial systems and frames it as an ephemeral monument. The author points out that, because this and other artworks that transform the land do not exist any longer, current publics rely on photographic documentation, among other sources, to view them. Thus, temporary site-specific artworks depend on the more traditional genre of landscape painting, with which Cheetham identifies both disruptions and continuities through a series of visual analyses as well as thanks to a thorough review of art historical literature.23 The influential book Earthworks and Beyond—the first of multiple editions which was published in 1984 by garden and landscape historian John Beardsley24—describes Land art as in direct continuity with landscape painting, as both involve the representation and interpretation of particular lands. That said, the perception of landscape as a neutral, delightful, and universal expression of human imagination—as encapsulated in the landmark mid-twentieth-century publication Landscape into Art by Kenneth Clark25— has been critiqued by scholars and artists alike starting in the late 1960s.

8  Framing the field Deconstructions of landscape painting through critical theory, postcolonial, and new materialist lenses have thrived since the 1990s. Seminal contributions that show how landscape images hold implications of ownership, control, and colonial power include visual culture historian W.J.T. Mitchell’s Landscape and Power26 and environmental historian William Cronon’s The Trouble With Wilderness.27 In landscape painting, the artist, patron, and public contribute to the definition of the visual codes that inform the portrayal of a place, often framing it as a possession at the disposal of specific groups of humans. Landscape paintings tend to convey concepts and ideologies that sometimes reinforce worldviews and justify hierarchies of class, race, and gender. In contrast, agriculture-based artworks contribute to the disruption of the distanced views of landscape paintings by replacing apparently harmonious pictures with hands-on, immersive, and usually fatiguing interactions with particular sites. Beyond being analyzed in relation to histories of landscape painting and earthworks, experiments in art farming are often discussed as models for sustainable living in the context of ecocriticism.28 This approach is exemplified by artist and art critic Linda Weintraub’s book To Life! Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet (2012), which pairs thematic essays with monographic chapters.29 In addition, seed collection, plant materials, and edible gardening are included in contemporary art overviews like artist and writer Barbara Nemitz’s Trans Plant: Living Vegetation in Contemporary Art, published in 2000,30 and Down the Garden Path: The Artist’s Garden After Modernism, the catalog of an exhibition curated by Valerie Smith at the Queen’s Museum of Art.31 Artists and the Practice of Agriculture: Politics and Aesthetics of Food Sovereignty in Art since 1960 can be positioned at the intersection of the approaches and fields overviewed above. The book analyzes agriculture-based art by considering its roots in landscape painting, Land art, landscape design, environmental art, food-based art, and public art. It examines themes that connect examples of art farming by responding to critical questions that have emerged from research in food studies, ecocriticism, the environmental humanities, anthropology, cultural geography, history, landscape history, and more. While the volume embraces multidisciplinary frameworks, its primary field of reference is that of contemporary art history and visual studies. Compared to other sources that address art and agriculture, Artists and the Practice of Agriculture does not follow a linear timeline and rather adopts a thematic and discursive approach. In addition, the study’s scope goes beyond Western art historical canons. It shows the similarities that link critical questions, concerns, and priorities of artists on a global level, while contextualizing their practices within specific cultural, social, and political histories. The global scope does not aim to propose an encyclopedic overview: as stated before, this volume cannot be comprehensive, as art farms and art gardens are in constant flux, with new initiatives appearing frequently, and others decaying quickly, like the organic matter that the works are made of.

Framing the field  9 Chapters’ Overview, Author Positionality, and Writing Process Each section opens with a chapter that constructs a theoretical and art-historical narrative based on the study of primary and secondary sources and considers issues of artistic intention and reception. Chapter 1 elaborates on agriculture-based art as a means to enact human/ other-than-human relationships, which foster interconnected ontologies, embody Indigenous knowledges and spirituality, and provide tools for environmental adaptation. Chapter 2 discusses artists who critique corporate industrial science applied to food production and who propose alternatives by researching pre-industrial, do-it-yourself, and open-source technologies. Chapter 3 reflects on the living legacy and harsh consequences of colonialism on land and people; it presents examples of artists who incorporate crops into participatory installations or run community-based farms, in order to counter the violence of slavery and its legacy in contemporary labor with models of food sovereignty and care. Finally, Chapter 4 shows how artists plant the seeds for a more just and distributed food system by using art as a pedagogical tactic to educate and learn about urban agriculture, permaculture, regenerative agriculture, beekeeping, and foraging. These artists aim to foster public health by showing the links between food cultivation, land remediation, connection to place, nutritious diets, and socio-emotional fulfillment. I acknowledge that the analyses included in the book’s chapters are inevitably impacted by my positionality as a white middle-class woman who grew up in Italy and lives in the United States, as well as by my expertise as a visual and material culture historian with a focus on contemporary food-based art, ecocriticism, and twentieth- and twenty-first-century Italian art. To offer a more diversified range of perspectives, each section of this book also includes a series of conversations with artists who address the chapter’s themes, while also elaborating on additional aspects of their practice. This format allows the reader to understand multiple facets of the artists’ work beyond thematic categorizations. Although language barriers affected the selection of interviewees, the inclusion of artist interviews helps present overlapping narratives and represent diverse positionalities. The process of writing this book unfolded during a very complex period. While I have consistently studied art and agriculture since the early 2000s, research and writing toward this specific volume started in the summer of 2020, at a time of almost global quarantine at the inception of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the same months, social unrest and protests against racial and gender discrimination cast light on centuries-long crises, gaining overdue attention within academic and public discourses. Finally, national politics in the United States and elsewhere triggered awareness about the urgency of climate change and the inadequacy of existing policies to curb its effects. These intersecting crises left an important mark on the pages of this book and shaped many of its concerns. On a logistical level, the quarantine limited my opportunities to study at libraries and archives in the early stages of the writing process. Also, travel

10  Framing the field bans did not allow me to visit some of the contemporary examples discussed in this book until the spring of 2022. Finally, COVID-19 regulations, illness, and loss slowed down the very completion of the art and agriculture projects that I had planned to analyze here. Because of all these reasons, this volume remains open-ended and should be read as a dynamic resource, the subject of which will continue to shift and grow after the book’s publication. More than ever, I hope that my contribution will inspire others to continue learning, writing, and making to establish more creative, equitable, and mindful food systems. Acknowledgments I am profoundly grateful to Maria Thereza Alves, Artist as Family (Meg ­Ulman and Patrick Jones), Lauren Berkowitz, Eli Brown, Juan William Chávez, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Natalie Doonan, Haha (Richard House, Wendy Jacob, Laurie Palmer, John Ploof), Fritz Haeg, Lisa Kyung Gross, Seitu Jones, Jolene Rickard, Bonnie Ora Sherk, Nida Sinnokrot, jackie sumell, and Tattfoo Tan, who openly discussed their work with me for the conversations published in this volume. Also, this book would have not been possible without the contributions of Muriel Horvath, Lilli Jonhson, and Elka Sorensen; as Tufts Environmental Studies interns for Artists and the Practice of Agriculture, they conducted preliminary research, brainstormed interview questions with me, and helped with the transcriptions of recorded interviews. Class discussions have had an undeniable role in the definition of the frameworks that I apply to this volume; students and co-instructors in courses such as The Greeting of Art, Food as Sculpture, Sculpture In-Site, Art and the Environment, and Cultivating Ecologies, which I have taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University over the years, deserve much recognition. Very special thanks go to Emily Gephart, Patte Loper, and Mary Ellen Strom: co-teaching with them has expanded my understanding of the intersections of art and agriculture and has inspired aspects of this book. I am also deeply grateful to my Visual and Material Studies colleagues Claudia Mattos Avolese, Eulogio Guzmán, and Tina Wasserman, whose knowledge and wisdom make me a better scholar, educator, and person every day. Furthermore, I am thankful to all the members of the SMFA Sustainability Committee and to the Tufts Environmental Studies team, who inspire me with their enthusiasm, determination, and commitment. I would also like to thank the artists discussed in the book’s chapters, and those responsible for the artists’ archives, who have supported my research journey: Shannon Brunette, Amparo de la Concepcion Campos-Pons, Luigi Coppola, Agnes Denes, Amor Díaz-Campos, Binta Diaw, Magda Kaggwa, Ruth Hogan, Belinda Holden, Mary Mattingly, Elizabeth James-Perry, Alan Sonfist, Yinka Shonibare, Carla Subrizi, and Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas. Furthermore, I am indebted to the staff of the Tufts Libraries, especially of the W. Van Alan Clark, Jr. Library at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, for generously meeting my numerous requests as I finalized this

Framing the field  11 book; many thanks to Darin Murphy, Carrie Lissette Salazar, Lauren Kimball-Brown, Séphora Bergiste, Cecilia Karoly-Lister, Sophia Day, Parker Milliken, and Claire McMichael. This book strongly benefits from the wonderful support of the Tisch College Faculty Fellowship at Tufts University, thanks to which I could conduct studies in Cuba, Germany, and Italy to further understand the art and agriculture of the African Diaspora. I am thankful to all the staff and faculty members who participated in the Faculty Fellows program for their invaluable feedback. In addition, I am deeply grateful to all those who have shared their insights with me, helping me make this book the best that it could be: many thanks to Alexander Blanchette, Margherita d’Ayala Valva, Raúl Domínguez (Quimbo), Sara (Coco) Gomez, Nelvis Gómez-Campos, Dina Deitsch, Emilio O’Farrill Almendariz, Elisabetta Rattalino, Abigail Satinsky, Marco Scotini, Ninian Stein, Martina Tanga, among many others. Last but not least, I would like to recognize that this volume would have never been written had it not been for my family’s patience and encouragement across the years. Notes 1 See among others: Cordula Kropp, Irene Antoni-Komar, and Colin Sage, Food System Transformations: Social Movements, Local Economies, Collaborative Networks (London, New York: Routledge, 2021); and Tamar Mayer and Molly D. Anderson, Food Insecurity: A Matter of Justice, Sovereignty, and Survival (London, New York: Routledge, 2020). 2 “Gardens with a Politically, Socially Conscious Message,” Ghada Amer, accessed June 17, 2022, https://ghadaamer.com/gardens/gardens-with-a-political-sociallyconscious-message/ 3 Karen Milbourne, “Woman in the Garden, Ghada Amer,” in Earth Matters. Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa, ed. Milbourne (Washington and New York: Smithsonian Institution and The Monacelli Press, 2014), 251–6. 4 Susan Thompson and Brahim Alaoui, Ghada Amer (Paris: Skira, 2021), 44. 5 Amer, “Gardens with a Polically, Socially Conscious Message.” 6 On Amer’s engagement with political themes through gardening, see Maura Reilly, Ghada Amer (New York: Gregory Miller & Co, 2010), 41. 7 Ibidem. 8 Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2007), 27; 92. See also: Fabio Parasecoli, “World Developments,” in A Cultural History of Food in the Modern Age, ed. Amy Bentley (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 206–7. According to Parasecoli, “Other countries, especially in Asia, embraced what became known as the Green Revolution. The term was coined in 1968 by William Gaud, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, to indicate a set of measures aimed at increasing agricultural yields to eliminate hunger, by using new crop varieties, fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation, and mechanization. The efforts behind these policies, funded by developing countries, together with the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation, started with the introduction of new wheat varieties in Mexico right after the war, which turned the country into a wheat exporter in twenty years. […] The Green Revolution, hailed by many as a success, particularly in terms of yields, often proved to be non-sustainable in the long term, causing loss of biodiversity, scarcity of water, environmental problems due to chemicals,

12  Framing the field soil impoverishment, and dominant positions guaranteed to the producers of seeds and other inputs.” 9 Tim Folger, “The Next Green Revolution,” National Geographic Magazine, September 2013, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/green-revolution/ 10 Patel, Stuffed and Starved, 92. 11 Faizal Khan, “Art and Dissent: Young Indian Artists Respond to Farmers’ Protests in their New Works. Artists Weigh Up Livelihood Losses, Disappearing Seeds and Traditional Knowledge to Address the Ongoing Protests against New Farm Laws,” Money Control, March 7, 2021, https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/trends/features/ art-and-dissent-young-indian-artists-respond-to-farmers-protests-in-their-newworks-6613461.html 12 Mark A. Cheetham, Landscape into Eco Art: Articulations of Nature since the ’60s (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018), 4. 13 Reilly, Ghada Amer, 41. 14 Elizabeth Hoover, “Defining and Enacting Food Sovereignty in Native American Community Gardening, Culinary Work, and Land Defense,” Hoch Cunningham Environmental Lectures, Tufts University, September 9, 2021, https://as.tufts.edu/ environmentalStudies/lecture/lectureFall2021.htm#sep9 15 Judith Nasby and Craig Pearson, The Cultivated Landscape: An Exploration of Art and Agriculture (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008). 16 Ben Stringer, ed. Rurality Re-imagined. Villagers, Farmers, Wanderers, Wild Things (Novato, CA: Applied Research and Design Publishing, ORO Editions, 2018). 17 MyVillages.org, eds. The Rural (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2019). 18 Barbara Benish and Nathalie Blanc, Art, Farming and Food for the Future: Transforming Agriculture (New York: Routledge, 2023). 19 Stephanie Smith, ed. Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL: Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2013). 20 Catherine Flood, May Rosenthal Sloan, and Johanna Stephenson, eds. Food: Bigger Than the Plate (London: V & A Publishing, 2019). 21 Silvia Bottinelli and Margherita D’Ayala Valva, The Taste of Art: Cooking, Food, and Counterculture in Contemporary Practices (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2017). 22 Silvia Bottinelli and Margherita D’Ayala Valva, eds. “Food and Activism in Contemporary Art,” Public Art Dialogue, special issue 8.1 (2018). 23 Cheetham, Landscape into Eco Art, 7–9; 98–99. 24 John Beardsley, Earthworks and Beyond: Contemporary Art in the Landscape (New York: Abbeville Press, 1984). Subsequent editions were published in 1989, 1998, and 2006. 25 Kenneth Clark, Landscape into Art (London: John Murray, 1949). 26 W. J. Thomas Mitchell, Landscape and Power (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2002). 27 William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness,” in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1996), 7–28. 28 For an overview of ecocritical theory and art history, see Andrew Patrizio, The Ecological Eye (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019). 29 Linda Weintraub, To Life! Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). 30 Barbara Nemitz, Trans Plant: Living Vegetation in Contemporary Art (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2000). 31 Valerie Smith, ed. Down the Garden Path: The Artist’s Garden After Modernism (Queens, NY: Queens Museum of Art, 2005).

Section I

1

Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection through Agriculture in Contemporary Art

Preparing the Terrain: Historical Contexts and Theoretical Lens Starting in the 1960s, tent cities and communes, both urban and rural, provided spaces to critique values and systems linked to capitalist accumulation and bourgeois aspirations.1 Small-scale agriculture offered a platform to experiment with countercultural lifestyles, which carried political and social meaning by modeling alternatives to established power hierarchies and institutions. Many artists participated in this milieu, within which farming was sometimes conceived as a form of art practice in and of itself. The process of cultivating land and interacting with its human and other-than-human inhabitants expanded on the conceptualization of “art as life” that had taken root in neoavant-garde circles since the late 1950s, when food became a beloved vehicle to creatively involve the public in phenomenological processes that activated all the senses.2 Especially in the 1970s, some artists attempted to establish separate spaces for the practice of countercultural ideologies. It must be noted that this separatist approach was paralleled by practices that engaged with agricultural labor through activists organizing for workers’ rights. Importantly, the latter was the path taken by organizations like the Black Panthers and the Mexican-American United Farm Workers, that came together despite their differences in order to change inequitable classist and racist systems for large groups of oppressed people.3 Overwhelmed by the tensions and conflicts that were embedded in activist struggles, and perhaps less affected by class and racial oppression, some artists retired into spaces of their creation, where they could afford relative freedom and practice aspects of the ideologies that they believed in. By caring for agricultural spaces, they worked toward self- or community-sufficiency, distanced themselves from art markets, promoted environmentally minded lifestyles, and nurtured specific local communities that they identified with. The example of 1970s artist-run farms provided a paradigm that artists have continued to adopt for decades to follow. The efforts of 1970s artists who engaged with agriculture have often been defined as a search for utopia, enabled by a renewed relationship with land and  an aspiration to food sovereignty independent from capitalist systems.4 DOI: 10.4324/9780367200800-3

16  Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection As pointed out by Richard Noble, the utopian impulse is at the core of many contemporary art practices that propose alternative modes of living, aspiring to create “a place in which the problems that beset our current condition are transcended or resolved,” a place “imagined but not realized.”5 That said, I argue that the actual experience of farming is far from utopian: it does exist in specific places, and it witnesses problems and conflicts in the present despite hopes for better futures. Farms, including those created by artists, rely on the repetition of quotidian tasks, constant negotiations, internal contrasts, hard labor, economic sacrifice, and frugality. Instead of applying the framework of utopia, which implies a disconnection from place and the construction of exclusive human societies, this chapter focuses on the ways that agriculture-based art has enhanced dynamic human and other-than-human collaborations based on the complex awareness of particular lands. While agriculture can be seen as a system of domination, as a human attempt to control other-than-human beings in order to serve human needs, reversing the point of view can, as noted by food writer Michael Pollan, show how species of farm animals and plants might have evolutionarily benefitted from humans, who invest in their cultivation, care and protection.6 For many of the artists discussed here, farming activities have fostered a sense of reciprocal connection with other-than-human presences, sometimes prompting an acceptance of life and death cycles. This chapter contributes to deconstructing the assumption of nature and culture distinctions, which have been challenged by theorists like scientist and anthropologist Donna Haraway, among others, since the 1980s.7 My discussion is informed by New Materialism and Posthumanism, a series of multifaceted ontological theories that emphasize the nature–culture and body–mind continuum, valuing the agency and vitality of organic and inorganic materials. Vibrant fields of study that gained steam in the 2000s, with roots in pre-modern and modern philosophies (from the Presocratics to Spinoza, Leibniz, Bergson, Deleuze, and more), New Materialism and Posthumanism are ever-changing discourses that involve thinkers and scholars from disciplines like philosophy, anthropology, visual studies, art, and beyond. In the collection of essays titled New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, Diana Coole and Samantha Frost define New Materialism is a posthumanist reorientation of ontology that conceives matter as ‘lively’ and possessing its own agency; a vitalist concern for non-human and other-than-human forms of life, including the inorganic; and lastly an interest in the relationship between material and the political economy.8 As argued by philosopher Rosi Braidotti, “this implies that the posthuman knowing subject has to be understood as a relational, embodied and embedded, affective and accountable entity and not only as a transcendental consciousness.”9 These theories rethink the entrenched assumption—grounded in aspects of Western philosophies since Socrates, then reinscribed in Christian religions—that humans dominate, own, and control other beings.

Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection  17 By  moving away from anthropocentrism, new materialist and posthumanist thinkers emphasize humans’ horizontal enmeshment in complex and constantly changing flows of life, decay, death, and rebirth that connect organic and inorganic matter. These theories inform contemporary curatorial and artistic projects, such as dOCUMENTA 13 in 2012, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, and the 2022 Venice Biennale curated by Cecilia Alemani, who prefaces the exhibition catalog as follows: Many artists and thinkers are envisioning a new “posthuman” condition […]. They challenge the Enlightenment notion of the human being—­ especially the white European male—as motionless hub of the universe and measure of all things. In its place, they propose new alliances among species and worlds inhabited by porous, hybrid, manifold beings…10 In the practices of the artists discussed in this book, such alliances among species and the awareness of the agency of non-human beings are components of everyday life. Caring for plants and farm animals is a humbling process that inevitably shows the artist-farmer’s limits as well as the power of other-than-­ human entities like soil, rain, light, seeds, pollinators, chicken, shrimp, cows, pigs, sheep, and the list goes on. As pointed out by art historian and theorist Giovanni Aloi and literary theorist Susan McHugh, both experts in animal and plant studies: while the posthuman revolution in the humanities and social sciences has gained momentum only during the last twenty years, the arts have spent the best part of the last century grappling with exactly the same epistemological and ontological preoccupations, notably through discourses of race and culture.11 It is indeed crucial to underline that approaches to human and non-human relations have been diverse across cultures, histories, and races; thus, generalizations about anthropocentrism are not productive. In particular, this chapter recognizes that Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies do not always center humans in the context of creation stories and life on Earth. Echoing centuries-long traditions that pre-date by far posthumanist and new materialist theories, Indigenous artists often see human and other-than-human beings as intertwined in respectful and profound connections. Art historian Kate Morris, among others, has also noted that artworks by Indigenous artists enact or represent regenerative cycles of time, in which past, present, and future are threaded together.12 For example, processes of renewal on a vast scale of time and across natural, geological, and Indigenous histories are emphasized in Morris’s analysis of the work Mantle (2018, Richmond, Virginia) by artist Alan Michelson, a Mohawk member of the Six Nations of the Grand River. Mantle is a public artwork in which a garden is lined by a spiral-shaped path; a fountain is placed at the spiral’s center. Mantle’s materials, iconography, and

18  Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection references to place-based Indigenous histories are multilayered and complex. For the purposes of this book, it is important to observe the incorporation of “cast images of corn, squash, and bean plants embedded along the edges of the reflecting pool at the work’s center,”13 which parallel the visual and material languages of artists such as Jolene Rickard (Tuscarora) and Elizabeth JamesPerry (Aquinnah-Wampanoag), the work of whom is discussed in the conclusion of this chapter. In the practice of Rickard and James-Perry, growing live plants highlights the survivance of the economic, cultural, and spiritual lives of the artists’ Indigenous communities. Becoming Plant: Giuseppe Penone It is perhaps not by chance that several thinkers, art historians, and curators involved in the discourses of Posthumanism and New Materialism, such as Rosi Braidotti, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Giovanni Aloi, and Cecilia Alemani, have roots in Italy, a country marked by a sudden transition from rural to industrial economies and cultures in the post–World War II period. Artists involved in the Italian movement of Arte Povera experienced similar contexts and their aesthetics often called for a reconnection of nature and culture through the sculptural and performative dialogue with materials.14 This conceptual approach becomes apparent in the work of Giuseppe Penone, who was involved with Arte Povera starting in 1968. According to contemporary art historian Elizabeth Mangini, for Penone Segregations between rural and urban, artistic work and factory labour, the “natural” wood of a tree and the “cultural” used to build a house or make a sculpture are, like wind and breadth, false distinctions. Instead, the ways that many of his works emphasize the agency of materials over that of the artist can be read as challenges to such binaries and, on a larger scale, to the concept of human society as being rooted in the struggle for domination over one another and over the natural world.15 In his piece titled Patate (Potatoes, 1977), Penone cast parts of his body and then planted them with potatoes that grew by taking, at least in part, Penone’s own shape. This process makes anthropomorphism literal and might be read as an ultimate attempt to mold non-human beings so they can serve human desires. Yet, this reading is complicated by the potatoes’ individual reaction to the artist’s input. As reported by Penone in an interview with art historian Benjamin Buchloh, just five of the 60 tubers that he planted took on forms that were recognizable as his body parts.16 Thus, different potatoes responded differently. There is a level of autonomy left to the potatoes that the artist cannot and does not want to control. To quote from Mangini: The material is simultaneously a passive receptacle of the artist’s intervention and an active agent by its own growth. The tubers take their

Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection  19

Figure 1.1 Giuseppe Penone, Zucche (Gourds), 1978–79. Bronze. Photographic documentation of the making process. Garessio, Italy. Photo © Archivio Penone.

shape underground, in the dark, where the artist cannot see them until they are fully formed. In this case, the artist sows and harvests the artwork, but the material does the actual ‘sculpting’ while Penone is not even present.17 A similar process can be observed in other works by Penone, including Zucche (Gourds, 1978–79), in which the vegetables are grown above ground inside plaster casts of the artist’s head, eventually taking the form of his face. The work, created at the artist’s family farm in Garessio, Italy, fosters mutual transformations: the artist becomes the squash, and the squash becomes the artist. These continued experiments challenge the boundaries of art and agriculture in ways that echo other contemporaneous practices. Energy Flows and Non-Hierarchical Interactions: Bonnie Ora Sherk In the mid-1970s and early 1980s, the creation of artist-farms blossomed internationally. In the United States, California offered a fertile space for artists interested in reimagining artmaking, with little pressure from institutions and the market.18 A notable example is Crossroads Community, The Farm (1974–80) in San Francisco. Conceptualized and run by artist Bonnie Ora Sherk, according to curator Jana Blankenship, The Farm sought to create a radical ecological model that facilitated nonhierarchical interactions, a cornerstone of countercultural organization and activism embraced by cultural radicals from the Diggers to Jerry

20  Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection Rubin’s Yippies. Everyone who entered The Farm or lived there—plant, human, or animal—was seen as an integral part of the ecosystem. For Sherk, this embrace of nonhierarchical organization reflected her concept of the “life frame,” whereby performance could become a microcosm for exploring alternative modes of existence.19 The Farm materialized Ora Sherk’s interest in creating inclusive communities and enabling nurturing relationships among humans, animals, and plants, as described in the conversation published in this book. The site itself embodied such principles: located in a space adjacent and under the Cesar Chavez Street Freeway Interchange, The Farm was at the intersection of four diverse neighborhoods: the Mission District, Bernal Heights, Potrero Hill, and Bayview. The project also provided conceptual and literal connections between urban and rural spaces, as food was grown and animals were raised in a patch of seven acres by a monumental highway junction. Often seen in binary opposition in Western paradigms, the organic and the human-made conflated into The Farm thanks to the mediation of agriculture, which Sherk recognized as a form of technology that involves collaboration with other-than-human beings. The Farm set up an infrastructure that allowed local children—for whom The Farm offered after school programs and was available for school field trips—to care for vegetables and fruits and to interact with cats, pigs, goats, rabbits, sheep, ducks, geese, and chickens in the context of The Raw Egg Animal Theatre (TREAT), a performance program held onsite. For Sherk, animals showed creativity through their ability to build environments and adapt their space. She stated: “I’m trying to expand the notion of what art is. . . Take the rabbit, burrowing tunnels. She’s an incredible architect.”20 The Farm emphasized interconnections and parallelisms, rather than focusing on differences. The location close by a highway highlighted the fluidity and movement across human-made and organic structures. Like a river, the road brings people from a place to another and links different sites. Connections and continuity, indeed, are pivotal to Sherk’s philosophy and art practice. Across her life, she often interacted with sites that were related to one another through watersheds, roads, soils, or people. For example, in one of her first performances, Sitting Still I (1970), the artist sat on a discarded armchair floating on a pool of water interspersed with garbage that formed after the construction of the Army Street Freeway Interchange. Coincidentally, she later realized that during the performance she was facing the area that would then become The Farm in 1974, by the Islais Creek. Since then, other projects that she was commissioned or initiated were on the Islais Watershed, sometimes in areas where the water was hidden underground.21 She saw these coincidences as signs of flows of energy that she was attracted to like a magnet. The experience of place was innervated with spiritual awakenings and the realization, for the artist, that she was part of a whole, part of systems that she only partially understood. Sherk’s interest in challenging supposed binaries was fueled by her experience with agriculture,

Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection  21 which in her hands bridged the boundaries between the human and the natural, and nourished a deep sense of place through an immanent sense of spirituality.22 The Healing and Spiritual Power of Agriculture: Joseph Beuys Agriculture channels human/non-human interactions ripe with energy, almost in religious terms, for another artist who is considered like Sherk one of the protagonists of 1970s environmental art: Joseph Beuys.23 Born in Krefeld, Germany, in 1921, Beuys turned to art in 1949 after violent and traumatic experiences under the Nazi military. As highlighted by art historian Claudia Mesch, art helped him face what was likely a form of PTSD.24 As part of the group Fluxus, he thought of the everyday as a form of art to be shared outside of the art market with a broad public.25 This idea is consistent with his framing of agriculture. Cultivating the land helped him face a period of depression in the mid-1950s, and this healing perception of agricultural work accompanied him for decades.26 It was in the mid-1970s that his conceptualization of agriculture as a form of art took form: in 1973, he was exposed to Rudulf Steiner’s studies in biodynamic agriculture,27 and in 1974, he led community discussions in Pescara, Abruzzi, Italy, hosted by the gallery of Lucrezia De Domizio Durini. During subsequent trips to Abruzzi until the mid-1980s, Beuys worked the land made available to him by count Giuseppe Durini, enabling processes of experimentation with non-industrial farming that informed his political philosophy and aesthetics. He denominated this multiyear process as Foundation for the Rebirth of Agriculture (1978) and Operation Defense of Nature (1980–86). The latter included his famous performance 7000 Oaks in Kassel, Germany, where for the exhibit documenta 7 (1982), he planted 7,000 trees next to basalt stones to visualize deep time and demonstrate the idea that reforestation and environmental care are the necessary bases for sustainable futures.28 For Beuys, planting was a matter of spiritual elevation: when the energy contained in seeds is nurtured and activated by humans through planting, it flows from the ground and enables intimate internal growth for humans as well as plants. If technology and a culture of productivity often reduced industrial agriculture to a way of extracting resources for profit, Beuys sought to eliminate profit and money exchange from the picture. He found that creativity was the true form of wealth, to be spent in finding deep spiritual experiences and forming community. Art, according to Beuys, is a form of social sculpture, a way of shaping society beyond capitalism and communism, both founded on economic priorities. Beuys saw agriculture as a cosmic religion, in which the growth of plants and animals codepends with that of humans and is in sync with the movement of stars in a cosmic system of interdependencies.29 Despite his intentions to provide interspecies connections through agriculture, some of the terminology and actions employed by Beuys echo colonial mindsets of conquest and exploitation. For example, in Diary of Seychelles—compiled by De Domizio

22  Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection Durini during a trip to the East African islands with the artist in 1981—Beuys is described as showing interest in local agricultural systems and technologies, which are often defined as “primitive,” as if Indigenous populations were living in a static and authentic past.30 The trip was an inspiration for Beuys’s subsequent project titled Operation Defense of Nature, a component of which was Piantagione (Plantation). The title Piantagione confusingly equated nature with the intensive agriculture that characterized colonial enterprises. Often based on the exploitation of enslaved labor of people of color and on extractive agricultural methods, plantations can be seen as a cause of the current environmental crisis,31 rather than a way to protect nature. Through Piantagione, Beuys hoped to mend ecological degradation, like the loss of biodiversity, by planting trees that were at risk of extinction. Nonetheless, agriculture sometimes acquires complicated and incoherent layers of meaning in Beuys’s philosophy, as inherited bias co-existed with intentions to model forms of interconnected living. Agricultural Knowledges and Economies: Global Tools and Gianfranco Baruchello Joseph Beuys was interested in a kind of agriculture that involved human interactions with organic and inorganic beings, which was facilitated by the use of farming tools. Such focus was demonstrated by the creation of a series of ready-made sculptures that consisted of signed hoes tautologically titled Zappa (Hoe).32 These multiples originated from the founding of the Institute for the Rebirth of Agriculture, marked by a conversation of students from the Free International University (FIU)—opened and directed by the artist—and the residents of Pescara on February 2, 1976. Contemporaneous artists and collectives in Italy were similarly interested in traditional agricultural tools and their ability to demonstrate embodied knowledge and environmental adaptation. For example, the radical architecture collective Global Tools (1973–75) formed temporary communes on the Tuscan hills to relearn traditional ways of survival in non-urban environments.33 Those who participated in their programs saw these settings as spaces to relearn skills  for creative engagement with landscapes and material cultures formed over centuries. This effort was informed by an anthropological interest in ­understanding early technologies developed by farmers that had lived in interdependence with the land. Through such effort, Global Tools—like Beuys— explored the interplay of tradition and the avant-garde in ways that both celebrate and appropriate traditional tools. By signing objects like hoes and shovels as their own art, they adopted know-hows that they had not invented; simultaneously, their use of traditional tools helped critique modernist paradigms and individualistic approaches. Such critiques hinged on collaboration and participatory work that involved peer artists and architects as well as activists and farmers. Discussions and dialogues became forms of performance, and visual and textual documentation of organized workshops took the form

Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection  23 of zines, collage, photography, and more. Global Tools experiments were inspired by transnational exchanges of ideas through the circulation of publications, pamphlets, and people, as the collective’s members contributed reflections after traveling to international exhibition spaces and hippie gatherings. They responded to a broader global discourse that manifested in a range of projects on a local level.34 Italian artist Gianfranco Baruchello participated in the same international network. His practice saw art and agriculture as interlaced components of a vision that was embodied by Agricola Cornelia S.p.A., a small farming enterprise at the outskirts of Rome where the artist and his partner Agnese Naldoni lived from 1973 to 1981. Baruchello had been practicing as an artist since the early 1960s, and was active in the 1968 protests. With Naldoni, he had been exposed to extra-parliamentary left groups that were veering toward domestic terrorism. Baruchello refused to join a violent fight to change society as a whole and decided to turn the page by embracing the values he had fought for in a separate setting.35 While friends and peer-protesters moved into rural communes, Baruchello and Naldoni moved into Agricola Cornelia S.p.A.36 As Baruchello clarified in a pamphlet titled Agricolantipotere37—a combination of Italian words that reads as “Agricola against power”—moving to the farm was a Foucauldian statement and indicated the artist and his partner’s position against the power of institutions, both artistic and political. Baruchello argued that actions like growing and selling sugar beets were a creative act, both in alignment with and against “nature,” and bypassed the control and interference of the art system. Beets, even more than the artist, were the protagonists: their bountiful harvest featured on Agricolantipotere’s cover, and stories about how much beets were liked by the farm’s cows, populated Baruchello’s writings on Agricola Cornelia S.p.A. As much as he occupied uncultivated lands and farmed them, he did so in agreement with the owners. The farm was not a commune, although as a couple Nardoni and Baruchello consistently worked together, sharing the process of painting, farming, and more. In addition, they hosted friends and peers, as in the case of African American art critic and performer Henry Martin, who translated and co-wrote many texts with Baruchello, including How to Imagine, a book that chronicles life at Agricola Cornelia S.p.A through a stream-of-consciousness, combining journaling with theoretical reflections.38 While Baruchello exhibited his drawings, paintings, and ready-mades inspired by Agricola Cornelia S.p.A. in galleries throughout Europe, he kept the farm itself a secret for art publics for many years, in an attempt to find focus in a withdrawn environment.39 The autonomy that was afforded by agriculture, for the artist, echoed Mao Zedong’s approach to socialism, intended as reliance on one’s own resources.40 Differently from Mao’s political vision, Baruchello’s goal was not national autarky, but rather the self-sufficiency of a small close-knit group of people. He framed farming at Agricola Cornelia S.p.A. as a performance, as the theater of living, as a total work of art. A passage from the volume Agricola Cornelia S.p.A. states:

24  Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection B.’s post-1968 subconscious therefore echoed with the temptation to exercise a ‘squatter’s rights to cultivation’ and that’s exactly what happened with the subtle difference that real political force was replaced with a tacit and pacific understanding with the various proprietors that B. would keep their lands clean for them and eliminate all of the brush that had become a homeland for snakes as well as a potentially dangerous source of summer brush fires. The situation, in short, is that we have a middle-aged European painter who takes his family to live in the countryside not far from the metropolis of Rome and on the basis of the ideal of revisiting certain myths, producing primary food-stuffs, raising animals, generally frequenting the EARTH, and continuing, of course, with his work as an artist; all of these experiences were to become simultaneous, interchangeable, and without any clear borders and distinctions between them.41 When the artist left the studio to take care of agricultural tasks, from harvesting beets to helping a cow give birth, and then returned to the studio, the memory of the experience in the field permeated his imagination; thus, the agricultural experience became part of the artistic process. Rather than focusing on productivity and modernity, Baruchello’s practice of agriculture was akin to art due to its unpredictability. He argued: The garden magician seems to share his state of mind with the writer or painter who gets up in the morning and sets doggedly to work indifferent to the way the moon is out of phase or the hazards of a shifting creative silver thaw and he confronts these various hostilities with the resignation of those who have had to learn when and how to yield, lose time, and forget inexorable calculation of days that slip by in relative ‘inactivity.’ Is agriculture, like the art of magic, reserved to an ever more exiguous number of individuals who remain aloof from the seductions of industrialized factory work? In addition to offering a regular salary, a factory is attractive because its evils as well as its benefits are more predictable than those of agriculture, and it also offers a legible image of the economic adversary: an adversary not at all indifferent, say, to a strike, and by no means always invincible.42 In agriculture, there is no specific entity to fight against and address demands to, like for factory workers’ protests. At Baruchello’s farm, human plans did not always materialize, and partially depended on chance, that is on uncontrollable natural phenomena like rains, temperature, sunlight, and more. The parallel experiences of caring for the farm, painting, creating ready-mades, speaking with Henry Martin, writing, and more were fluidly co-penetrating each other, becoming one another in rhizomatic and non-hierarchical ways. Agricola Cornelia S.p.A. reflected Baruchello’s overall philosophy and mode of working, which often relies on collaborations and is characterized by fluidity of process.43

Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection  25 In a 1981 TV interview filmed at the exhibition titled Agricola Cornelia S.p.A. at the Galleria Milano in Milan,44 the artist discussed a series of his artistic objects that had resulted from his activity at Agricola Cornelia S.p.A. and emphasized the role of chance in aesthetic production, a concept inspired by Baruchello’s mentor and friend Marcel Duchamp.45 The ready-mades on view included seven dried corn cobs that Baruchello had harvested across several years at the farm. There was a progression in terms of size, as the piece illustrated the development of the artist’s farming skills as time went by. Also, the corn showed Baruchello’s artistic approaches that involved human and other-than-human collaborations: the artist replanted cobs from previous harvests together with new seeds in order to make space for the interaction of old and new crops. This was not considered a standard agricultural practice, yet the artist enjoyed how it helped him release control and allowed to share authorship with other beings at the farm. The sculptural and architectural skills of non-human participants are exhibited by additional objects presented during the interview, including a beehive left behind by bees in the artist’s studio and the half-chewed trough from which rabbits had eaten for one year. Fluidity was shown by additional items exposed in the same display: molded bread rolls and dried clementines, for example, embodied Baruchello’s reflections on decay, putrefaction, and the passage of time. Agricola Cornelia S.p.A.’s vitality and materiality, in the form of 250 kilos of the farm’s soil, are literally transported

Figure 1.2 Gianfranco Baruchello, Nascita e Morte del Pane (Bread’s Birth and Death), 1981. Installation (metal cases, soil from Agricola Cornelia, bread, and tools), 40 × 60 × 14 centimeters. Courtesy Archivio Baruchello.

26  Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection on top of the artist’s RV to the exhibition site, contained by plastic bags. The soil was unloaded into 20 rectangular containers on top of a long table, and at the center of each container the artist placed a large bread loaf. In each element, the loaf was paired with different items, such as wire, knives, newspapers, and tools. The installation, titled Nascita e Morte del Pane (Bread’s Birth and Death), illustrates mythologies that imagine bread being born from soil and then being digested by fungi and bacteria in the soil, establishing a connection between violence and life, entrapment and constant change.46 Bread is also a reference to fairy tales, like Hansel and Gretel’s bread house, and of course for an artist based in Rome, to Catholic symbolism, with bread indicating the body of Christ and his sacrifice. The co-existence of indoors and outdoors, organic and inorganic, here and there, and earthly and spiritual creates a paradox that generates a humorous effect, which the artist welcomes: the artwork is a trace of chaotic, multifaceted, and incoherent realities, where contrasts trigger irony. Ultimately, the symbols and narratives of the works also suggest political as well as mythical meanings that link the body, food, soil, and organic materiality with introspective depth. Fluidity against Binaries: Fritz Haeg Baruchello’s farm has remained a model for artist-farmers both in Italy and internationally for decades.47 In the 2000s, American artist Fritz Haeg visited and photographed Agricola Cornelia, highlighting the connection with his own agricultural art practice. Haeg’s work is often concerned with edible gardening, as shown in his famous series of Edible Estates (2005–13) and his more recent project Salmon Creek Farm (2014–ongoing), both described in the conversation with the artist published at the end of this chapter. Edible Estates was first performed in Salina, Kansas—located at the very center of the United States—in 2005, in the aftermath of a very divisive election season. Haeg wanted to create an art piece that could bring people together across political divides, as his previous works were only shown and discussed within circles of people that had similar viewpoints as his own. He writes: At the end of 2004 we watched as the media informed us that the United States had just split into red and blue. I was devastated by the results of the election, but I was also alarmed by the popular story that our country was cleft in two, with supposedly irreconcilable opposing points of view. For us or against us; it seemed like the lines had been drawn and you were meant to take a side.48 The response was a series of projects—beginning with Salina’s first experiment—in which the artist planted edible varieties in urban and suburban front gardens. Such a simple concept unsettled the standard US expectation of seeing manicured lawns in front of private homes. Rather, Haeg used that space to

Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection  27 exemplify the potential of urban agriculture and symbolically counter industrial monocultures—including that of the lawn itself49—that he critiqued due to their high carbon emissions and association with urban/rural binaries. The visible locations of the Edible Estates sites allowed home residents to begin conversations about alternative food systems and to invite neighbors to partake in communal meals after harvest. Haeg’s hope was that the project would help overcome binaries beyond those associated with political parties: edible gardening could show that people are inter-reliant with their human and other-than-human community. After a six-week-residency in Australia, where he spent time at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney and the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef, the artist stated: I realized how completely interdependent each organism is upon the others. Remove one and the whole system can eventually degrade and collapse. This seemed to be a good lesson at a time when our obsession with independence is perhaps naive and oversimplified.50 Edible Estates became a prototype, made open-source through manuals downloadable via the artist’s website.51 For years, they were installed by Haeg himself, as the artist exhibited this and other work at prestigious art institutions across the world, for example the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum, the Tate Modern in London, the Mass MoCA, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, just to name a few.52 After several years of life on the move, he realized that he needed to settle in order to truly enact the care and connection with the Earth that he had predicated through his gallery shows. As written by Marty Carlock in 2009: As a long-term project, he envisions a capitalist commune: ‘I’m interested in failed utopias, why they didn’t work. This one would recognize that we live in a capitalist society, but we can take from it what we want. We would all own our own land, but we would grow our food together.53 A few years later, Haeg ultimately purchased a farm in California, Salmon Creek Farm, that was a former hippie commune. He has stopped exhibiting regularly in museum settings since 2014. Life at the farm is now about cyclical labor that hinges on mutual care and collaboration with other humans and with crops. Haeg does not aim to build a utopian society or a model for others to follow. He is rather interested in experiencing the physicality and uplift that emerge from the interdependence with the land, food, and people. In his words: These are seasonal foods, prepared from plants grown in living soils free of chemical inputs, enriched by decomposed matter, nourishing a diversity of other plants and organisms. Tended by my hands and friends’ hands within a network of intentional green spaces, they provide pleasure and bounty for human and non-human species.54

28  Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection As a gay man, Haeg also frames Salmon Creek Farm as a community space, as a place where an extended family of choice can co-exist and find support. In the interview published in this volume, he emphasizes fluidity against binaries, loosely echoing the new materialist and posthumanist ideas presented at the beginning of this chapter. His work can also be seen as unintentionally aligned with Queer Ecologies, a field of study that casts light on fluidity and relationality as tools to avoid anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism, and questions supposed inner hierarchies based on gender normativity and racial identities.55 Beyond Utopia: Adaptation and Community for Kamin Lertchaiprasert and Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Artist as Family The experience of Salmon Creek Farm is, for Haeg, a platform for facilitating self-sustaining and slow-paced relationships with a community of peers. In this sense, it finds parallels with other examples of artist-farms on a global landscape, including The Land (1998–ongoing) by Kamin Lertchaiprasert and Rirkrit Tiravanija outside of Chiang Mai, Thailand; and the collective

Figure 1.3 The Land. The Land, Sanpatong, Thailand. Courtesy The Land Foundation.

Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection  29 Artist as Family (Meg Ulman, Patrick Jones, Blackwood Ulman Jones and previously Zephyr Ogden Jones )’s home on Dja Dja Wurrung country in Central Victoria, Australia. The Land—as it is known internationally, although a more accurate translation from Thai is The Rice Field56—was founded by Thai artist Lertchaiprasert and Thai-Argentinian artist Tiravanija on a small property that they acquired together in Sanpatong, a 20-minute drive away from the city of Chiang Mai in Thailand, in 1998. After studying ceramics in Bangkok in the 1980s, Lertchaiprasert spent three years at New York’s Art Students League from 1989 to 1992, and then moved back to Thailand to continue developing sculptural and performative works informed by his Buddhist spirituality. Tiravanija was, by then, conducting a nomadic life as an internationally accomplished artist, living between Berlin, New York, Buenos Aires, and Chiang Mai. He was associated with the movement of Relational Aesthetics, which placed interactions among participants or between the artist and the viewer as the very subject of art making.57 Relational artworks by Tiravanija often incorporated food from his Thai heritage, like Pad Thai, that gallerygoers were offered as a starter for open conversation.58 The viewers became creatively active in the shaping of the artwork’s content, which was otherwise intentionally loose.59 Tiravanija and Lertchaiprasert intended The Land as a similarly open-ended project, perhaps not even a work of art per se, but rather a collaborative space for artists, farmers, and architects to imagine adaptive forms of living. In Tiravanija’s words: It’s more about finding new ways of being together […]. That’s how it started, and that is the real significance of what’s going on here. A group of artists has come together to find out if there are other ways of working together and producing things. Not just art but, more important, things to eat, like fruit, herbs, greens, and other vegetables.60 For example—based on critic and curator Daniel Birnbaum’s account in 2005—rice was cultivated locally by artists, farmers, and students, and sustained the farm’s community as well as AIDS patients in a nearby center.61 Students were involved with a one-year pedagogical program that included art, philosophy, meditation, farming, and more; the class was taught by Lertchaiprasert, Tiravanija, and a group of international artists and collectives—like Tobias Rehberger, R&Sie(n), and Superflex—that visited The Land regularly and created alternative energy devices (using, for example, buffalo gas) as well as small buildings on site. The Land Foundation describes the place as such: As there is water around, an agricultural irrigation stream on the one side and a natural stream on the other, a series of ponds and pools were laid out in relation to the usage of water. In the middle of the land lies [sic] two working rice fields […]. Rice has been grown and harvested yearly,

30  Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection though initiated [sic] as an experimental project to grow and harvest rice year-round (rather than seasonally), and the harvest which yields in approximation 1000 to 1500 kilograms are [sic] shared by all participants involved and to [sic] some families in the local village that has fallen ill from the AIDS epidemic. Presently these two fields have been the most active part of the usage of the land. As well, fruits trees and edible plants are dispersed into the landscape, though awaiting [sic] the fruits to be borne. Vegetables and different assortments of salads and herbs will be planted as well.62 At The Land, the mantra is that humans and the environment form a continuum, are made of the same matter, and strive for balance. The material composition of the land reflects that of the human body, with three-quarters of water and one-quarter of solid elements.63 This concept of relationality can be seen in dialogue with posthumanist principles, as expressed by Rosi Braidotti’s quote at the beginning of this chapter.64 More directly, it aligns with Tiravanija’s Relational Aesthetics approach and Lertchaiprasert’s religious practice in Buddhism. In fact, inspiration for The Land’s agricultural principles comes from the philosophy of Thai Buddhist farmer Chaloui Kaewkong.65 Because many critical analyses of The Land revolve around the discourse of utopia and eutopia66—imagined as an enclosed and ideal place for a harmonious community—some art historians have observed that the site is far from perfect: several of its experiments with alternative energy production, irrigation, and DIY technology stopped working soon after they were installed. Also, in order to fly to the site, some of the artists trigger significant carbon emissions, in ways that are incoherent with the sustainability goals of the overall project. In addition, interactions with local residents have not always been smooth, especially as the lifestyles of international visitors have highlighted the divide between haves and have-nots. Finally, the visions that the two founders have for The Land are sometimes at odds.67 That said, I maintain that if this project is not seen as an aspiration to utopia, its failures gain a positive role, as they are part of an ever-evolving attempt to adapt to uncertain circumstances. The Land’s participants respond to the farm’s environment through trial and error. Functionality, efficiency, productivity, and coherence are not necessarily the objective. The journey and the process of embodied learning, even through failure, might be more valued than the materialization of utopia. As Tiravanija put it in an interview with Raimar Strange in 2012: The Land has now existed for over ten years. It combines different desires: on the one hand, a desire for a safe house—a place of rest, but also a place to think and to have exchanges outside or aside from the normal spheres, a desire for a retreat outside of the grid; and, on the other hand, a desire to experiment with living structures—towards holistic ideas, without idealism, without property, without ownership, and essentially

Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection  31 without expectations. It is really a rice field when in season as well as a place for contemplation. It is a landscape upon which to act, a surface on which to build models and a table around which to meet. But it is only those things when there is a need and a will for such interaction. It lays fallow when there is no water, it becomes lush when the rain falls, and it becomes impossible when water floods the plains. It is the desire of many, but most of the time it is only a possibility. It is what many imagine it to be—beyond what it actually is. Still, it is there, and it has reached much of its potential, although it has failed in other ways. It was built, and it has fallen. And others will arrive to build on both the failures and the successes.68 A similar trial-and-error approach to life on a farm is visible in the work of the collective Artist as Family (Meg Ulman, Patrick Jones, Blackwood Ulman Jones and previously Zephyr Ogden Jones ), who, similarly to Haeg, abandoned nomadic, urban lives that led them to live in cities across continents before permanently moving to a property they purchased 130 kilometers away from Melbourne, in Dja Dja Wurrung territories in Australia. They named their small property, a quarter acre plot, Tree Elbow. As they expand upon in the conversation published in this volume, they have worked at Tree Elbow for about 15 years, using permaculture methods to create a system in which their human bodies, as well as other animals and plants, are integrated into organic cycles of growth, decay, and rebirth. As argued by Jones: The co-originators of permaculture, Holmgren and Mollison, devised design strategies for human settlements that drew on the collective intelligence of perennial ecologies and the Indigenous-agrarian peoples of place who live/lived closely with and imbibed this intelligence. Permaculture acts as a framework for life beyond pollution, beyond destructive affluence and acute anthropocentrism.69 Like The Land, Tree Elbow functions as a laboratory for the possible, a place that artists co-exist with by becoming farmers, foragers, builders, and engineers, in order to test out sustainable carbon-positive solutions to human living. Differently from Tiravanija, who occasionally visits The Land in Thailand while being based elsewhere, Ulman and Jones have chosen sedentary life, becoming “creatures of place.”70 They have taught their kids that relationships and knowledges acquired through the experience of a particular place are what will make them resilient, privileged with a kind of wealth that is more reliable and stable than money. To them, “wealth is family time, community time, and accruing knowledges.”71 In this sense, their work enacts aspects of Joseph Beuys’s aforementioned “third way,” an alternative to monetary economies that values creativity and agriculture as the true forms of capital. Artist as Family has not eaten supermarket-bought processed foods in about 12 years: they do not own cars and travel on foot or bicycles. Their diets incorporate

32  Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection about 150 species of mushroom, plants, and animals that they can find or grow on their property or locally. They do not aspire to be self-sufficient, and could not be on a quarter acre plot. Rather, they value “community-sufficiency,” the possibility of leaning on networks of local people that they can exchange services and goods with. While working hard and living simply, they understand that not everyone could have access to their lifestyle. In a film documentary about their practices on their permaculture plot, they say: “We’re privileged to have a quarter of an acre of land on Dja Dja Wurrung country,” a land that Aboriginal Dja Dja Wurrung people—who were dispossessed, massacred, and killed by illness brought by European settlers in two waves, in the 1830s and 1840s72—continue to be spiritually connected to. Like Haeg, Artist as Family recognize that the farm work that they are doing on specific sites—trying to embrace experiential exchanges with plants and animals and achieve relative food sovereignty independent from industrial production—is a privilege that hinges on the use of unceded Indigenous lands and on lessons learned from Indigenous practices of interconnectedness and stewardship of place.73 Place-Based Knowledges and Interconnectedness in Contemporary Indigenous Art: Jolene Rickard and Elizabeth James-Perry Contemporary Indigenous artists who embrace the cultivation of plants are inspired by ontologies and epistemologies that are grounded in the respect and deep knowledge of specific environments. For example, the care of corn, squash, beans, and many other plants is essential to Indigenous economies and the survivance of whole communities. While showing elements in common with Indigenous thought, posthumanist and new materialist theories that inform part of this chapter can be seen as generalizing. As argued by Ethiopian-American artist Betelhem Makonnen: The human in posthumanism is most often presented as neutral and nonsubjective: a representation that ignores its structural sociohistorical entanglements with racialized European colonist projects and the corroborating philosophies, literature and science at the root of its myth.74 Instead, there is remarkable specificity in the ways that different groups of people and nations relate to place, landscape, and all of their inhabitants. Such specificity is evident in the work of Jolene Rickard, for whom the reference to corn and other plants is rooted in the history of her Tuscarora Nation and beyond. As she clarifies in the conversation published in this volume, the term for corn in Seneca language is “onëö’ge:n,” meaning “that which sustains us.” Because of its link to nutritional sustenance, artisanal uses, and spiritual meanings, corn was cultivated by Indigenous peoples across the Americas, who facilitated the domestication and agricultural development of its varieties for 9,000 years.75 Rickard’s own family is responsible for caring for this heritage seed in their community. They have carried, grown, and kept the seeds of

Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection  33 Tuscarora White Corn for centuries, and continue to share seeds and communicate ways to care for them with members of their Nation today, at a time of exceptional challenge for agriculture due to changes in climate. Corn has been featured in several of Rickard’s artworks since the 1990s. One iconic piece is Corn Blue Room (2000). Gerald McMaster—curator, artist, and Plains Cree member of the Siksika Nation—describes this artwork as an installation that includes photographs of corn and dams, [and] forms the shape of an Iroquoian longhouse. At its center, corn is suspended, while a CD-Rom narrative can be manipulated to take the viewer deeper into the story. The idea is to imagine a small Tuscarora community, surrounded by powerful dams and electrical generating stations, and its fight for cultural survival. In the context of Corn Blue Room, corn becomes associated with resilience and protection in the most difficult of circumstances. In fact, the reference to dams is related to the 1958 effort of the Power Authority, led by Robert Moses, to flood the Tuscarora reservation in order to build a new reservoir. The plan was met with resistance by the Tuscarora community, and their protests resulted in the preservation of part (but not all) of the reservation.76 The new reservoir still flooded about half of the land. The Tuscarora community was not afforded the opportunity—which individual artists like Ora Sherk, Baruchello, and more had in the 1970s—to devote themselves to farming as a way to reimagine modern living on sites that they could reclaim as their own, or occupy in agreement with the legal owners. For the Tuscarora and other Indigenous Nations, the clash with Western paradigms was not necessarily an ideological or lifestyle choice, but was inevitable for political, cultural, and physical survival. Rickard addresses the importance of corn and land as tools for resistance in Corn Blue Room. According to art historians Jessica Horton and Janet Berlo: The installation invites reverence for the caloric and cultural power of these ancestral strains of corn kept and nurtured by countless generations of Tuscarora horticulturalists. The blue glow calls to mind contemporaneous artworks invoking the ultraviolet light under which the GFP—green fluorescent protein—gene is rendered visible for engineering. An aura of technological know-how is certainly deserved. Tuscarora women have carefully maintained a variety known as Tuscarora White Corn for size, flavour and nutrition; its kernels have as much as fifty per cent more protein than mass-marketed corn and a lower glycaemic index. Today, these ancient, Indigenous strains of corn are constantly threatened by the genetically modified corn hybrids ubiquitous in American agribusiness. […] Corn, in turn, becomes a powerful visual justification for the continued relevance of Haudenosaunee principles of governance based in material collaborations, rather than manipulations.77

34  Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection In her installation, Rickard counters the standardization of extractive forms of industrial agriculture through the juxtaposition of the organic materiality of corn and the evanescence of ultraviolet lights that are often used to grow foods indoors. Horton and Berlo point out the role of women in preserving and maintaining Tuscarora White Corn, and Rickard herself stresses women’s contributions to her Nation’s cosmologies and economies throughout her practice,78 including the recent Ah-Theuh-Nyeh-Hah: The Planting Moon at the Cornell University, Botanical Gardens (2016). This work consists of 13 mounds of soil planted with Haudenosaunee heritage seeds like the three sisters (corn, beans, and squash) as well as tobacco, sunflower, and wild strawberry. The mound system is a traditional technique that preserves the soil by avoiding tillage, facilitates the growth of crops with different root depth, and fosters both symbiosis among different plants and easier care from humans.79 In Ah-Theuh-NyehHah: The Planting Moon, the mounds’ configuration recalls the shape of a turtle, referring to the imagery of turtle island as the Earth in Indigenous creation stories: According to us, the Ska ru re (Tuscarora), it was a woman called Mature Flowers, or Mother Earth, who first tumbled through the sky world to this world. Her fall was broken by the united backs of waterfowl, and she was gently eased onto the back of a great turtle. On this tiny earth, she began at once to walk about, throwing dirt, causing it to grow. Mature Flowers, the first mother, brought with her the seeds of our life—corn, beans, squash, and tobacco—and so it continues…80 This creation story, as told by Rickard herself in an essay published in 1992, highlights the role of women in Tuscarora cosmologies, indicates the spiritual and ancestral roles of the seeds used in Ah-Theuh-Nyeh-Hah: The Planting Moon, and explains the piece’s iconographical reference to the turtle. The number of mounds—13—points to the 13 lunar cycles that inform the Haudenosaunee calendar.81 As a sculptural, performative, and participatory work that uses planting to emphasize Indigenous connections to the land and to other-than-human beings against the settler–colonial mindsets of occupation and extraction, AhTheuh-Nyeh-Hah: The Planting Moon finds parallels with the more recent A Garden for Boston. Raven Reshapes Boston (2021), created by Aquinnah-Wampanoag marine biologist and artist Elizabeth James-Perry. Together with a sunflower garden created by Black artist and Roxbury resident Ekua Holmes, James-Perry’s piece was commissioned by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in response to concerns about the public display of sculptor’s Cyrus Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit (1909) in front of the museum’s front entrance. As expressed by Joseph Zordan, an enrolled member of the Bad River Ojibwe and the former Henry Luce Curatorial Intern for Museum Diversity in the Art of Americas:

Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection  35

Figure 1.4 Elizabeth James-Perry, A Garden for Boston: Raven Reshapes Boston, 2021. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Photo Elizabeth James-Perry.

Though Dallin was a noted advocate for Indigenous peoples’ rights, he did not deviate far from stereotypical imagery of us in many of his statues. Appeal to the Great Spirit is a near-perfect encapsulation of the “vanishing race” trope—wherein Indigenous people are represented as a doomed race with no hope but to quietly vanish from the planet, to make way for the superior race. With Appeal to the Great Spirit, Dallin has taken our grief as Indigenous peoples and cast and immobilized it in bronze, cursed to hang in the air forever, with lips parted and eyes frozen wide open.82 James-Perry’s A Garden for Boston: Raven Reshapes Boston was located right underneath Dallin’s statue. Shaped like a horseshoe crab and bordered by crushed shells, the garden honors the coastal lands and interdependency with the sea of the Aquinnah Wampanoag. This specificity counters the generalizing and stereotypical representation of Appeal to the Great Spirit, in which a Native man on a horse wears feathered regalia that were not used by the Wampanoag. Like Rickard’s Ah-Theuh-Nyeh-Hah: The Planting Moon, James-Perry’s Raven Reshapes Boston used mound gardening to grow corn and beans, as well as sedges. James-Perry’s motivation echo Rickard’s interest in honoring women’s roles. She writes: It has to do with being a woman from a matriarchal society, where women have responsibility for deciding how land is used and where, and I was working with Tribal leadership to defend Tribal sovereignty as well.83

36  Experiences of Human and Other-Than-Human Interconnection Growing plants as a form of artistic language allows Indigenous artists to argue for aspects that are crucial to their communities’ sovereignty, like the right to their land. In James-Perry’s artwork, the occupation of space and soil in front of the Museum of Fine Arts is the literal basis for the artwork’s existence. Furthermore, such occupation of land functions on a symbolic level by affirming the existence of Indigenous Nations that continue to live, change, and adapt like the living organisms that the garden is made of. Adaptation, unfortunately, is made more challenging by harsh circumstances, including pollution and climate change, which threaten the very possibility of agriculture. Indeed, A Garden for Boston: Raven Reshapes Boston was an indicator of such challenges. For example, the garden was planted in the middle of the museum’s front lawn, which was treated with chemicals. To prevent the absorption of contaminants by the corn, the bottom of the edible garden’s bed was lined with gravel. The side effect was that the roots could not grow deep, and the corn remained small. In addition, due to an extremely warm and humid winter, powdery mildew took over during the summer of 2021, attacking the crops in James-Perry’s public installation. While pollution and climate affected the height and health of the plants—thus the legibility of the work as a confrontation in response to Dallin’s over-towering equestrian statue—it demonstrated another fundamental concept behind the piece: that life on Earth is tied to cycles of growth and decay, and the survival of one species depends on the well-being of others. Overall, this chapter illustrates that—despite important differences in intention, context, history, and positionality—the practice of agriculture requires artists to care for seeds, plants, animals, and the places that sustain them, sometimes against the barriers posed by pollution and climate change. For the artists discussed here, regular contact and interaction generates deep respect for and empathy with non-human beings. These experiences make the porosity of human and other-than-human boundaries tangible, generating appreciation for the constant exchange of energy and transformation of matter that are inherent to life.

Conversation with Bonnie Ora Sherk84

Silvia Bottinelli: You have engaged with planting and human/non-human relationships for decades. Let’s start from the work that you produce today, and then connect it to your background story. Bonnie Ora Sherk:  The work I am doing today, A.L.L. A Living Library (1981– ongoing), is planetary: it is meant to be developed in communities all over the world. Each branch of A Living Library & Think Park is place-based.85 It fosters an understanding of the local resources of a community—human, ecological, economic, historical, technological, and aesthetic—seen through the lens of time—past, present, and future. No matter where you are, there is incredible richness. A goal of the work is to develop site-and-situation-transformed environments that incorporate the local resources and engage the local community in research, planning, design, implementation, use, maintenance, management, and communications. It is an interdisciplinary series of processes that occur through collaboration. The idea of Funcshuional is a whole gestalt that I have developed; it is a structure for disseminating these processes of engaging people and learning by doing.86 Funcshuional art is what I call what I do. Crossroad Community: The Farm (1974–80)87 was an early example of Funcshuional art, and A Living Library is another example. It took me about a year to figure out how to spell Funcshuional, because it was a design problem. What it does is that it marries the so-called functionalism of Western culture with the Feng Shui and alignment of Eastern, Northern, and Southern cultures and spirituality, and Indigenous cultures worldwide. So, it is a way to describe a planetary stance toward embracing different styles and methodologies from around the world, which is an extremely important thing for us to be doing, particularly now. It creates this opening for understanding how diverse cultures are all interconnected and the form of art that I do is very practical and transformational. Basically, there are two elements: transforming the environment and then transforming consciousness of the environment. So, the planning program for creating A Living Library & Think Park in a community is a learning program.

38  Conversation with Bonnie Ora Sherk Most people really don’t have a clue about where they are and what was there before them, and who they are and who was there before them, and what rich resources surround us. One of the ideas is that when we learn all that we can about our local place, from that we can extrapolate and learn about the world. And so a goal, as I said, is to develop branches of Living Libraries & Think Parks in diverse communities locally and globally—each branch being unique because each place is unique and each community is unique—and then link them through Green-Powered Digital Gateways, which are multi-funcshuional. Works of art, sculptural elements in the landscape that can bring water forth from the ground, showcases of local resources through multimedia archives, display technologies… together, these tools allow for live interactive broadcast between places. So, this is a framework that I’ve been developing since 1981. As soon as I left The Farm at the end of 1980, I went to London, as I had been invited by Lucy Lippard to be in an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art.88 The name of the installation that I made was A Triptych Within a Triptych Within the Context of a Counterpointed Diptych.89 The piece was about my relationship to The Farm, with the freeway interchange and the non-mechanized forms of nature adjacent to it. After London, I went to New York and lived there all of the 1980s. In March of 1981, I spent time in Bryant Park, which is the park between 40th and 42nd Street, and Fifth and Sixth Avenues, adjacent to the main research branch of the New York Public Library. I spent time in this place, just feeling its energy, and I had an epiphany. My idea was to incorporate the formal elegance of the Beaux Arts design of the library and to bring the inside of the library outside, to create gardens based on the Dewey Decimal System. Each “garden of knowledge” had plants that related to the subject, visual and performed artworks, and programs with lectures, demonstrations, research institutes, and state of the art communications technologies, like these Green-Powered Digital Gateways that would allow for a place to link to other branches and other communities. The seed for A Living Library was born there. S.B.: Your practice fosters knowledge-building and initiates educational experiences. What is your proposed pedagogy? How do you bring in students and inspire learners? B.O.S.: Well, it was about looking at local resources; with Bryant Park, it began with the Graduate Center of CUNY across the street; and there was another school very close. So, part of the planning for each branch of A Living Library is to come together with a steering committee of local people and research what are the local schools, what

Conversation with Bonnie Ora Sherk  39 are the colleges, what are the other institutions that can be involved to really understand the richness that’s all around us. This phase engages people who are interested in participating from the local community. It turns out that the very site where I had this epiphany, Bryant Park, in the nineteenth century was the home of the Crystal Palace.90 So the art and industry of all nations actually had a precedent on that very site. Adjacent to it, before the library was there, was a reservoir.91 So there’s a history. Then, underneath the ground there’s a lot of information, if one studies the hydrologic systems. So, this discovery period is a very rich learning program for the local community to understand where they are, who they are, where they’ve been, who was here before, who are the Native communities who were and still are here, what are the migration patterns of people. It’s very exciting research, I think, to understand the human, ecological, economic, historic, technological, and aesthetic resources of a place. From that process of research, you come up with a plan for where you want your Living Library & Think Park and what you want to be addressing. S.B.: What have you learned from these processes yourself through the years? B.O.S.: Incredible things. Do you know my piece Sitting Still I (1970)?92 I thought I was just demonstrating how a seated human figure could transform the environment very simply. And I took that idea to different places so there’s a whole series of pieces. But in Sitting Still I, what I didn’t know at the time and I discovered some years later is that I was actually facing my future. I was facing what would become The Farm; I was facing the northern frame of the Islais Creek watershed that I’m currently very involved in working with and have been ever since that time, really. I was facing this freeway interchange that was being built and the audience for Sitting Still I was the people in the cars moving very slowly because of the construction. S.B.: So, through A.L.L.’s research processes you learned that there are connections among your projects across time? B.O.S.: Oh, totally. I had no clue about any of these things in 1970. Years later, in 1974, The Farm started and there I was in the same place. And then decades later in the mid-1990s, I was out in another part of the watershed developing the OMI/ Excelsior Living Library & Think Park.93 There were four schools—two high schools and a middle school and an early education school—going through a master planning process; through the research phase we uncovered old maps in the library that showed the Islais Creek going under one of the high schools, Balboa High School, and I realized in 1998 or 1997 that I was in the same watershed miles away. So that’s one of the things I learned that’s phenomenal.

40  Conversation with Bonnie Ora Sherk Everything is connected: thoughts, feelings, water, time, even highways… all these components of your processes and sites flow constantly. B.O.S.: Yes, there are natural, cultural, and technological interconnections. My work is really about bringing these different sectors together. You know, oftentimes bureaucracy silos things. Like in a university, people often stick to their own discipline, in government and communities, too, people have tunnel vision, and they don’t see how what they’re doing relates. But artists were taught to be very resourceful. You know, our minds fly around in all directions, at least mine does, and I see all these connections and it’s an exercise. It’s athletic. S.B.: So, tell me more about these connections. I would like to go back to The Farm: Crossroads Community. How do nature, culture, and technology interrelate in that work? B.O.S.: Well, I have personal involvement with that issue, even before The Farm. As a child, I had a recurring dream: there was a technological clanging monolith, a fragile flower growing inside it. Years later, I created my Portable Parks I-III (1970), which was my first experience with Caltrans. The first park was literally on top of the freeway, in an area where Highway Patrol would just pull people over to give them tickets. For 24 hours, we had palm trees and a cow and myself in this location. It was a performance installation, and people could see it by driving by, or they could see it from the ground looking up and see the trees coming up over the concrete. Introducing growing, living elements into that concrete monolith for me was a familiar thing to do. Portable Park II was on concrete islands, very barren places, adjacent to a freeway off-ramp and underneath the freeway. And so for another 24 hours they were transformed into a participatory park and more animals were brought in. More cows, there were three calves, and chickens on another island and picnic tables. So, people came and had their lunch. The works became little parklets, demonstrating how to transform underused, derelict, urban, grey, concrete, monolithic, technological places. Portable Park III lasted for 48 hours. It occupied a whole street in Union Square, between Grant and Stockton, and that became a park for two days. And then, I also borrowed animals from the San Francisco Zoo, in addition to the cows and the chickens, and people came and had their lunch, and, you know, everybody enjoyed it, the whole street was paved with sod. And so that was an early experiment, but the technological monolith was transformed for a short period of time. In 1974, there was a building that had been on this very large, open space of land, almost five acres of land. It used to be the Borden’s Dairy, a huge brick building that was a bottling plant for dairy. It was on Potrero Avenue, and I actually lived across the street for a time in Mel Henderson’s studio at 25th and Potrero.94 In 1974, the property S.B.:

Conversation with Bonnie Ora Sherk  41 had been bought by the Knudsen company, which made juices, and they razed the building. For whatever reason, all of a sudden, it became a huge open space, which was fantastic. So, bordering this open space on the north side was a public school; also on the east side there was a public elementary school, and I happened to know the principal at the time; to the left of it was a construction company, and then to the south of it was another sort of one-acre parcel of open space that was kind of a garbage field. And then there was a cluster of buildings that were for rent, old buildings. There was a state right of way alongside the south side; there was a freeway, and in the center of the freeway interchange was another section of land, which was owned by the city under the jurisdiction of the Department of Public Works. I saw this and I had an epiphany of an urban farm and art center, thinking of all of these different disparate land fragments coming together as a whole. And it was literally in the crossroads of four neighborhoods—the Mission District, Bernal Heights, Potrero Hill, and Bayview—communities that had been severed by this freeway interchange. The next day I did a drawing of The Farm that illustrated my vision. It is often exhibited to document the project. I called it Crossroads Community, because it was in the crossroads literally and also metaphorically, as in “being the cultural crossroads of an urban and agricultural place.” I used urban agriculture as a tool to replenish, revitalize, and reeducate about natural systems. I saw all of these different layers of meaning in this opportunity and also saw the relationship of the farm and the freeway as a diptych: this natural form of nature next to this technological monolith was an exciting juxtaposition, a sculptural opportunity to graphically demonstrate the differences, but also the interconnections. Because, first of all, agriculture is a form of technology, and so there’s a relationship with the highway. And it turns out the freeways were hollow. So they weren’t these huge technological monoliths after all. They had to go in some years later and stabilize them and bolt them together so they wouldn’t fall down. So the point is: fragility is everywhere. And then the water, I learned about the creeks underground at the same time. And the original proposal was to use the creek water to create ponds and windmills that would bring the water forth to really use the site in an ecological way. To bring the people from the different communities that I mentioned together with each other, and with plants and animals. In terms of the arts, to create an opportunity for artists of different persuasions to come together with each other and understand those interconnections. Because I will tell you, in 1974 the art world was a pretty snobby place and printmakers and photographers and painters would put up their noses at each of these different disciplines.

42  Conversation with Bonnie Ora Sherk

Figure 1.5 Bonnie Ora Sherk, Original Proposal for Crossroads Community: The Farm, 1974. Drawing/Collage.

That perception was not long-lasting, considering that practicing beyond traditional mediums is now almost expected. B.O.S.: Of course, what I was doing I saw as art, but nobody saw it as art then because people didn’t even get it. I was exploring the nature of what a performance could be, where performance could be, who an audience could be, and the content of what it could be. I came to the conclusion, in 1974, that the ultimate performance was being a total human being, and that was embodied by The Farm. Within that, I’ve had many different roles. I was the chief designer, the administrator, the cook, the educator, the farmer… it was all, even if it was before I officially began A.L.L. I learned a lot, including how not to run a farm. At the end of 1980 I left, because I realized that I had done as S.B.:

Conversation with Bonnie Ora Sherk  43 much as I could do and that I needed to get on with my life. But some people stayed, and they stayed until they imploded, basically, and then the owners took the buildings back. This was years after I had left. The vision that I had was very open and inclusive of the larger community; instead, I think that those who stayed after me became a cluster of self-referential friends and finally they got kicked out because the project didn’t relate enough to the larger community. S.B.: During the years in which you were at The Farm, who participated in the project? B.O.S.: People in the community who were interested in gardening and farming came regularly. The space was a meeting place for political groups, too; and it was a base for visual and performing artists. It was one of the first alternative art spaces in the country funded by the National Endowment for the Arts: there, visual artists created unconventional artworks, and we had different kinds of art shows. For performing artists, there was The Raw Egg Animal Theatre (TREAT), which was an indoor/outdoor environment that I created; the participants were human and non-human animals: this was a place meant to foster an understanding of the intelligences of different species, and a healthy place for animals to live in an indoor/outdoor environment. Different performing groups came to TREAT for dances, theater, and circus rehearsals. The place was also available for public programs. Over 75 public and private schools from all over San Francisco and other parts of the Bay Area came to visit on field trips. Children from close-by schools came on a regular basis to participate in TREAT during the school day. They loved it so much that they would also come after school and during the weekend to bring their friends and their families. There was no place at that time where you could have that kind of experiential engagement with nature and with the arts. It became like a community center for public gatherings and birthday parties, as people would rent the facility. There were a variety of different environments: below there was a library, and for some time we even hosted a state preschool nested in the lower portion of one of the buildings. In its early years, The Farm was eclectic and vital; later it became a venue for punk rock music, but at that point it was too much of an insular community of interest. That’s why I think it failed. S.B.: Given that you were so close to a freeway intersection, did car emissions ever pose a challenge for the participants in the project, including humans, animals, and plants? B.O.S.: We had to really build the soil up, so there was a lot of composting that went on; we recycled the straw and the feces of the animals from The Raw Egg Animal Theatre. There were a lot of crops that were grown close to the freeway, and we did different tests to find out about pollution levels. It was discovered that the most amount of lead came not from the cars, which was interesting, but from lead in the paint on

44  Conversation with Bonnie Ora Sherk

S.B.:

buildings that the wind blew through. Lead is a fascinating and complex material, but in young children it is not good, it impacts cognition. Spinach was the most susceptible to lead, but other foods were not so impacted by pollution. Beyond the practical farming concerns, The Farm provided an opportunity to use agriculture as a metaphor, really. It’s all about understanding systems. All the things that we ­create—such as parks and gardens and farms and artworks and networks and communities, libraries, and schools—are a way to understand that culture and technology are part of nature. It’s all nature. It’s all just different kinds of nature. What we should be doing is to create a better balance between the different forms of nature and be more understanding and sensitive to them. My work with A.L.L. is a way to frame life so we see it and experience it more profoundly. It seems like we’re ending where we began. We started with A Living Library and discussed the concept of interconnection, looked at various phases of your body of work, and then we are back to the present, aware of its multiple links with the past, across time.

Conversation with Fritz Haeg95

Fritz Haeg: Sorry, it’s just… someone is at the door. Just one second…this is life in the commune…[comes back after a minute] Someone needed a pan to bake their zucchini bread. We’re harvesting zucchini that are this big. And it’s like… okay someone’s baking bread. Silvia Bottinelli: That is absolutely a priority. You are now in Salmon Creek Farm, but your commitment to edible gardening started many years ago. Let’s begin with Edible Estates. Can you describe the project’s first incarnation? How did it come to life? F.H.: Well, I was coming out of architecture as a professional and academic background. I was migrating into the art world already at the end of my time in architecture school. My community of friends were mostly artists, and art is where my interests were going. When I lived in New York for five years after school, I was going through a very confusing period when I didn’t know who I was, or what I was doing. Then when I moved to L.A., I started gardening very seriously and that became a real consuming passion that then influenced my teaching. I started a community garden at the art center where I was teaching and later at CalArts. I was also doing little architecture projects. In 2004, that’s where I was: at this kind of strange crossroads of continuing to do little architecture projects, teaching, having gatherings at my home, gardening very seriously. And all these new activities that were consuming me were very confusing to me also because my background was very much coming from architecture and getting into art: these kind of classic colossal disciplines of hierarchies, of buildings, paintings, sculptures, of what is serious, and what is not serious. And all of the things I was being drawn into were outside of this kind of serious canon of art and architecture and more about modest, domestic activities that are very marginalized, usually in the realm of women and grandmas. In 2004, there was the second election of George Bush; it really kind of shook me… I mean I can trace the roots of the Edible Estates project very directly to that election. The United States was going through an extreme division of blue and red states, of urban versus rural. It was very pronounced; it was

46  Conversation with Fritz Haeg everything that we are living with today, but a turning point. I was starting to feel deeply ambivalent about the realms that I was working in. These isolated, urban communities of art and architecture that were very elite and rarified and insular and self-referential. People were making work for each other, and were not very interested in a broader audience, in reaching out to people who didn’t agree with them. All the work that would follow came from this turning point in my life when it became clear to me that I need and want to make work for more people than those who go to a commercial gallery or even to a museum or can afford to hire an architect to build a building. I hadn’t done any gallery or museum work, but I had been doing the Sundown Salons, gatherings of artists at my house (a geodesic dome on the eastside of L.A.) which had galvanized the community of artists there.96 The Edible Estates project was straddling these different worlds, and it could be seen in different ways by different communities. It could be seen as art ultimately, and was welcomed into that role because I was part of the art community. Anyway, my first impulse was to do something for the country, for the whole country; to do a project in the geographic center of the United States, just as a symbolic gesture. At the time, I was starting to travel and doing lectures about my work. I was invited by Stacy Switzer at Grand Arts, which was an art space in Kansas City (Missouri) from 1995 and 2015, to do a lecture. At the lecture I mentioned that I wanted to do a project in the geographic center of the country. I was interested in pioneers, westward movement, manifest destiny, and these kinds of founding principles of the colonization of the United States. She then said: I am curating a show at the Salina Art Center in Kansas, if you want to participate in that. Maybe that’s a chance for you to workshop whatever it is you want to do, because it actually is the center of the country geographically. It was a group show, and it was centered around eating. This was my very first commission. So, I made a proposal in the early spring to do an edible garden in someone’s front yard as a public gesture. There was something so compelling about a landscape that feeds you. Gardening wasn’t about making pretty spaces. It was about capturing the imagination with the possibilities of the land around us. From my background in architecture, I was turning my attention away from the building to everything that was inside and outside of it. So, it was in the spring, and I thought it was too late to get a garden in the ground for this show. I just thought, it’ll be an abstract proposal that can be shown in the galleries; but Stacy Switzer said, “no, we actually have to do this somewhere in Salina at someone’s house.” She did have a budget, and we did a search for someone’s front lawn; the point was to have a typical house in town where a front lawn could be entirely removed and replaced with an edible landscape, and that lawn would be kind of a shock to the street because all the other houses would have lawns.

Conversation with Fritz Haeg  47

S.B.: F.H.:

This would be an interruption, and it would be obvious that something had happened. We found the perfect couple. Stan Cox, who worked at the Land Institute, which is run by Wes Jackson, doing really incredible research about global food production and the possibilities of having annuals and perennials growing together, of having a landscape of food production that is always alive with plants, instead of monocultures of annuals that are harvested and then you have bare soil.97 Starting with the prairie as a model, the Land Institute then looks at other models globally and applies them to different places. Anyway, Stan Cox was a researcher there. The first edition was for him and his wife Priti, who is from India. They’re radical environmentalists. He later went on to write a book about air conditioning, Losing Our Cool.98 They were the perfect couple for the first garden, and we had a dramatic weekend of removing the lawn with the sod cutter, digging it up. Fortunately, we had local advisors to help us with choosing plants; the strategy from the beginning was to create a garden that conveyed a real feeling of a landscape that happened to produce food and also diversity. So, I wanted anything that would produce food in that climate. After this first experiment at the Salina Art Center, you brought Edible Estates to other places. How did the project adapt to the change of sites? At some point I decided this should be a prototype and we should see how this could be applied to any town. I set out a goal of having nine gardens around the US, just as a statement. The next garden, the following year, was in a suburb of L.A. and Lakewood, and then I planted others in New Jersey and London. Anyway, the list is there.99 And that is when the project captured people’s imagination about the possibilities, seeing how this same idea could be applied to any city in the world. This is a specifically urban project. The interesting thing about doing the first Edible Estate in Kansas was that even in a small town it was shocking. The neighbors on the street, small children who were very engaged in the planting, had never seen a food garden before and they were so excited. And they were there every day, helping us and being involved. Even there it was somewhat provocative. Each new garden, each new city, each new commission by different arts organizations was an opportunity to look at the project in a different way, or look at a different context, kind of family, and street. The site was always strategically selected to be publicly visible, owned by a family who was up for the challenge, who could be ambassadors of the project with their neighbors. I considered many factors, from the climate and microclimate of a site to the social dynamics of a particular street, the tastes of the family, and the community of local advisors on plants. In each city, there was an open call to look for a site. Some gardens were more communal, some more private in single-family homes. I look back now, and what brought me here to

48  Conversation with Fritz Haeg

S.B: F.H.:

S.B.:

F.H.:

Northern California to settle in Salmon Creek Farm was really the ten years of living on the road, with a lot of flying and writing emails, basically that was my life when I was doing these gardens. It was this serial project that was global and urban and itinerant. Maybe a year of planning would lead to a big weekend of planting and that was it for me, so I got these experiences with gardening that were very intense but very short bursts. In the moment that we’re in with the pandemic, we’re all reflecting on mobility: I look back on that period of my life happy that I had it and also wondering if that would make sense now or even be possible again. If you could recreate the Edible Estates today in carefully selected international sites, where would you like to repeat the experiment? The whole point of Edible Estates is that it was modest and small in scale. It was not intended to be scaled up. People ask me how they can do it, and it’s really just as simple as going out the door and looking at any arable land around you and planting some seeds and going from there. It doesn’t have to be as dramatic as the gardens that I did. In terms of doing it today, it would just be the same thing. Looking at that small-scale family unit of any city, looking at how people live in this city. What is their relationship to land? Where could people grow their own food? It could be a rooftop, a park, some empty lot to be reclaimed. There are some cities where it is really challenging and you’re left with very little, and it’s maybe a window box, if you’re lucky, but still there’s always something. For me it was about the functionality of actually producing food that could feed us, but just as importantly it was about that public gesture to the street and your community. Seeing what food looks like coming out of dirt, really simply, that’s the essence of it. To have that happening in a city is really important, to see that our food production is not all hidden and in monocultures. This project was not intended to be a panacea, or a solution to a problem. We’re not going to feed cities of nine million people with everyone going out the door and planting their food. But if people living in our cities today aren’t able to do it or to see it, then I think that’s a problem. After Edible Estates, you continued to create works that involved travel. In Domestic Integrity (2012–14), which incorporates storytelling, traditional crafts, and agricultural knowledge, you exported a prototype to different venues. What inspired the directions taken by your art then? It’s just part of a trajectory of my work that’s taken me from one thing to the next to the next, in ways that were at the beginning confusing and unpredictable, but now make more sense to me. I think so much about how our culture forces us to a kind of narrow specialization that starts out with some sort of dogma in schools, that channels us into specific things that we are meant to continue on for the rest of

Conversation with Fritz Haeg  49 our lives and don’t leave a lot of room to expand and grow as we get older, pursuing different interest. Buckminster Fuller had a good quote: “Specialization is in fact only a fancy form of slavery.”100 I’ve found now, at 50, how healthy and beautiful it is to be able to grow older and always be a beginner at something. I love more than anything that feeling at the beginning of a new discipline, interest, or craft, where you are a novice and amateur; and when you’re young and have so much to learn and your brain is alive. It’s like functioning in a way that it just isn’t when you become really good at something and you become critical. I’ve had these chapters of new things getting folded into my work and consuming me and then being brought into the fold, like gardens, dance, textiles, and now carpentry. So, now, coming to Salmon Creek Farm, I brought all those things with me. Back in 2012, I was coming back from Rome. I was at the American Academy in Rome for a year. And by the way, Italy has been a real touchstone for me. I lived there for three years on and off first at the School of Architecture in Venice (I.U.A.V.) studying and then outside of Florence, in a farm in Bagno a Ripoli in Tuscany for a year. So magical. And that year at that farm was very influential obviously. Anyway, at the American Academy in Rome, they give you a really beautiful studio with skylights, and I had a huge terrace. I had a tiny little bedroom and a huge studio. And I’ve never had a studio. I don’t use the studio; my studio is my home or wherever I am doing my work. I don’t have a studio practice; I don’t have a place to go make things. So, that was an interesting year, and I basically turned my studio into a domestic space. I made an Edible Garden on the rooftop terrace at the American Academy in Rome. When I came back to L.A., I started knitting. I learned how to knit when I was doing a project at the Hayward Gallery in London. A woman there in the lobby taught me. I established a schoolhouse for part of the show at Hayward and we had a knitting workshop and I learned, but I wasn’t getting it. I was just sitting in the lobby struggling, and this Finnish woman saw me struggling and just sat down and said, “I can see you’re struggling with that, let me show you how we knit”; and she sat with me for 45 minutes and taught me the continental stitch which is different from how Americans knit. And that was it. She literally taught me how to knit, this stranger who I haven’t seen before or since. Then, I was flying constantly, a few flights a week or more, and I was just knitting the whole time. I would knit and unknit things, and I got pretty good. It takes a while. I knitted all these triangles, and then later when I got back to L.A., I crocheted them together into this huge blanket. Yarn wasn’t enough for me and I started to look at these piles of old textiles and sheets I had and started to experiment with braiding them and sewing them together and then doing a hand crochet stitch. I started making that at home. And then for

50  Conversation with Fritz Haeg a show at MoMA and again later. At that time, I had a lot of museum invitations to do things, and it would have to come up with proposals or think about, Okay, well, where is my work headed? What do I want to do now? Somehow, this is what emerged from a series of six invitations from museums. This and other rugs (there were a few of them) traveled to museum installations, as part of the Domestic Integrities project. The project came about because I was deeply inspired by my time in Italy, in cities but also in farms. And I did a series of interviews of people who live in Rome about how they eat, which was part of a book that never really happened. But it came out of these series of experiences and interests into the culture of domestic space: thinking of how people make themselves at home, how people domesticate the little rituals of the kitchen, like how produce gets put in a basket on a table. I guess it specifically came out of all my time in Italy, that sense of the land coming into the house. And actually, I’ve never really thought about or talked about it explicitly but, obviously, it’s what my life here (Salmon Creek Farm) is all about. Now I’m living that 24/7 here. I think it’s the breakthrough for me that started with architecture, departed from it in a very dramatic way, and then I came back to it in a way that only sees architecture as that loose organic filter that is moderating your experience, or somehow a vessel that accommodates your life on a piece of land. These are all things I haven’t really talked or written about, but I will at some point. I had a hard time talking about Domestic Integrities with curators. But ultimately, what I was interested in is providing a physical space, this dramatic rug, within the confines of a white gallery that could play out the theater of domesticity, and oftentimes making gardens outside from which things would come in and be on the rug. A lot of this work was taking traditions that you would learn from a grandmother and taking them seriously, putting them on a pedestal, in a museum, and saying: “This is important. This is culture at its highest level.” Going into a farmer’s house and seeing how a family lives on a land and how they occupy themselves outside and how that comes inside and how they organize a kitchen and fold up towels and hang mugs and take care of pots and pans and all of this activity to me is so beautiful, when it’s thoughtful. Now, the kitchen that I built for myself at Salmon Creek Farm is made from wood on the land, even the slab of this counter, you know, that’s my life now. The thing that disappointed me the most is when I went into farmhouses in Abruzzo (Italy), waiting for this romantic experience, but… there’s a plastic tablecloth with fruit print on it, and plastic fruit on the table. I understood that there’s the romantic fantasy, and then there’s real life today for Italian farmers which is very difficult. And it’s not romantic, and they don’t romanticize it of course, it’s just real life, it’s often a struggle.

Conversation with Fritz Haeg  51

Figure 1.6 Fritz Haeg, Salmon Creek Farm, 2014–ongoing. Aerial view. Courtesy of the artist.

S.B.:

F.H.:

Part of the architectural discourse in Italy in the late 1960s and early 1970s was equally as fascinated with learning from farmers, with their ability of doing things independently from production systems. This emerges, for example, in Superstudio’s La Coscienza di Zeno,101 and was in part inspired by hippie culture. Salmon Creek Farm was originally a hippie commune. Can you expand on your relationship with that history? Albion, the town where I live, was a real center for the hippie communes in the early 1970s. A few of the women’s communes are barely functioning but are still active. For a full decade before I moved here, I had in my head this growing idea of wanting to live settled and rural. I talked about it with friends, and on my travels I always tried to visit communal and rural places. I was not committed to continuing a life of constant travel the way I had. In early 2014, I shut down my life and work and just focused exclusively on looking for land. Coming out of five years of drought in L.A., I really wanted a place with water to grow food, a place with some interesting history of homesteading or farming, not just a blank piece of land, a place where I could be rural and settled but not isolated and alone, still connected to the world and connected to other people. Somehow this place came to me: a realtor sent me a link about the property, and it was just a revelation. It’s almost a strange serendipity that I’m here, and I feel very lucky. It’s happened to me twice, first with the geodesic dome that

52  Conversation with Fritz Haeg

S.B.: F.H.:

I lived in in L.A., which became this kind of touchstone and center, all my work grew out of there, and then here. And in a way, everything I was doing at the dome—the gatherings, the gardening, the school— was really just preparation for this at a much larger and more permanent scale. Salmon Creek Farm was a commune, founded in 1971, and the hippies here were White, middle to upper middle class, straight. They were kids who were disillusioned with mainstream American society and looked for something else. They were part of a global urban to rural migration, the biggest in the history of the world supposedly. It was a global phenomenon that was especially pronounced here in Northern California. I have the archives here: letters, correspondence, photographs. When I wrote the letter with my offer to buy the place, I talked about my interest in continuing its legacy, of taking over the archives if they’d be willing. I was really interested in the values and the ethos of the place and building upon it. Obviously, everything that’s happening now here is very different, and it’s not a continuation of the commune. But there is something very beautiful about building a new project on the remains of that one, and continuing threads from that period to this. They built their own homes with scavenged materials; they grew their own food; they lived very simple resourceful lives for very little money. It was a time when kids in their 20s could come out of college and really take risks in a way that young people can’t afford to today, that is, if you’re coming out of school in college debt, in the reality of the world we live in today. There’s this urgency to support yourself and establish yourself and have a career and make money. It’s really sad to me to see young people come out of college without that freedom to experiment, to go off and try something that isn’t going to be economically viable right away. You underline that you come from a position of privilege. What are the limits, the challenges, but also the advantages and the responsibilities that are connected with that position? This position of privilege is something that’s become even more pronounced, of course, in the last few months with the protests seeking justice after the death of George Floyd. I’m from Minnesota and that whole moment has hit me really hard. I think it’s really been a very disorientating time for everyone, this moment of social break in culture, where there’s a rift and something opens up. I have been turning over Salmon Creek Farm to people of color retreats here for the last few years. I would leave the property, and it would become their space. It was really catalyzed by a few individuals who came here and proposed it, it’s nothing that I initiated myself; it became significant only because someone said, “this should happen.” I’ve been learning so much just from that the last couple years. I’m trying to work on a book that’s tentatively titled The Dirty Work. I don’t know if it’ll be called that. I don’t know what’s going to

Conversation with Fritz Haeg  53

S.B: F.H.:

happen to this book, but I do know that I want to write about my experiences here. I’m interested in the idea of the dirty work, which comes from a Joni Michell song, where she sings, “who’s going to do all the dirty work when the slaves are free.” What’s drawn me here is a desire to be outside working with my hands all day. That’s really all I want to do. That’s always what gave me pleasure doing my work before, and it’s something I feel is the driving force behind the whole place: me wanting to be in touch with the production of my food, the building of my house, the making of our fires. All of this is the essence of the place: doing that work, doing it happily, doing it with others. And then there’s this very bizarre twenty-first-century situation where to get a piece of land, to do that kind of labor, is a privilege, strangely. It is a privilege to be able to decide to do that work, and then at any given point in the day, if I don’t feel like doing that anymore, I don’t have to. I’m not in a position of having to chop firewood all day. I get to do it when I want. There’s a lot of unpacking to do about this labor, and a lot of things about race and gender. Just to give you an example of the kind of anecdotes that have come up for me writing this book: I’ll explain to my dad, “oh, I did this kind of work today.” And he’s like, “Well, at least you don’t have to do it again.” Only a man would say that, because, to stereotype by gender, a woman knows that no, this is not true. You do it, and then you do it again tomorrow, and then you do it again the next day or the next year or you have to fix it again later. I think that in architecture, in patriarchal structures, in the men’s world, you do something once, you do it monumentally forever, and then you leave that behind. Men do things once, women understand that you have to do them every day. It’s a practice, it’s like maintenance art. Like Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s art. Yes, exactly: she brought this to the art world in a way that was beautiful: this idea of a practice, something you do every day. You clean the floor and it’s dirty again; you know you cook food and you feed people and then they’re hungry again the next day. And that’s part of the thing that you have to surrender to in a place like this. Just responding to your question in terms of the privileged position of being here: I have had a certain amount of resources in my life that have allowed me to come here. If someone who has the privilege and the freedom chooses to use that privilege and freedom to grow their food in front of their house, then that sets the bar and says, this is what we’re aspiring to. In other words, people with privilege have the opportunity to declare publicly what is possible. If someone with privilege is going to use that privilege to hoard and take as much as they can and give as little back as possible and create an environment that is not sustainable, that is oppressive to others. Obviously, that is problematic, but it’s what gets held up as the aspiration. It’s an important question today: What do people with privilege do with their

54  Conversation with Fritz Haeg

S.B.:

F.H.:

privilege? How is that used? And that could be a voice that you have; it could be resources, it could be a piece of land… It’s obviously very complicated and more than I’ll be able to figure out here, but I do feel like, at the end of the day, what you’ve done, how you’ve spent your time that day; you can either sleep well or not. All of the work I’ve done as an artist is my ultimate checklist for myself, not that it is good ethically or morally, because I don’t believe that it’s the responsibility of artists necessarily to investigate that. But I do think that for me the work is something that’s consuming me right now, and also there’s something in the universe that needs this, and this work is there as part of the conversation with this global situation we’re in. I want to participate in it. I am a part of it. And I think a lot of the art world that I came out of, that I was schooled in, said that artists weren’t part of the world, that they were outside of it, and were critics. You could not be a part of it, but sit outside of it and critique it. I think I always wanted to make work that was acknowledging my participation and my place in a very flawed system, and my responsibility within it and my fault within it. You know, I’m complicit in the systems that I’m critiquing, and I am continuing to perpetuate them by being a part of them and I can’t just pull myself out. This is me within the system, living my life, and making my work the best I can, knowing that I’m a part of it. Right, and you’re not alone.. You talked about pioneers and the process of colonization of the US; you often use “land” as a term: “being in the land,” “transforming the land.” Historically, the idea of conquering and transforming the land has been framed as masculine.102 You acknowledge your complicity in this, but you also unsettle it by thinking about women’s work, labor, and maintenance. The complexity of gendered approaches to the land has been highlighted by the discourse of Queer Ecologies since the 1990s, and more prominently starting in 2010. As a scholarly field, Queer Ecologies questioned gendered approaches to wilderness, rurality, and ecology. Do you see your practice as part of this discourse? It’s been very interesting… just with life at Salmon Creek Farm, which functions as a core community of people who come and go, a series of gatherings throughout the season, especially in the summer…I’ve always talked about it as a queer-centric, not queer-­exclusive, but as a queer-centric space, just because of myself and the kind of inevitable queer communities that tend to come here. Now with the pandemic we’re moving towards a queer commune of more settled people that are here for months at a time, and there is something kind of beautiful about that. One of the things that I’ve always fought is the strict binaries within anything, that kind of Black and White or male and female or whatever it is. I like to embrace fluidity in all of its forms in terms of discipline, in terms of relationship to the land, in

Conversation with Fritz Haeg  55 terms of everything. That said, it’s not something I have researched much or thought about a lot explicitly, except for a project I did in London. The one I mentioned at the Hayward: it was the Sundown Schoolhouse of Queer Home Economics.103 I was looking at queer space. I do think there is something to be said about the heteronormative family unit, the nuclear family that is. The centrality of that in our culture is really toxic, in some ways; you can see generations of so many sad women and frustrated men trapped in a system that’s imposed upon them that they felt like was sold to them. They get into it and realize it is not what they wanted. It’s not for everyone. I think the great freedom of queer culture is that you can do whatever you want. You can get married and have kids now if you want to, but you can create the life that you want. That life can be also more community-focused and outward-focused than a conventional nuclear family that turns inward, that protects its own self-interest. I think in queer culture you can see an outward focus that is unique. People that have never had the experience of that don’t understand it. It’s very particular and it has its dynamics that are very different from other groups. If you grow up in a Native American family, you share the experience of being Native American. Whereas if you grow up queer, you’re probably growing up in a straight family and you don’t share that with your family, so you have to find another family. So, there’s this culture that’s created that necessitates a chosen family and it creates a culture that is cross-generational and extra-familial, and within it is the capacity to look empathetically at the world and at the land in a way that maybe you wouldn’t if you were more insular and focused on a racial community, a nuclear family, maybe religion. Muriel Horvath: We started this conversation talking about zucchini bread. To wrap it up, let me ask if you have a favorite variety of plant, any species that just felt like a joy to grow or eat… F.H: Here at Salmon Creek Farm it’s the apple trees. They were the only cultivated thing that was here when I arrived. The crowns of the trees had been buried in dirt, and they had been tended. A lot of my energy has gone into tending those more seriously, terracing the trees, making them the center of the whole garden structure. I prune them seasonally, harvest them seasonally, use the fruit to make a hard apple cider and apple cider vinegar, and preserve the apples for the winter. Apple trees are magical. They’re these incredible things that span everything from the Garden of Eden to Johnny Appleseed, making alcohol, preparing apple cider vinegar, which is now this kind of elixir in our culture today. The apple cider vinegar I make is a kind of currency, I traded it with my farmer friend for 15 yards of her compost. I don’t sell it but I use it to trade. Someone sent me flour for baking from the Bay Area, and in the next car that went south, I sent him some apple cider vinegar in exchange. My apple vinegar has become a form of currency.

Conversation with Artist as Family104

Silvia Bottinelli: In what ways does the name “Artist as Family” describe what you do? Artist as Family: There is not a privileging of artist and non-artist distinctions in our household. Cultural, creative, and generative productions occur each day and involve many participants, human and much more, family and much more. Artist as Family composts artist-as-solohero, and speaks to subsistence and distributed culture-making and postmarket productions. The name and practice call for our attentions to engage in generative production where participation, process, experimentation, and meaning making are not ends in themselves. Rather these things are families of circularity. S.B.: How do art and life merge in your practice, sometimes described as a ten-year-long piece of performance art?

Figure 1.7 Artist as Family, Wheel of Ecological Culture, 2012. Courtesy of the artists.

Conversation with Artist as Family  57 A.a.F.: Permaculture’s principle “Integrate don’t segregate” is a conceptual lever for our practice, where meaning making, or permapoesis, integrates generative art into generative lifeway. Permapoesis speaks to both the endurance processes of “permanence” and the acting and making (poesis) that derives from the permaculture portmanteau— permanent culturing. Economy, which in our case can be described as generative subsistence and gift exchange, and culture-making is inseparable. The economy we make is the culture we make, and the culture we make is the economy we make. S.B.: What is the art historical genealogy in which you inscribe your work? A.a.F.: We draw on the rituals, rites, celebrations, and cultural economies of First Peoples, especially our own First Peoples’ peasant-animist traditions from Europe and the Middle East. We nonetheless have been schooled in Western philosophy, and such criticality is not absent from our practice. This hybrid state we call neopeasantry. The “neo” locating various privileges and schoolings. While we don’t appropriate customs, ritual, or costumes, or live in an antique romance state, we do draw on old story and ancestral wisdom and bring it forward. The story of Druid universities, for example, where the university is situated in great oak forests and the professors are the trees themselves. This moving away from Socratic (via Plato’s Phaedrus, 230d) anthropocentrism—“I have nothing to learn from trees and fields, I only have things to learn from men of cities”—has been central not only to opening to multispecies culture and consciousness but also in attending to toxic patriarchy. Such gender lopsidedness in Western culture became systemic after the Witch Hunts that began in the thirteenth century—though probably begins much further back with Hesiod the misogynist poet 2,700 years ago. Hesiod rewrote the theology of his day to diminish Greek goddesses like Pandora to a pre-Evelike state—transforming her from the goddess of fermentation and abundance to the mortal who brought suffering to man.105 The Witch Hunts led to the diminishment of feminine popular power (herbalism, midwifery, fermenting, dispute resolving) within our peasant ancestries and cultural traditions to an extreme next level.106 Out of the Witch Hunts, which also saw to the diminishment of village/forest (domestic/wild) interrelationships, grew mercantile forms of art relations based on synthetic or urban imperatives that classical Greek philosophy had built a temple to centuries before. More recently, performance and Land art movements have also been formative before we arrived at permapoesis, as have popular cultural forms such as parkour and doing-saying poetics, physical theater, folk music, graffiti, and culinary cultures. However, while Artist as Family is foremost a practice of poetic-pragmatic meaning making, it has also been a practice that has very consciously moved away from bourgeois or mercantile forms of

58  Conversation with Artist as Family art culturing, forms, and modalities which we were exposed to and influenced by as students of university art and media departments. S.B.: In what ways does your experience celebrate childhood and raising children? A.a.F.: Our practice seeks to incorporate a “free to learn” cosmology, which evolutionary biologist Peter Gray (2013) speaks to in his critique of Western schooling. We learn through play, through grief, by making mistakes, by cutting ourselves and falling down, and our children and the many other children we interact with are constant reminders of ancient instinctual intelligence we all embody. Children are our link to pre-literacy; they remind us how possible it is to be present to the living of the world and the imaginal realm. They don’t name the world in total—although words to them hold magical powers— rather, they sense the words of the world, giving us insight into the possibilities of a fuller presence and thus showing us little paths to reclaiming relationships that are much more than human. That is, reclaiming relationships to words and naming that are spoken in and of their breath. By honoring this intrinsic state, this exploration into life, and by giving them space and time for non-prescriptive play and languaging, we celebrate children, learn from them, and celebrate our own way back into animist states of belonging. Children play and experience the world in context with an immediate presence that roots them in place. Allowing this to take place and indeed learning from it is one powerful way of celebrating children and their natural state of interbelonging. S.B.: Your property in Central Victoria (Australia) is significant to Artist as Family. If we could take a tour there, what would we see? A.a.F.: Our home, which we call Tree Elbow, is an example of intensive garden-agriculture situated at the edge of suburbia and the Wombat Forest. We live in a small street of social-warming neighbors who we gift exchange with and share community responsibilities that include child minding, creek restoration, bushfire mitigation, planting and tending a community orchard, and working with goats to reduce the dominance of weed species in this novel ecology, thus helping to return indigenous biota to Country. As you walk into Tree Elbow through a food forest that begins on the street verge, there are numerous gardens and small dwellings. No cars can access the narrow inpaths from the street. There is a main home building orientated to capture winter sun and repel summer radiation. There are many smaller buildings used for non-monetized learning opportunities for live-in students who trade labor for learning. There are food forests (perennial gardens) aimed at integrating indigenous biota with low-input perennial food productions. There is a series of rain-catching swales that follow the contour of the land to passively harvest rain, which double as paths that run along annual food production

Conversation with Artist as Family  59 beds. There is an extensive poultry area for chickens and ducks (eggs, manure, and meat), and an apiary for bees (pollination services and high protein honeycomb). There are “social warming” fences, that enable conversations with neighbors while keeping animals inside the quarter acre property. There are multiple sheds, frost-protecting structures and glasshouses, a nursery area, a cookhouse (sauna) and cold-water plunge tank, innumerable water tanks, compost bays, and children’s play and social spaces, including a tree house in an ancestral oak. A stable area for nanny goats and their newborns exists under the house, which is large enough to enclose the herd of 12 or so goats in extreme bushfire weather. Next to this is a cellar that we built using stones unearthed from the annual garden, in which we store food year-round. S.B.: How do you honor the legacy of the Djaara peoples who were the first custodians of the land where you live? A.a.F.: We live with the problem of dwelling on unceded land, and we have only just begun, in the last decade, to work within the materiality of this. We listen to Djaara and other First Peoples’ eldership and Djaara community voices by organizing or attending talks and ceremonies. We are learning to deepen our roles as “custodial species.”107 We have initiated and continue to organize the annual Terra Nullius Breakfast, which takes place outside our local town hall and annually marks the historical lie of terrestrial ownership of Australia, particularly as it relates to Djaara Country. We engage Djaara eldership and participation in new rituals and rites such as the four-day Listening to Country initiation fast, which we facilitate. We honor our own First Peoples—their cultural and economic relationships with Djaara cosmology—and recognize ourselves as Second Peoples on Djaara land. Reclaiming our own First Peoples’ stories deepens our connection to Djaara ancestors and contemporaries. We practice daily rituals of listening to the land and its many actors (animate and inanimate), who we consider teachers. There are six seasons in Djaara Country—a winter and an autumn, two distinct summers, and two springs. Observing these seasons enables us to better honor Djaara perceptions and intimate knowledges of Country, as the seasonal changes are triggered by plant and animal behaviors rather than imposed upon by a Eurocentric idea of seasonality. S.B.: How do death and decay play a role in your work with the farm? A.a.F.: We honor death and decay as teachers. Death and decay are as significant as birth, consumption, growth, and renewal within our form of permacultural subsistence economy, which we call neopeasantry. Humanure compost is the heartsoil of our plant food productions. All our human waste is safely returned to our soils, thus closing what we call “the poop loop.” We use our sifted fire waste for potash, and the charcoal soaked in our urine makes an activated biochar. We return

60  Conversation with Artist as Family both these byproducts to our gardens and the nearby forest commons. We only eat animals we kill ourselves or that have been killed consciously by friends who practice respectful slaughtering processes and who honor the life taken in some form of ritual, as we do ourselves. We eat little meat but the killing of animals brings us into regular contact with the materiality of death and the transmission of souls from one form into another. Mortality acceptance has been critical to our cultural and behavioral transformations, which are aided and deepened by practices of breath work, meditation, deep listening, and cold-water plunging. Fermentation, which is a major cultural practice in our household, is the courting of microecology to slow down the decaying process of our homegrown fruit and vegetables. Being daily fermenters deepens our awareness of the importance of death and decay, as does living seasonally and within cycles of renewal, which so critically require death and decay. S.B.: How do you incorporate permaculture into your project, on both a practical and a conceptual level? A.a.F.: Holmgren’s permaculture principles and ethics encircle and embody our practice pragmatically and conceptually. They inform our approaches to caring for Country, community, each other, and ourselves—we understand that self-care is required foremost if one wishes to be in service to others. The principles and ethics enable a collaborative life practice of integration and interrelationship between human and other-than-human entities, of producing little or no waste, incorporating broad definitions of biodiversity, applying self- and family regulations after incorporating both human and more-than-human feedback, growing non-monetized economies of homeplace where rituals of return are made and gifts flow between generous actors or to those in need. We have used the principles and ethics of permaculture as a framework to act and speak another cultural reality that, while may not be fully independent from the dominant cultural-economic realm, demonstrates the possibility—through small-scale modeling—of postcapital relations with economy, especially concerning food, art, medicine, and energy productions. Additionally, our practice is feral, and while permaculture principles grow the “village” wisdom of our day-to-day, it is weed and feral consciousness (that is, our ancestral biota) that develop our minds to open to forest wisdom and multispecies culturing. S.B.: Across the years, you have collected knowledge through experience and observation. What is the importance of spreading the knowledge that you have collected and how do you disseminate such knowledge? A.a.F.: Sharing our knowledges, experimentation, and experience is, for us, in keeping with the spirit of commons and thus the politics of strategic degrowth and what we call a flow of gifts belonging. It is keeping with the spirit of non-privatized learning and open-source

Conversation with Artist as Family  61 passed-down knowledges we ourselves have benefitted significantly from. The great majority of what we share does not reside behind paywalls or within capital relations. We do occasionally produce an artefact where either money or formal barter exchange is required. We see knowledge sharing akin to ecological succession—well-being resides not in debt to a money system but in indebtedness to the living of the world. We facilitate non-monetary workshops ranging from fermentation, natural beekeeping, orchard care, soil health, herbal medicine, seed saving, annual vegetable gardening, community forestry, and community gardening, and we run non-monetary bush skills for children where parents are encouraged to gift excess produce in exchange for the learning. All of this teaching, formally and informally, occurs under the umbrella of the School of Applied Neopeasantry at Tree Elbow University. We encourage young people not to go into debt for an industrial degree at a university, but to become instead self-­learners. At this point, the Internet still enables an incredible commons of knowledge, and we contribute to this in our open-source videos on our YouTube page, through writings on our blog and via our freely available resources page. We also hold regular house and garden tours to the public and for permaculture design course (PDC) participants, for which we charge a small fee. S.B.: Can you share examples of tools, species, processes that you have found rewarding in your practice? A.a.F.: Our practice is broader than agriculture, and we draw on our hunter-gatherer-gardener ancestors to augment our cultural economy. For example: Our seven-year-old son Blackwood has just dug up some clay from beside a nearby creek. It is dark gold in color and quite sticky, and he is rolling it into small balls. Later this morning, after we have baked our bread and the wood oven is still hot, he will cook the small balls to use as pellets in his homemade slingshot, the making of which was yesterday’s self-initiated project. He may spend the afternoon hunting rabbits in the forest alongside Zero, our Jack Russell Terrier and chief rabbitor. They will sit patiently and observe the communities of life in the forest while they await their prey. If successful, we will have rabbit liver pâté on our fresh bread for tomorrow’s lunch, rabbit stew for dinner, and then bone broth the following day. All these meals will be cooked by our wood stove (which runs eight appliances), fueled by walked-for or bicycled wood energy from the guerrilla-inspired community-managed forest we are custodians of. This is Blackwood’s main classroom as an unschooled child—if we are to take “school” as meaning: derived from the Prussian militarism of the Teutonic Knights, which industrial schooling, and indeed culture, is founded upon. We will add the rabbit’s tanned pelt, after it is salted, dried, scraped, and softened, to our growing collection to sew into our first rabbit-skin coat.

62  Conversation with Artist as Family While we are technical animals—cyborgs—we increasingly foreground knowledge and background technology akin to ecological cultures of place who worship the Earth as Mother, Gaia, or Goddess and are open to instruction and wisdom from more-than-human consciousness. Thus, we don’t grow our dependency purely on industrial-digital technologies. Biological processes intersect with lowtooled labors, such as using a shovel and a small electric chainsaw, to build a series of weirs to create pools in a human-degraded creek from where Blackwood finds his clay, near to where he hunts. These two tools—one with a repaired handle from forest timber, the other part of the global expansion of electric battery tools that is causing much suffering in countries like Bolivia—aid ecological succession, rehydration, and rehabilitation of that ecology. We limit small or large machinery from such works. Once there are a dozen pools along the creek the intention is to return indigenous fish to this upper tributary, which will act as a breeding biome to supply indigenous fish and other aquatic life downstream as well as occasional food for our neighbors and us. The fallen timbers we use to build the weirs will themselves break down eventually but plant life and washed down debris should maintain the weirs as pools. Another such process is using goats to eat the dominant weed species in the forest. By using electric fences and a solar pack, we have found that the cell grazing of goats has enabled indigenous plants to return to Country transforming the ecology from weedy, fire-prone forests into grassy woodlands that can then be managed by indigenous herbivores, Djaara cool burn methods, and light grazing of goats if still required. While managing the goats is firstly a service to the forest and the community (especially with growing bushfire threats), we eat the surplus of male goats throughout the year, and are beginning to teach ourselves how to make shoes with the skins. S.B.: You choose to model community-sufficient ways of life, modes of survival that depend on close interactions with the plot that you inhabit but also the neighboring community. This shows alternatives to the reliance on industrially produced products, even those that corporations claim to be sustainable (sometimes as a form of greenwashing, others to advertise more genuine concern for the environment). Can you talk about the difference between self-­sufficiency and community-sufficiency? A.a.F.: Self-sufficiency might be a powerful antidote to consumer culture if you are self-reliant in terms of the food you eat, the water you catch and the energy you provision and store. Community-sufficiency describes a more connected, interrelated way of being with human and other than human communities in what we call one’s “locasphere.” We are advancing the term “community-sufficiency” to describe a

Conversation with Artist as Family  63 walked-for food, energy, and medicine cosmology. We are in a gift exchange relationship with over 80 other households. We gift a jar of honey from our bees, and we are gifted back a bucket of cow’s milk; we edit a chapter of a book, and we are helped with the weeding in our garden. Community-sufficiency underpins our relationships to our human community and neighbors as it does to our goats, for example, who we guerilla-farm on the nearby common land. The goats eat the dominant weed species while their manures fertilize the forest floor to help grow more food and habitat for other species to flourish. As described above, goats are also land managers providing a social good for the town, which is vulnerable to bushfires. The goats provide meat and skins grown simply from unwanted weeds, and, like our bees, forage their own food and supply us protein that has no industrial inputs. Community-sufficiency describes our interrelationship with the living of the worlds, a conscious mutuality—what we breathe in, the trees breathe out—and an understanding of interbelongingness—the flower gifts itself to the insects and birds who gift pollination in return. We don’t perceive economy as mere mechanics—as human-centric distribution systems—we see it as complex and relational, as deep connection, as animist and shapeshifting, and, at times, beyond human comprehension. And this not knowing and complexity ­informs our culturing away from domination economics into interbelonging. Therefore, community-sufficiency is a state of interbelonging where frugal or sufficient amounts of food, medicine, energy and other gifts are not overly consumed. It is a relationship between limits and abundance. S.B.: What are the limits of depending on capitalist systems to tackle the problems of our era? A.a.F.: The greatest limit of neoliberal capitalism is that it doesn’t accept negative feedback and it lives within the illusion of endless growth. Both these limitations make neoliberal capitalism and those wholly dependent on it exceedingly vulnerable.

Conversation with Jolene Rickard108

Silvia Bottinelli: Corn appears in your photographs and installations such as Three Sisters, 1992; Cracked Shell (1994); Corn Blue Room, 2000; Cornbread Room (2007); and most recently, Ah-Theuh-Nyeh-Hah: The Planting Moon (2016). How does this plant speak to your personal and cultural experience? Jolene Rickard: Sure, this is at the heart of my practice, in that corn is actually something that my extended family has been responsible for since the Skarù·ręʔ, or Tuscarora now, forced dispossession from our homelands in North Carolina. When we made our way north, we sought protection and then were welcomed home by the Five Northern Brothers or the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. As Tuscarora now, this is how we understand our history: we were here109 before the coming of the Peacemaker, a visionary prophet, who brought the Great Law or Akunęhsyę̀·niʔ. According to our oral history, we left these territories and migrated down to the homelands in North Carolina; and then, at early contact, our people were dispossessed in the 1700s and we were forcibly removed and that’s when we returned to our northern homeland. One of the oral histories that actually made it into the twentieth century, carried by my grandfather on my father’s side of the family—Clinton Rickard, who had a text written on him called the Fighting Tuscarora110—recognized that we brought corn from the Carolinas.111 We call it Tuscarora White Corn. It’s the corn that I feature in my work. It’s flour corn, used as a base for many of the foods that we prepare. So, we brought that corn back into the Confederacy at a period of time that the Confederacy was actually going through its own trauma due to the impact of what they call the French and Indian War,112 or some people call the Seven Years War, and then ultimately the impact of the Clinton Sullivan campaign.113 So corn does not only represent our physical or material survival as Tuscarora. Corn is one of the grandmother seeds and represents resilience throughout the Americas. Indigenous peoples created a relationship to this seed, which was originally a grass and then through time it’s become this thing that

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sustains us. So, in Seneca, the word for corn is “onëö’ge:n,”114 meaning “that which sustains us.” It’s interesting how uneven the collection of these words are in our languages today. Within the Confederacy, my family is acknowledged as growing corn, continuing to maintain our relationship to these heritage seeds, at a period of time when a lot of families and a lot of communities let it go. But we continued a communal practice in my family, and what that means is that I’ve always felt that the corn taught us to keep working together as a people. That’s a principle of the “longhouse way of life,”115 and so I think we were practicing that through trying to maintain this one responsibility. It wasn’t just the White Corn. There are other kinds of corn that are used ceremonially that we took responsibility for, making sure that we had enough in our community. If anybody were to ask us for this seed or for the corn for some ceremonial feast, we felt it was our responsibility to have the corn and to be able to give it. So, on that material level, that’s the relationship that my family has to corn. It’s interesting because now our whole community has taken that up, there’s a lot of people growing. We’ve been talking about putting together a little chart of all of the people from the Confederacy that have come and spent time with us in various phases of growing, planting, or harvest, seeing how we plant, how during harvesting we collect the seeds that are going to be the seeds for the crop for the next year. That’s the role that I took on, working with my uncles and my father. When we braid the corn, they taught me, and then my daughter, that we are going to put this ear of corn aside for our seed corn. Over the years you learn all the things that they were looking for in the seed corn. That’s why this particular corn, that we call the Tuscarora White Corn, is particularly long: it’s because we look at the straightness of the rows, we look at the size of the seeds, we look at the color, and when we see a particular corn that looks like what we’re looking for, we set that aside for next year. You emphasize the relevance of creating community and being together through planting. Are there other plants, for example beans, squash, potatoes, apples, and peaches, that you have included in your work? In what contexts? In the creation story, it’s thought that seeds were brought from the Creator’s world to this world. Only more recently, the emphasis settled on corn, beans, and squash. There is a really wonderful critique by Amber Adams, who is Mohawk, that looks at the oral history of the creation story and then the biological history of the region that we are in and tries to mediate the two.116 We know that beans are much later in the development of the biome that we are in than the beginning of time of the creation story. So, what we understand is that human beings and these seeds that sustain us co-evolved, that we

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have always had a relationship, and that we need to treat them like a relative. That is, I think, the important principle. Jane Mt. Pleasant, who is also a Tuscarora descendant, is the person that has really drilled down the most on this because of her interest in her own heritage as Tuscarora Haudenosaunee and her willingness to look beyond the conventional frameworks of biology and agriculture to consider cultural dimensions. She began to compare tillage and mound farming.117 Today, the most innovative soil conservancy is against tillage. Indigenous peoples had already arrived at this perspective and instead used mound farming. In the mound complex, they probably experimented and came upon this combination of corn, beans, and squash as a good interdependent mound combination. One of the things that never escapes me is that there is very little mysticism in Indigenous knowledge. It is actually very much about practice, sustained observation, and engagement, and so that is why the relationship to these plants taught me so much. I want to share with you that when I began working with plants, it was 20 years before people were having a discussion about food sovereignty. There was no real celebration of these plants or this process. It was understood as part of the fabric of our culture, but it was not seen as a fetishized, exotic, aesthetic expression. So, I feel like the artworks that I did were not recognized at that period of time, really, for being forward-thinking and for doing what art does, which is anticipating or leading. It was encouraged by Gerald McMaster and exhibited in the show he curated titled Reservation X.118 As an Indigenous person, McMaster never questioned that this was an important thing to deal with. Other than in this case, I didn’t receive much positive reinforcement from the art world. Was the lack of positive reinforcement both from within the Tuscarora community and from the art world? Each of the pieces that I have evolved with has a different reception. The Corn Blue Room, which was included in Reservation X, fits into very conventional notions of art making.119 Its materiality is sculptural, and the piece is interactive, tactical, loaded with aesthetic properties. In contrast, a more recent piece I did, Ah-Theuh-Nyeh-Hah: The Planting Moon, is really based on embodiment, and the performative relationship that we, as women, have to the seeds.120 It is really hard for people to recognize it as an artwork today; but I think that, 20 years from now, people will say: “of course it’s a performance piece in relationship to seeds.” But because it doesn’t have the hardened, normalized aesthetic qualities that art is now associated with, it’s difficult for the public to see this as both a quotidian space and an experiment and, at the same time, as a form of cultural expression. In Ah-Theuh-Nyeh-Hah: The Planting Moon, I conflated the notion of the mound with the corpus of a turtle: I made that installation as a

Conversation with Jolene Rickard  67

Figure 1.8 Jolene Rickard, Ah-Theuh-Nyeh-Hah: The Planting Moon, 2016. Tobacco, sunflowers, corn, squash, beans, soil. Cornell University, Botanical Gardens.

S.B.:

J.R.:

large turtle with 13 moons as mounds. I suggest the notion of the Americas as metaphorically identified as Turtle Island. Also, the number 13 recalls the growing cycle: the Haudenosaunee… we count time by moons, and so our calendar year actually has 13 moons. Sovereignty, survival, and survivance are core for Native Nations, and central to your work as an artist and a scholar. How do you see them tied to growing and foraging plants as food and medicine, considering that these practices are deeply interconnected with place and land? I think the terminology of “sovereignty” is really complex.121 An Indigenous appropriation of that term is not an acceptance of a European oligarchic hierarchy. For a long time, I have been researching how the term “sovereignty” gained currency within our communities. The idea of sovereignty really seemed to pick up a certain legibility among the Haudenosaunee in the early twentieth century when the Confederacy sent a titleholder from the Gayogo̱hó:nǫ’ or Cayuga Nation to the League of Nations in Switzerland, which was the precursor to the United Nations, to advocate for our autonomy as a separate Nation to be recognized on the scale of a nation-state in the global context. It wasn’t a successful trip, but it shows the initial understanding of sovereignty. Starting in the 1980s, I wrote about how visual sovereignty that is representing ourselves in emancipatory ways becomes part of our own decolonization and a part of reimagining or imagining our future.122 This is what somebody like Leanne Simpson would call resurgence,123 or what Gerald Vizenor referred to as survivance.124 There are all kinds of ways in which people are using the notion of sovereignty as a forward-thinking future of Indigenous

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emancipatory space. Linking it to growing touches all of those bases, because many peoples in the world can’t feed themselves; it’s as important as water rights, and so it requires a rethinking of what we measure as success, what become the priorities of a people. We think we are successful when we can feed ourselves in a healthy way, because of the consciousness of putting things in our body that will build our strength or will feed our spirit. That is at the core of the principle of food “sovereignty.” A lot of people throw that word around today but I’m not really sure they have a practice of it. That is the challenge: to practice it and to not extract this knowledge but to be a part of it. To me, it does not make sense to make art about something that is not reciprocal. I am not just representing these ideas; I actually have a practice that I am deeply engaged in. It is really hard to do. You have to have land, resources, skills, knowledge of the seed and of the soil; you have to be in dialogue with people about the weather. This is all I talk about with my family and my cousins, looking at the crops and looking at how stressed they are this year. We see cornfields that are yellow because of the erratic weather we have had. Then we ask ourselves: What does that mean? What are the animals telling us, the caterpillars are already out, it’s really early for caterpillars…do we have early winter coming? The weather is a big thing now in the news: “oh it’s a 500-year flood.” No… it’s that these systems are now irrevocably changed and so we are scrambling to catch up with them. When you are a grower, you ask yourself: “Do I have to change my crop?” Everybody is struggling right now. It is really good that more people are interested in food sovereignty because we are all going to be faced with shipping issues and importing food from other places in the world. The consciousness of trying to grow and eat locally, sustainably, is rising. It is really hard for the art world to see planting or lab experiments as art, but I think people are starting to get that it was very anticipatory of this moment when we’re all focused on the biological representation of the pandemic. Yet, I feel that growing food is going to be a central issue for the next 25 years: How do we feed the world’s population? One question that I care about asking concerns collaborations with other women. You contributed to the exhibit Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2020. What was the exhibition process like, how did it help reflect and compare Indigenous women artists’ realities, legacies, and hopes? For me, it wasn’t a new experience because I was involved with Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Harmony Hammond in an exhibit called Sweetgrass Cedar and Sage: Contemporary Art by Native American Women (1987) that took place in New York City at the American Indian Community House Gallery.125 I would argue that this show was a precursor of the model of women collaboration focused on

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J.R.:

women’s work, and the celebration of multiple forms of making that included textile art. At that period of time, there still was not full acceptance of non-sculptural and non-painterly works. Hearts of Our People expanded on the Sweetgrass Cedar and Sage model and benefited from a wider acceptance. Sweetgrass Cedar and Sage came out of an Indigenous art gallery in New York City that was located in SoHo and struggled with a hand-to-mouth kind of existence. Now, Hearts of Our People is supported by a federally funded institution. Putting those two exhibits in dialogue helps us to understand how much and what kind of change and maybe acceptance there has been in the artworld. As far as a collaborative process, I think that the institution still has a heavy mark, there has to be a different leadership structure, although this does not apply to the curatorial and collaborative process. My co-curator Jill Yohe was really informed and sensitive, and I have a more experienced eye, so I think it was a good experience for lots of women from our communities who have not felt that sense of co-creation and empowerment from being involved in an exhibit. In those terms, I think it was very important to extend the experience of the maker into the responsibility of representation, of framing the experience. This process enables a form of interconnectedness, shows another way of creating relationships. Yes, it does, it met some of my needs; but if I were at the helm, there would have been more of an eye toward our political autonomy in relationship to settler space. So, the exhibit was very celebratory and a number of the works did have an informed and critical perspective, but what does it mean to bring all of these Indigenous Nations together? I think that question was never explored or asked. I would like to further explore your commitment to reimagining the role of women within the Tuscarora community and in the arts in general. For you, what is the connection between women and growing plants? How does this relationship embody non-hierarchical structures? Among the Haudenosaunee, there are different kinds of instruction that reinforce these ideas, and one, of course, is what people sometimes refer to as The Words Before All Else or the Thanksgiving Address or Haʔ Kanęherathęhčreh, and it’s really a recitation that situates human beings in relationship to all other living things and, of course, that includes the wind, the sky, the sun, the moon, everything you can think of… and there is a particular order to it. That is a representation of how the Haudenosaunee world is ordered: there are so many different points in the cosmological framework, in the worldview, that look at women as equal to men, but having distinct roles. Historically, actually, women were primarily responsible for growing, and so there were seed songs that women were responsible for during

70  Conversation with Jolene Rickard planting. It is all about energy, and there is a lot of discussion around women’s bodies in relation to these energies. Over time, when the Haudenosaunee… and it’s not unique to the Haudenosaunee… when we became peoples that did not have full control over our homelands, growing became one of the most important ways in which we would sustain ourselves. At that point, it was taken over by men. Today, men are very proud and responsible growers in our communities. I guess part of me continuing to engage with this on both artistic and practical levels is just to continuously remind my own people that women have a really important role. It’s really difficult to open these discussions up even within my own community, but maybe we are entering a new phase. All our peoples have been impacted by oppressive systems of patriarchy. Pushing back is really difficult because it is not just men that sustain patriarchies, but rather entire families, because their power is privileged by this system. My father, when he was with us, received a lot of criticism for insisting that his daughters be educated, insisting that we be financially independent. He was very forward-thinking in this way, and we talked about it a great deal. And so, historically what the garden or growing represented was power and independence for Indigenous women, in particular, Haudenosaunee women. If you control food sources, you have a lot to say about how things are done in your community or your village or your extended family. That is why my work has always been concerned with economics, as shown by Corn Blue Room. I was engaging with the entanglement discourse before people named it that, because you can’t really talk about one of these things without really dealing with everything else.

Notes for Section I

1 Greg Castillo, “Counterculture Terroir: California’s Hippie Enterprise Zone,” in Hippie Modernism. The Struggle for Utopia, ed. Andrew Blauvelt (Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center, 2015), 87–101. See also Silvia Bottinelli, “The Kitchen: Stories from Western Magazines,” in Arts and Foods, ed. Germano Celant (Milan: Electa, 2015), 563. 2 Silvia Bottinelli and Margherita D’Ayala Valva, The Taste of Art: Cooking, Food, and Counterculture in Contemporary Practices (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2017), 3–20. 3 Lauren Araiza, “In Common Struggle against a Common Oppression: The United Farm Workers and the Black Panther Party, 1968–1973,” The Journal of African American History 94.2 (Spring 2009): 200–23. 4 Overall reflections on utopia in contemporary art at the turn of the millennium appear in: Molly Nesbit, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Rirkrit Tiravanija, “Utopia Station,” in Dreams and Conflicts: The Dictatorship of the Viewer: 50th International Venice Biennale, ed. Francesco Bonami (New York: Rizzoli, 2003), 320–42; and Richard Noble, ed. Utopias (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2009). A specific discussion of food-based art and utopia is included in Daniela Fargione, “Utopian and Dystopian Meals: Food Art, Gastropolitics and the Anthropocene,” CoSMO 15 (2019): 255–70. 5 Noble, Utopias, 12. 6 Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World (New York: Random House, 2001). 7 Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century (1985),” in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, ed. Haraway (New York: Routledge, 1991), 149–81. 8 Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). 9 Rosi Braidotti, “A Theoretical Framework for the Critical Posthumanities,” Theory, Culture & Society 36.6 (November 2019): 31–61; 31. In “Posthuman Critical Theory,” Journal of Posthuman Studies 1.1 (2017): 9–25, Braidotti further positions Posthumanism as “Monism= embrainment of the body and embodiment of the mind; Relationality= interdependence and co-creation of all beings; Nature-culture-media ecologies (Deleauze, Haraway); Flow, nomadism, constant becoming (instead of binaries, oppositions, antagonism; Non-linear cartographies (politics of location, the subject experiences a constant zig-zagging across time and space through memory and imagination).” 10 Cecilia Alemani, “The Milk of Dreams,” in The Milk of Dreams: Biennale Arte 2022, ed. Manuela Hansen (Venice: La Biennale di Venezia), 44. 11 Giovanni Aloi and Susan McHugh, Posthumanism in Art and Science: A Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021), 4.

72  Notes for Section I 12 Kate Morris, Shifting Grounds: Landscape in Contemporary Native American Art (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019), 111. 13 Ibidem, 113. 14 For an overview of this movement, including critical contextualization, primary sources in English translation, and color images of a range of artworks, see Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Arte Povera (London: Phaidon, 1999). 15 Elizabeth Mangini, Seeing Through Closed Eyelids. Giuseppe Penone and the Nature of Sculpture (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2021), 97. 16 Benjamin Buchloh, “Interview with Giuseppe Penone,” in Giuseppe Penone, ed. Laurent Busine (Brussels: Mercatorfonds, 2012), 16. 17 Mangini, Seeing Through Closed Eyelids, 100. 18 Frances Colpitt, “In and Out of the Studio,” in Under the Big Black Sun. California Art 1974–81, eds. Lisa Gabrielle Mark and Paul Shimmel (Munich, London, New York: Del Monico – Prestel, 2011), 63–80; see also Donna Brookman, “Terms of Engagement: Radical Communalism in Bay Area Art,” Sculpture 21.6 (July/August 2002): 46–51. 19 Jana Blankenship, “The Farm by the Freeway,” in Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America 1965–77, eds. Elissa Auther and Adam Lerner (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 44. 20 Katy Butler, “A Farm Flourishes beside the S.F. Freeway,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 18, 1977, 17. 21 Christine Macel, La Biennale di Venezia: 57. Esposizione Internationale D’Arte: Viva Arte Viva (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2017), 240–3; “Q&A: Bonnie Ora Sherk and the Performance of Being,” Berkelee Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2012, https://bampfa.org/news/q-bonnie-ora-sherk-andperformance-being 22 Lisa Woynarski, “Performing the Bio-urban in Bonnie Ora Sherk’s The Farm and Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s FlowCity,” Performance Research 25.2 (2020): 126–33. 23 David Adams, “Joseph Beuys: Pioneer of a Radical Ecology,” Art Journal 51.2 (1992): 26–34. 24 Claudia Mesch, Critical Lives. Joseph Beuys (London: Reaktion Books, 2017), 18. 25 Thomas Kellein and Jon Hendricks, Fluxus (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995). 26 Antonio d’Avossa, Joseph Beuys. Difesa della Natura (Milan: Skira, 2001), 14. 27 John Paull, “The Secrets of Koberwitz: The Diffusion of Rudolf Steiner’s Agriculture Course and the Founding of Biodynamic Agriculture,” Journal of Social Research & Policy 2.1 (2011): 19–29. 28 Lucrezia De Domizio Durini, Incontro con Beuys (Pescara: D.I.A.C., 1984), 339. 29 d’Avossa, Joseph Beuys, 19–21. 30 De Domizio Durini, Incontro con Beuys, 242–312. 31 See for example Donna Haraway, “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin,” Environmental Humanities 6.1 (2015): 159–65. 32 De Domizio Durini, Incontro con Beuys, 119. 33 Silvia Bottinelli, Double-Edged Comforts (Montreal & Kingston: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2021), 238–40. 34 Andrew Blauvelt, “One, Two: A Hundred, a Thousand Global Tools. An Interview with Franco Raggio,” in Hippie Modernism, ed. Blauvelt, 425–32; and Sara Catenacci and Jacopo Galimberti, “Deschooling, Manual Labour, and Emancipation: The Architecture and Design of Global Tools, 1973-1975,” in Collaborations and Its (Dis)Contents. Art, Architecture and Photography since 1950, eds. Meredith Brown and Michelle Millar Fisher (London: The Courtauld Institute of Art, 2017), 99–121. 35 Sara Catenacci, “Recipes for Solo Sailors: Gianfranco Baruchello and the Agricola Cornelia S.p.A., 1973–81,” Public Art Dialogue 8.1 (2018): 72–97; 76. See also Gianfranco Baruchello and Henry Martin, How to Imagine. A Narrative of Art and

Notes for Section I  73 Agriculture (New Paltz, NY: PcPherson & Company, 1983), 27–8; and Elisabetta Rattalino, The Seasons in the City: Artists and Rural Worlds in the Era of Calvino and Pasolini (PhD Diss., University of St. Andrews, 2018). 36 Baruchello and Martin, How to Imagine, 28. 37 Gianfranco Baruchello, Agricolantipotere, brochure, cyclostyle. Baruchello Archives. Courtesy of Carla Subrizi. 38 Baruchello and Martin, How to Imagine. 39 Catenacci, “Recipes for Solo Sailors,” 75, 83. 40 Baruchello and Martin, How to Imagine, 153. The overall reception of Maoist ideas and image by the Italian left in the 1960s and 1970s is discussed in: Jacopo Galimberti, “Dadaism and Mao-Dadaism in 1960s and 1970s Italy,” in Art, Global Maoism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, eds. Galimberti, Noemí de Haro García, and Victoria H. F. Scott (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), 213–32. Galimberti analyzes the ways that Mao’s positions were adapted and appropriated by Italian activists to serve the needs of their own struggles. He underlines that far left magazines complemented their texts with illustrations that often altered Mao’s image through collage; their Dadaist juxtapositions sometimes expressed continuity between Mao’s politics and the magazines’ ideology, while others showed humorous contrasts. Pablo Echaurren, son of artist Roberto Matta, contributed to the conceptualization of the creative strategies of Autonomia (within the Italian far left) including the use of Dadaist collage. My hypothesis is that Baruchello’s interest in Mao was in part motivated by the association of Maoism and Dadaism in contemporaneous visual culture. Dada in general and Marcel Duchamp specifically had a great impact on Baruchello’s poetics, and Baruchello had direct contact with Matta, who introduced him to Duchamp in the late 1950s. For more on this topic, see: Gianfranco Baruchello and Henry Martin, Why Duchamp: An Essay on Aesthetic Impact (Kingston, NY: McPherson, 1985), 17–19. 41 Gianfranco Baruchello, Agricola Cornelia S.p.A. 1973-’81 (Milan: Grafis, 1981), 37. 42 Baruchello, Agricola Cornelia S.p.A., 34. 43 On the idea of fluidity in Baruchello’s work, see Sharon Hecker, “In the Belly of the Book: Carla Subrizi’s Note a Margine to Gianfranco Baruchello’s Psicoenciclopedia Possibile,” presented at Gianfranco Baruchello. Psicoenciclopedia Impossibile, Center for Italian Modern Art, December 21, 2022, https://vimeo.com/channels/1236855 44 “Sull’Agricola Cornelia,” TV Interview with Gianfranco Baruchello, 1981, 58.54, 5.56. Baruchello Archives. Courtesy of Carla Subrizi. See also Carla Subrizi, “L’Agricola Cornelia,” in Baruchello, Certe Idee, eds. Achille Bonito Oliva and Subrizi (Milan: Electa, 2011), 76–83; 79. 45 Baruchello and Martin, Why Duchamp. 46 Bonito Oliva and Subrizi, Baruchello, Certe Idee, 260. 47 Wood Roberdeau, “After Baruchello. Agricultural Encounters in Contemporary Art,” in Rurality Re-imagined. Villagers, Farmers, Wanderers, Wild Things, ed. Ben Stringer (Novato, CA: Applied Research and Design Publishing, ORO Editions, 2018), 90–101. 48 Fritz Haeg, Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn: A Project by Fritz Haeg (New York: Metropolis Books, 2010), 10. 49 Diana Balmori, “Beauty and the Lawn: A Break with Tradition,” in Edible Estates, ed. Haeg, 12. 50 Ibidem. 51 “Edible Estates,” Fritz Haeg Complete Online Archive, accessed August 5, 2020, http://www.fritzhaeg.com/garden/initiatives/edibleestates/main.html 52 “Shows,” Ibidem, http://www.fritzhaeg.com/archive/shows/ 53 Marty Carlock, “Fritz Haeg’s Alternative Possibilities,” Sculpture 28.4 (May 2009): 38–41; 41.

74  Notes for Section I 54 Fritz Haeg, “Life with the Land,” Frieze 205 (September 2019): 31–32; 31. 55 Catriona Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, eds. Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010); Amanda Di Battista, Oded Haas, and Darren Patrick, eds. “From Queer/Nature to Queer Ecologies,” Undercurrents 19, special issue (2015). 56 “The Land,” The Land Foundation, https://www.thelandfoundation.org/about 57 Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2002). French edition 1998. 58 See, among others, Stephanie Smith, ed. Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL: Smart Museum, 2013), 334–43. 59 Tiravanija’s practice was at the center of a heated debate involving art historians Claire Bishop and Grant Kester. Bishop critiqued the vagueness of relational aesthetics’ construct, especially concerning the assumption that deep meaning could be generated by interactions with the elite public of art galleries. She argued that conflict and difference, instead of community and commonality, are the basis for healthy criticality and democracy. On the other hand, art historian Grant Kester saw positively the work of artists that allowed audience interactions through their work, countering the individualism and isolation of late capitalist societies. For more detail, see: Grant Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Claire Bishop, “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,” October (2004): 51–79; Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London, New York: Verso Books, 2012); and Jason Miller, “Activism vs. Antagonism: Socially Engaged Art from Bourriaud to Bishop and Beyond,” Field 3 (2016): 163–83. 60 Daniel Birnbaum, “The Lay of the Land. An Experiment in Art and Community in Thailand,” Artforum 43.10 (2005): 270–346. 61 Ibidem. 62 “The Land.” 63 Birnbaum, “The Lay of the Land.” 64 Braidotti, “A Theoretical Framework,” 31. 65 This information can be found in multiple sources about The Land, although more detail is not available. 66 See among others: Hans Ulrich Obrist, “The Land,” 2003; and Molly Nesbit, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Rirkrit Tiravanija, “What Is a Station?” 2003, in Noble, Utopias, 158, 169. 67 Jennifer Roche, “Socially Engaged Art, Critics and Discontents: An Interview with Claire Bishop,” in Artistic Bedfellows: Histories, Theories, and Conversations in Collaborative Art Practices, ed. Holly Crawford (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2008), 208; Janet Kraynak, “The Land and the Economics of Sustainability,” Art Journal 69.4 (2010): 16–25; Clare Veal, “Bringing The Land Foundation Back to Earth: A New Model for the Critical Analysis of Relational Art,” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 6.1 (2014): 23701–10. 68 Raimar Strange, “Interview with Rirkrit Tiravanija,” Spike Art Magazine 31 (Spring 2012), https://www.spikeartmagazine.com/?q=articles/interview-rirkrit-tiravanija 69 Patrick Jones, “Reclaiming Accountability from Hypertechnocivility, to Grow Again the Flowering Earth,” in Perma/Culture: Imagining Alternatives in an Age of Crisis, eds. Molly Wallace and David Carruthers (London: Routledge, 2018), Ch. 3. 70 Happen Films, Creatures of Place, 2018 12 min. 14 sec., https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=rCRukvZE2Vk 71 Happen Films, Creatures of Place. 72 Ian D. Clark, Scars in the Landscape. A Register of Massacre Sites in Western Victoria, 1803–1859 (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, 1995), 85–102.

Notes for Section I  75 73 Haeg, “Life with the Land,” 32. Indigenous thought is a precedent for New Materialist theories. Developed in the context of academic disciplines since the 2000s, the latter show points in common with pre-existing Indigenous cosmologies and epistemologies, which are more deeply tied to particular places, fostering a sense of cultural belonging and identity. Jerry Lee Rosiek, Jimmy Snyder, and Scott L Pratt, “The New Materialisms and Indigenous Theories of Non-Human Agency: Making the Case for Respectful Anti-Colonial Engagement,” Qualitative inquiry 26.3–4 (2020): 331–46. 74 Betelhem Makonnen, “Beyond Posthumanism,” Antennae 57 (Spring 2022): 10–12; 11. 75 Michael Blake, Maize for the Gods: Unearthing the 9,000-Year History of Corn (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 63–73. 76 “Moses Shunning Tuscarora Lands: Smaller Niagara Reservoir Approved by Commission Though ‘Less Desirable,’” New York Times, February 11, 1959, 42. 77 Jessica Horton and Janet Berlo, “Beyond the Mirror,” Third Text 27.1 (2013): 17–28; 27. 78 See, among others: Amy Hufnagel, Jolene Rickard. Cracked Shell (Syracuse, NY: Menshel Photography Gallery, 1994); Jessica Horton, Art for an Undivided Earth. The American Indian Movement Generation (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2017), 7. 79 Jane Mt. Pleasant, “The Science behind the Three Sisters Mound System in the Northeast,” in Histories of Maize. Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Prehistory, Linguistics, Biogeography, Domestication, and Evolution of Maize, eds. John Staller, Robert Tykot and Bruce Benz (Burlington, MA: Academic Press, 2006), 529–37. 80 Jolene Rickard, “Cew Ete Haw I Tih: The Bird That Carries Language Back to Another,” in Partial Recall. Photographs of Native North Americans, ed. Lucy Lippard (New York: The New Press, 1992), 105–11; 105. 81 “‘Ah-Theuh-Nyeh-Hah:’ The Planting Moon,” Cornell University, October 29, 2016, https://events.cornell.edu/event/ah-theuh-nyeh-hah_the_planting_moon 82 Joseph Zordan, “Art for This Moment. Appeal to the Great Spirit,” Museum of Fine Arts Boston, July 6, 2020, https://www.mfa.org/article/2020/appeal-to-thegreat-spirit 83 Faazine, “Garden for Boston. Raven Rishapes Boston,” First American Art Magazine, May 31, 2021, https://firstamericanartmagazine.com/garden-for-boston/ 84 This conversation between Bonnie Ora Sherk and Silvia Bottinelli took place over zoom on July 30, 2020. It was later transcribed by Lilli Johnson and edited by Bottinelli. Sherk gave verbal approval to include the interview in this volume. Sadly, Sherk passed away before she was able to see this book published. It was an honor to speak with such a remarkable artist, and I feel grateful for the opportunity to celebrate her memory here. 85 “About,” A.L.L. A Living Library, https://alivinglibrary.org/about 86 “FUNCSHUIONAL ART: East Marries West – North and South – A New Planetary Genre,” A.L.L. A Living Library, accessed June 27, 2022, https://alivinglibrary. org/uncategorized/funcshuional-art-east-meets-west-north-south 87 Among other sources, see Linda Weintraub, “Bonnie Ora Sherk,” in To Life! Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet, ed. Weintraub (Oakland: University of California Press, 2012), 105–10; Mirjana Blankenship, “The Farm by the Freeway,” in Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968–78, ed. Chris Carlsson (San Francisco, CA: City Lights Foundation, 2011), https://www.foundsf.org/index. php?title=The_Farm_by_the_Freeway; and “Crossroads Community (the farm),” A.L.L. A Living Library, https://alivinglibrary.org/art-landscape-architecturesystemic-design/crossroads-community-the-farm-video 88 Sherk was included in Lucy Lippard’s feminist art exhibition titled Issue. “Sherk’s installation for Issue integrated conceptual elements of The Farm for an upper gallery of the ICA with an auspicious eastward orientation and view to the gardens of St. James

76  Notes for Section I Park,” as stated in: Beth Anne Lauritis, Lucy Lippard and the Provisional Exhibition: Intersections of Conceptual Art and Feminism, 1970–1980, 2009 (Doctoral Diss., Los Angeles, CA: UCLA, 2009), 270. See also: Lucy Lippard, Issue: Social Strategies by Women Artists: An Exhibition (London: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1980). 89 Nick Kaye, “Interview with Bonnie Ora Sherk. San Francisco, 6 February 2015,” SiteWorks: San Francisco performance 1969–85, accessed August 10, 2020 http:// siteworks.exeter.ac.uk/interviews/bonnieorasherk#a_triptych_within_a_triptych 90 “Nation’s First Fair Held Here in 1853: Dazzling Crystal Palace was scene of World Exposition…,” The New York Times, September 23, 1935, 14. 91 P.S. Lespinasse, “Bryant Park and the Reservoir,” The New York Times, March 15, 1892, 5. 92 “In Sitting Still I, Sherk, in an evening gown, sat on an overstuffed armchair in the midst of a garbage- and water-filled field near a recently constructed freeway in San Francisco to call attention to the neglect of natural resources, such as the watershed where she was sitting.” Jennifer McCabe, Counter-Landscapes: Performative Actions from the 1970s–Now (Diss., Tempe: Arizona State University, 2020), 22. See also: Kathryn Crocker, Stillness as a Strategy for Political Resistance in the Early Performances of Bonnie Sherk (master’s thesis, San Francisco: California College of the Arts, 2015), https://www.academia.edu/36963319/Stillness_as_a_Strategy_for_ Political_Resistance_in_the_Early_Performances_of_Bonnie_Sherk 93 “OMI/ Excelsior Living Library & Think Park,” A Living Library, accessed August 10, 2022, https://alivinglibrary.org/branches/omiexcelsior 94 Like Bonnie Ora Sherk, artist Mel Henderson (1922–2013) was interested in temporary interventions that interacted with urban landscapes—often freeways and intersections. He sometimes introduced farm animals (live or sculpted) and plants within the built environment. See Steven Nash and Bill Berkson, Facing Eden: 100 Years of Landscape Art in the Bay Area (Berkeley: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and University of California Press, 1995), 126; Suzanne Foley and Constance Lewallen, Space, Time, Sound: Conceptual Art in the San Francisco Bay Area: the 1970s (San Francisco, CA: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1981), 79, 173; Tanya Zimbardo, “Magic is Everywhere: Mel Henderson (1922–2013),” ­SFMOMA Open Space, December 4, 2013, https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2013/ 12/henderson/ 95 This conversation among Fritz Haeg, Silvia Bottinelli, Muriel Horvath, and Elka Sorensen took place over zoom on July 10, 2020. It was subsequently transcribed by Horvath, edited by Bottinelli, and reviewed by Haeg. 96 Fritz Haeg and Stacy Wakefield-Forte, The Sundown Salon Unfolding Archive: A Project by Fritz Haeg (Livingston Manor, NY: Evil Twin Publications, 2009). 97 “About,” The Land Institute, accessed August 3, 2020, https://landinstitute.org/ about-us/ 98 Stan Cox, Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer) (New York: New Press, 2012). 99 Haeg, Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn; for a list of the Edible Estates Project, see “Edible Estates,” Fritz Haeg, accessed August 3, 2020, http://www. fritzhaeg.com/garden/initiatives/edibleestates/main.html 100 Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2018), 41. Original edition 1969. 101 Superstudio, La Moglie di Lot e la Coscienza di Zeno (Venice: La Biennale, 1978). 102 Sandilands and Erickson, Queer Ecologies; Shauna M. O’Donnell, “Carrying on and Going Beyond: Queer Nature,” Undercurrents 6 (1994): 2–3. 103 “Sundown School of Queer Economics,” Fritz Haeg, accessed August 4, 2020, https://www.fritzhaeg.com/schoolhouse/projects/queer-home-ec.html#:~:

Notes for Section I  77 text=The%20Sundown%20Schoolhouse%20of%20Queer,exercising%2C%20 hanging%20out%2C%20lecturing%2C 104 This conversation between Artist as Family and Silvia Bottinelli, in collaboration with Elka Sorensen and Muriel Horvath, was conducted over email in July and August 2020. 105 Patrick Jones, re:)Fermenting Culture: A Return to Insight through Gut Logic (Central Victoria: TreeElbow, 2017), accessed August 6, 2020, https://drive.google.com/ file/d/1cbQaOSey5DgntjmUvOiv_kgeTWEaqUoE/view 106 Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body, and Primitive Accumulation (New York: Autonomedia, 2004). 107 Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World (­Melbourne: Australia Text Publishing, 2019). 108 This conversation between Jolene Rickard and Silvia Bottinelli took place over zoom on September 3, 2021; it was later transcribed by Lilli Johnson, edited by Bottinelli, and reviewed by Rickard. 109 The Tuscarora Nation Reservation in Niagara County, New York State. 110 Clinton Rickard and Barbara Graymont, The Fighting Tuscarora: The Autobiography of Chief Clinton Rickard (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1984). 111 On the role of migratory movements of peoples in the early spread of corn and the agricultural development of corn varieties, see: Michael Blake, Maize for the Gods: Unearthing the 9,000-Year History of Corn (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 63–73. 112 See Alfred Cave, The French and Indian War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004); Daniel Marston, The French-Indian War, 1754–1760 (New York: Routledge, 2003). 113 See Rhiannon Koehler, “Hostile Nations: Quantifying the Destruction of the Sullivan-Clinton Genocide of 1779,” American Indian Quarterly 42.4 (2018): 427–53. Because the Sullivan-Clinton campaign aimed to destroy access to food for the Haudenosaunee Indigenous Nations, the reintroduction of corn had important ­implications for survival and political affirmation. 114 Kaylena Bray, “Voices of Maíz: Exploring Seeds, Knowledge, and Relationship,” Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine (December 2016), https://www.cultural survival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/voices-maiz-exploringseeds-knowledge-and-relationship 115 See Jacob E. Thomas and Terry Boyle, Teachings from the Longhouse (Toronto: Stoddart, 1995). 116 Amber Meadow Adams, “Yotsi’tsishon and the Language of the Seed in the Haudenosaunee Story of Earth’s Creation,” English Language Notes 58.1 (2020): 111–31. 117 See for example Jane Mt. Pleasant, “The Science behind the Three Sisters Mound System in the Northeast,” in Histories of Maize. Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Prehistory, Linguistics, Biogeography, Domestication, and Evolution of Maize, eds. John Staller, Robert Tykot and Bruce Benz (Burlington, MA: Academic Press, 2006), 529–37. 118 Gerald McMaster, ed. Reservation X, exhibition catalogue (Seattle: University of Washington Press; Hull: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1998). 119 McMaster, Reservation X, 122–131. On page 125, Corn Blue Room is described as such: “Her complex installation […], which includes photographs of corn and dams, forms the shape of an Iroquoian longhouse. At its center, corn is suspended, while a CD-Rom narrative can be manipulated to take the viewer deeper into the story. The idea is to imagine a small Tuscarora community, surrounded by powerful dams and electrical generating stations, and its fight for cultural survival.” The reference to dams is related to the 1958 effort of the Power Authority, led by

78  Notes for Section I Robert Moses, to flood the Tuscarora reservation in order to build a new reservoir. The plan was met with resistance by the Tuscarora community, and their protests resulted in the preservation of part (but not all) of the reservation. The new reservoir still flooded about half of the land. Corn Blue Room is further discussed in Jessica Horton and Janet Berlo, “Beyond the Mirror,” Third Text 27.1 (2013): 17–28. On page 27, they argue that: “The installation invites reverence for the caloric and cultural power of these ancestral strains of corn kept and nurtured by countless generations of Tuscarora horticulturalists. The blue glow calls to mind contemporaneous artworks invoking the ultraviolet light under which the GFP – green fluorescent protein – gene is rendered visible for engineering. An aura of technological know-how is certainly deserved. Tuscarora women have carefully maintained a variety known as Tuscarora White Corn for size, flavour and nutrition; its kernels have as much as fifty per cent more protein than mass-marketed corn and a lower glycaemic index. Today, these ancient, Indigenous strains of corn are constantly threatened by the genetically modified corn hybrids ubiquitous in American agribusiness. […] Corn, in turn, becomes a powerful visual justification for the continued relevance of Haudenosaunee principles of governance based in material collaborations, rather than manipulations.” 120 Ah-Theuh-Nyeh-Hah: The Planting Moon by Jolene Rickard, Cornell University, Botanical Gardens, Installation. Sponsored by the CCA, 8/16-10/16. See: Jolene Rickard, YękhihsutkęhaɁnęhk: Our Ancestors, Single Channel Video (Ithaca: Cornell University, Johnson Museum, Faculty Exhibition, 1/2016-5/2016). 121 On Rickard’s discussion of the term “sovereignty,” see Jessica L. Horton, Art for an Undivided Earth. The American Indian Movement Generation (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2017), 7. 122 See for example Jolene Rickard, “Diversifying Sovereignty and the Reception of Indigenous Art,” Art Journal 76.2 (2017):81–4; and Jolene Rickard, “Sovereignty: A Line in the Sand,” in Strong Hearts: Native American Visions and Voices, eds. Nancy Ackerman and Peggy Roalf (New York: Aperture, 1995), 50–9. 123 “Utilizing storytelling as a decolonizing process with the power to recall, envision, and create modes of resurgence and contesting cognitive imperialisms… This  ­resurgence creates profoundly different ways of thinking, organizing, and being because the Indigenous processes that give birth to our collective resurgence are  fundamentally nonhierarchical, nonexploitative, nonextractivist, and nonauthoritarian.” Quote from: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, “Indigenous Resurgence and Co-resistance,” Critical Ethnic Studies 2.2 (2016): 19–34; 19, 23. See also: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence (Burnaby, BC: ­Simon Fraser University Library, 2011). 124 “Native survivance is an active sense of presence over historical absence, the dominance of cultural simulations, and manifest manners. Native survivance is a continuation of stories.” Quote from: Gerald Robert Vizenor, Native Liberty: Natural Reason and Cultural Survivance (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 1. See also: Gerald Robert Vizenor, Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence (­Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008). 125 Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Mary Adams, Imogene Goodshot, Rhonda Holy Bear, Florence Benedict, Christine Eustace, Carm Little Turtle, and Otellie Loloma, “Women of Sweetgrass, Cedar, and Sage,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 15.1/2 (1987): 35–41; Nancy Luomala, “Women of Sweetgrass, Cedar and Sage,” ­Woman’s Art Journal 9.1 (1988): 42–44.

Section II

2

Confronting Technology in the Field Reimagining Agriculture for Food Sovereignty and Environmental Remediation

Dialectics, Tautology, and Paradox: Agnes Denes A golden rectangle crops up against areas of gray, in aerial photos of the 1982 environmental artwork Wheatfield—A Confrontation, by American artist of Hungarian origin, Agnes Denes. From above, the work looks like a geometrical abstract painting. Yet, by shifting perspective to get closer and on the ground, additional photographic documentation helps notice that the gold is not painted on and flat: it is wheat, alive and three-dimensional, bordered by a landfill overflowing with waste. Denes played with the vocabulary of abstract art—from field painting to minimalist sculpture—to unsettle it from within. The rigidity of a rectangular shape, in part determined by the site, is put into question by the insertion of unpredictable organic elements within its borders. I argue that this visual strategy echoes that of artists practicing since the 1960s, including many Arte Povera members.1 In a US context, Helen Mayer and Newton Harrison, whose work will be further analyzed later in this chapter, filled geometrical pools of water with brine shrimp cultures for Survival Piece #2: Notations on the Ecosystem of the Western Salt with the Inclusion of Brine Shrimp (1971),2 and planted a small hog pasture within a rectangular raised bed inside museum spaces (Hog Pasture: Survival Piece #1, 1970–71).3 That said, for Denes’s Wheatfield—A Confrontation, the scale was outstandingly large, and the location was outside the gallery space. The piece was a two-acre wheatfield in Lower Manhattan, in an area then used as a dumping site where Battery Park now sits. There, Denes received permission to grow a wheatfield for a few months, before the area was redeveloped.4 During the summer of 1982, a participant visiting the site would have been immersed into an agricultural landscape with a view of the World Trade Center, which towered over New York City’s skyline. The soil brought in by Denes— and eventually the wheat that grew from such soil—formed a horizontal, rectangular plot that for the artist functioned as a confrontation with the verticality of the city, and especially the close-by twin towers of Wall Street. Through this contraposition, Denes hoped to point to the need for more genuine, fulfilling,

DOI: 10.4324/9780367200800-5

82  Confronting Technology in the Field

Figure 2.1 Agnes Denes, Wheatfield—A Confrontation: Battery Park Landfill, Downtown Manhattan, with Agnes Denes standing in the field, photographic documentation, 1982. Creative Commons.

and generous values for humanity against the cruel antagonism enabled by ideas of modernity and progress. She wrote: Wheatfield was a symbol, a universal concept. It represented food, energy, commerce, world trade, economics. It referred to mismanagement, waste, world hunger, and ecological concerns. It was an intrusion into the Citadel, a confrontation of High Civilization. Then again, it was also Shangri-La, a small paradise, one’s childhood, a hot summer afternoon in the country, peace, forgotten values, simple pleasures.5 Through formal choices and embedded symbolism, the artist intended to contrast the perceived masculine, aggressive, abstract, and industrial realm of finance with what was presented as the feminine, horizontal, caring, and experiential environment of agriculture. Her interest in the materialization of language was in sync with international feminist art discourses: Denes’s work was part of the 1978 Venice Biennale exhibition curated by critic and artist Mirella Bentivoglio and titled La Materializzazione del Linguaggio. For the occasion, Bentivoglio collected contributions from female artists who experimented with tools for self-expression, aware of the limits of spoken languages that had been defined by male writers and thinkers. Materiality, in the sense of mater, both matter and mother, offered opportunities to communicate in liberating ways.6 An avid researcher of philosophy, logic, and mathematics, Denes worked tirelessly to visualize thought processes and arguments through her art. As she shared with critic and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, since the 1950s

Confronting Technology in the Field  83 she was interested in matrices, dialectic oppositions, and mathematical structures that materialized in her performances, ritual actions, poetic texts, and drawings, including in The Human Argument (1969–70) and The Rice/Tree/ Burial (1968).7 In the latter, on a site above Niagara Falls, Denes planted rice— which she saw as a thesis, symbolic of life, creation, growth, impermanence, and death; chained trees, to embody an antithesis and signify interference with life and development; and buried haikus, poetry written by her, to indicate a synthesis, an acceptance of decay, a form of survival through succession, a continuum that would result in transcendence.8 The elements in the artwork, including organic components like rice, trees, and soil, functioned as symbols in a logical grammar that reflected on human condition in terms that Denes considered universal. Interestingly, the symbolism used by Denes was sometimes open-ended and intrinsically contradictory, as in the case of rice, which to her signified both birth and death. I would like to expand on this observation and apply it to Wheatfield—A Confrontation in order to offer a layered and multivalent perspective on this seminal work. The “confrontation” in Wheatfield meant to juxtapose profit-and-­progressoriented, fast, and powerful finance systems with deeper values of care, slowness, and nourishment, embodied by wheat. Yet, a few art historians have observed that the field that Denes planted was obtained through the movement of soil and the use of tillage, fertilizers, and heavy machinery:9 Wheatfield was a monocrop, which could be seen as another expression of the finance world that the artist meant to counter. For example, Caroline Jones has noted that “the consistent discourse of opposition and confrontation may have obscured the work’s involvement with other levels of ‘the system.’”10 More specifically, according to T.J. Demos, the said confrontation amounted to a conventional nature-culture opposition, pitting a “leisurely wheatfield,” as Denes explained, against an “island of achievement-craze culture and decadence,” a “city of competence, sophistication, and crime” against “open fields and the unspoiled farmlands,” and the “everlasting” against the “everchanging.” […] Yet her model of interventionist farming […] had its limits. […] Denes planted a monocrop field, a mode of agriculture that inadvertently paralleled the very rationalization and commodification of farming practices by corporate industrial-chemical agribusiness to which her work’s anticapitalist spirit was otherwise opposed.11 Indeed, the artist fertilized, treated with pesticides, and planted the lower Manhattan field with golden and resilient wheat from North Dakota. The field was not biodiverse; weeding and removing of unwanted plants had to be conducted to keep the project monochromatic, inhabited by golden wheat only. Months later, the harvest relied on heavy machinery; thus the artist applied the technologies of industrial agriculture, which produced pollution and forms of human control over so-called “nature.”

84  Confronting Technology in the Field On the other hand, Denes also replaced acres of wasteland with food, which she later distributed to underprivileged communities through food banks and museum initiatives to help the fight against world hunger. Wheatfield intended to be a form of landscape remediation, an alternative to capitalist greed, and an act of generosity and care, and in part it was all that; nonetheless, it also contributed to pollution and modeled exclusionary monocropping, almost “cropping” and collaging a rectangle of Midwestern landscape with North Dakotan wheat onto the urban space of a megacity. Contradictions were embedded in the work beyond what might have been initially planned for. Similarly to Rice/Tree/Burial, Denes might have intended to structure a visual dialectical argument with Wheatfield—A Confrontation, where Wall Street functioned as the thesis, wheat as the antithesis, and alternative human futures that value and protect the Earth as a synthesis.12 That said, for some, the work ended up being a tautology, where the wheat monocrop equaled the World Trade Center’s financial system. I argue that there is a third-possible interpretation, if one makes space for variables in the equation. I maintain that—like rice—wheat is an open-ended signifier. It can stand, at the same time, for Midwestern monocrops and for a solution to world hunger; to sustenance and peace; to classical myths of maternal love and rebirth, and more. As Denes wrote to me: “to call attention to a problem, you use the strongest symbol. Wheat is the most used grain next to rice.”13 Wheat is ubiquitous and carries a range of meanings depending on context; for example, as I write, global access to wheat is compromised by the Russian war on Ukraine, a violent circumstance that aggravates world hunger and impacts cultural and economic associations with wheat.14 When wheat is a component of the visualization of an argument, like in Wheatfield—A Confrontation, it makes the argument’s overall meaning shifting and dynamic—sometimes tautological and other times dialectical. In this sense, Wheatfield—A Confrontation can be seen as a paradox, that is “a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.”15 The terms of the contradiction in Wheatfield’s paradox are perhaps not wheat versus skyscrapers, but rather opposing meanings within wheat itself. And paradox, Denes maintains, is what makes a piece powerful. As she wrote, “My whole output was based on the paradox. Everything that I did. The strength of a work of art is the push and pull of the paradox. If it doesn’t have the strength of the paradox, it doesn’t exist.”16 Wheatfield—A Confrontation does exist indeed. Despite being a temporary project that lasted one summer in 1982,17 it has entered the canon of art history and was a long-lasting inspiration for countless artist-farmers, including Fritz Haeg, Tattfoo Tan, and many others included in this book.18 DIY Technology and the Power of Agribusiness: Critical Art Ensemble If Denes referred to the imagery of and—to a point—reproduced the mechanisms of monocrop industrial agriculture, other artists actively countered such approaches through do-it-yourself (DIY) technologies that hoped to make

Confronting Technology in the Field  85 food production independent from corporations. For example, since the mid-1990s, the Danish collective N55 (Rikke Luther, Ion Sørvin, Cecilia Wendt, and Ingvil Hareide Aarbakke) has created open-access manuals with instructions on how to build objects based on their own prototypes, including a modular hydroponic unit to grow one’s own food and a “soil factory” to make compost at home.19 BioArt practices that target GMO crops and agribusiness often rely on DIY strategies, too. Monocrops and GMO crops, in very general terms, respond to demand for standardized and abundant foodstuffs and products for consumption by humans, as well as other animals or plants that serve human needs. As part of a modernist agriculture logic, humans attempt to control biological processes to an extent that helps make production and profit more reliable and consistent. Such a mechanism falls under what sociologist and food activist Raj Patel and environmental historian Jason W. Moore define as cheap nature. Cheap nature is the result of the perceived separation of culture and nature, the privatization of land, and the exploitation of labor, with the outcome of turning “the work of human and non-human alike into cheap things.”20 Cheap nature paradigms have difficult histories: for example, the practice of monocropping has roots in the colonial model of plantation agriculture, artistic responses to which will be further discussed in Chapter 3. In addition, the introduction of GMOs jeopardizes food sovereignty for small farmers around the world—with tragic consequences for Indigenous peoples and for farmers in the Global South—­ impacting environmental and public health both at testing sites and in agricultural fields.21 At the same time, advocates of industrial agriculture and GMO crops argue that GMO-crop productivity helps feed the world at a rate that cannot be reproduced by non-industrial farming methods. As presented by sociologist and food studies scholar Hugh Campbell, “This is the complex politics of modernist farming: on one side lauded as a bearer of enlightenment and progress, on the other as a destroyer of worlds with pathological social and ecological ­consequences.”22 Another cause of skepticism concerns the effects of GMOs on human health, with debates both within and outside the scientific community.23 To the art collective Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) (originally Steve Kurtz, Steve Barnes, Dorian Burr, Hope Kurtz, and Beverly Schlee), GMOs became the subject of situational projects with harsh real-life consequences. CAE’s goal was to help the non-technical public understand the science and geopolitical implications of GMO foods. To empower non-specialized readers, in the book Molecular Invasions (2002) CAE summarized their ideas regarding transgenic production and molecular biology: The knowledge and technology in these systems is pliable and can be used in ways for which it was never designed. It can do more than serve the military and the multinationals, as it can be repurposed to work against them. This knowledge and technology is too important to be left to the financial and technocratic few who will use it to advance their own interests.24

86  Confronting Technology in the Field

Figure 2.2 Critical Art Ensemble, Beatriz da Costa and Claire Pentecost, Molecular Invasion, 2002. Roundup Ready corn, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Public domain. Courtesy Steve Kurtz.

CAE experimented with a series of projects that activated such premises, including The Molecular Invasion’s first iteration at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC (2002); and Free-Range Grain at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Germany, and, in a modified version, at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams (2003–4). In Molecular Invasion, in collaboration with artists Beatriz da Costa and Claire Pentecost, and molecular biologist Mustafa Ünlü, among others, CAE planted Roundup Ready soy and corn in planters under ultraviolet lights inside the art gallery. Roundup Ready are GMO seeds first designed in 1996 by the biotech multinational Monsanto to resist the herbicide Roundup, manufactured by the same company.25 In the early 2000s, farmers around the world began to oppose the introduction of Roundup and Roundup Ready crops because of their economic and environmental consequences. These seeds had to be repurchased every season instead of being collected from the crops; also, legal terms with Monsanto made it difficult to stop using GMOs after first introducing them in a field. As discussed by food scholar Emily Eaton, these issues continue to be present and have recently triggered the opposition of organizations of Canadian farmers: their organizing efforts blocked the introduction of Roundup Ready wheat and caused Monsanto’s withdrawal of the crop from North American markets.26 In the mid-2000s, CAE joined activists and farmers in a battle against Monsanto by consulting publicly available studies released by the company itself in the product-testing phases. CAE found out about a possible DIY method to sabotage the GMO crops’ protections and attack the plants’ modifications

Confronting Technology in the Field  87 through the application of a vitamin B enzyme, pyridoxal 5 phosphate (p5p).27 They tested this hypothesis experientially at their display of Molecular Invasion at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. The collective let gallery visitors watch Roundup Ready crops grow day after day, and by the end of the exhibit they treated the plants with a mix of the herbicide Roundup and p5p. This simple DIY spray successfully neutralized the high-tech research packaged by Monsanto in Roundup products, and the plants died. In its spectacularization of death, the work made manifest the violence over non-human beings that is regularly applied in agriculture through selection, weeding, and the adoption of herbicides and other industrial products. Also, the performance challenged Monsanto’s power and patents very specifically, to the extent that Monsanto lawyers visited the exhibit and threatened legal action. While the installation of Molecular Invasion, perhaps because of its association with a highly visible DC cultural institution, did not have any immediate legal consequences for CAE, the collective’s member Steve Kurtz was later subjected to a years-long FBI investigation for suspected bioterrorism. The investigation was put into motion by research related to Molecular Invasion and the subsequent work Free Range Grain (2003–4), which was created by CAE in collaboration with Beatriz da Costa. In its first iteration presented in Frankfurt, Free Range Grain consisted of testing for GMOs in food products sold in European markets, in order to verify the assumption that regulations against GMOs, like the ones established in the European Union, could fully prevent GMOs from entering food products available in those contexts. The work demonstrated that modified corn was incorporated into products found in Germany and Austria, among other countries, showing the impossibility to fully control both seed migrations and the complexity of food processing.28 The project was supposed to be reinstalled at Mass MoCA, this time focusing on organic agriculture. That said, the work could not function as a participatory installation because of the aforementioned FBI intervention. As reported by critic Brian Holmes: The Joint Terrorism Task Force raided the home of CAE member Steve Kurtz. […] The raid was called when emergency personnel saw technical equipment in the Kurtz home after the untimely but entirely natural death of Hope Kurtz, Steve’s wife and CAE member.29 Despite the fact that such equipment was used with artistic and research purposes by Kurtz—a well-established artist and university professor—and despite the support of many fellow artists and art world institutions, the FBI did not allow CAE to include a testing site in Free Range Grain at Mass MoCA. Eventually, the FBI concluded that Kurtz was not involved in bioterrorism; the investigation was mostly symptomatic of the tensions and collective fears of the early 2000s. CAE’s work might have been perceived as more threatening because it was conducted in the aftermath of 9/11’s attacks and of Amerithrax—terrorist acts perpetuated by sending highly toxic anthrax by mail, targeting public officials and members of the media in September and

88  Confronting Technology in the Field October 2001.30 That said, CAE’s Molecular Invasion and Free Range Grain posed another level of intended threat due to CAE’s open invite to common citizens to push back against governmental and corporate power through DIY science. Biopolitics, Biopiracy, and Sexuality: Ines Doujak In an essay published in Contemporary Theatre Review, performance and media scholar Gabriella Giannachi argues that CAE critiqued “the institution of authority regarding the production of knowledge, which defines concepts and practices such as nature in terms of the political economy of the day.”31 When Giannachi wrote about CAE in 2006, discussions on globalization and genetic modification were predominant in public discourse. The author refers to texts that were important points of reference within such discourse, including Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire (2000) and its framing of economic globalization;32 Michel Foucault’s concepts of biopolitics and biopower—­ elaborated throughout his body of work and presented in a series of lectures in the late 1970—defined as the power to govern over life and bodies, to transform, replicate, and control them as a form of political dominance;33 and Donna Haraway’s reflection on cyborgs, especially the intersections of organic bodies and technology in the realm of human reproduction.34 In her analysis of CAE’s practice, Giannachi maintains: Technology and biogenetics have become tools for selection, control, and reproduction. Just as life itself is now rebranded as a global, manufactured, reproducible good, biopolitics becomes the main instrument by which the regulation, surveillance and maintenance of a technologically assisted genealogy, whose purpose is the creation of the best environment for corporate capital to flourish, can be critiqued, opposed, and perhaps even controlled.35 Concerns with corporate control over the environment, including human bodies and the food they eat, appears in other contemporaneous activist artworks, as well. In 2006—the year in which Giannachi’s essay was published—Austrian artist Ines Doujak was developing Victory Gardens, an installation exhibited in the context of the international exhibition documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany, in 2007. Victory Gardens approached the topic of biopiracy by addressing the power hierarchies associated with biotechnologies patented by big corporations like Monsanto and Merck. Biopiracy was intended as the process by which corporations extract knowledge about nutritional and medicinal plants from local and Indigenous peoples, and then patent-related genes that could be used for future genetic modifications, for example of climate change–­ resistant crops.36 Doujak’s installation constructed a sociopolitical critique by

Confronting Technology in the Field  89

Figure 2.3 Ines Doujak, Victory Gardens, 2007. Installation, documenta 12, Kassel, Germany. Courtesy of the artist.

juxtaposing live plants and seed packages designed by the artist.37 As described by documenta 12’s catalog: Ines Doujak’s work, a 16-meter-long white plant bed mounted at chest height on 150 hazelnut sticks with seed packets among the greenery, strikes one at first as an allotment garden idyll. But instead of information on sowing and care, viewers are confronted with the artist’s research into the latest form of colonialism: biopiracy. Botanical gardens—victory gardens—play a scandalous role in these internal appropriations of land by transferring valuable genetic resources to Western industrial nations and by acquiring property rights without financial compensation for the country of origin.38 The seed packages mentioned in the quote collage together plants and crops that remind of abundant and lavish gardens with orientalist connotations.

90  Confronting Technology in the Field The  vegetation frames sexually charged interactions, sometimes involving queer or same-sex encounters fixed in performative poses. As proposed by queer theorist Antke Engel, images from Doujak’s Victory Gardens seed packets stage scenes that elude dominant power dynamics involving the body, and challenge both heterosexual normativity and colonial subjugation.39 They remind the viewer of a range of identities beyond male-female binaries, as an ode to diversity—and biodiversity. This imagery elicits another discourse parallel to that of geopolitical powers and agricultural trades, to delve into philosophical concerns and identity issues. In Doujak’s work, queer bodies are, like seeds, packaged and marketed, classified in an attempt to encapsulate them into predictable boxes. Yet, the graphics visualize how non-heterosexual bodies escape binary classifications. The inability to classify LGBTQ+ people according to gender binaries has contributed to their description as “unnatural” in the context of mainstream paradigms, as further discussed in Chapter 4. The parallelism between plants and humans was not alien to contemporaneous discourse around biotechnologies in the late 1990s and early 2000s.40 The debate around biopiracy and GMO foods was linked to discussions of cloning and genetic editing in humans, which raised ethical and even religious concerns, as some felt that biotechnological advances positioned scientists as creators of new forms of life, almost as modern gods, challenging divine-human hierarchies.41 Doujak’s connection between plants and humans can be contextualized as part of such broader debates, and can be placed in dialogue with arguments constructed by philosopher and ecofeminist scholar Victoria Davion in an article published again in 2006.42 Davion points out that we should not separate discourses on the ethics of genetic modification on plants, animals, and people based on a supposed difference between humans and non-humans.43 In addition, she argues that public opinion frames human cloning as immoral and unnatural because it tests the belief that heteronormativity is necessary for reproduction, and is thus necessary to human survival. In this sense, general anti-cloning positions are seen by Davion as homophobic. She observes: Under certain conditions, cloning would allow single women and partnered lesbians to have children without the help of a man. It could allow gay males to have offspring with their own genetic material. […] It does not seem much of a stretch to argue that homophobia, at least to some degree, grounds the insistence that reproduction should involve a sperm and an egg.44 Nonetheless, Davion points out that generalizations about humans do not consider the impact of class, race, ethnicity, and geography on access to new technologies. Even if hypothetical in 2006, Davion predicted that access to human genetic editing and cloning would not be widespread, and rather a privilege of a few people in wealthy areas of the world. This could lead to extreme consequences like eugenics on the one hand and the cloning of bodies considered

Confronting Technology in the Field  91 “less than human” and thus exploitable on the other.45 The potential for environmental racism, Davion argued, made genetic modification unethical, while she did not oppose the idea of cloning and modifying genes per se. The Agency of Plants: Li Shan, Natalie Doonan, and Maria Thereza Alves Some artists have certainly experimented with gene modification as a form of creative practice that further challenges the boundaries of humans and non-humans. A clear example is Chinese artist Li Shan, who has practiced BioArt since 1993. In the early 1990s, he proposed to experiment with the mixing of human and non-human genes toward the engineering of new life forms.46 Later, he created the piece titled Pumpkin Project (2007) in collaboration with bioscientists growing a series of hybrid pumpkins that he then photographed. As written by critic Michael Young, the experiment “led to a living crop of deformed and grotesquely blackened gourds, […] hardly the Utopia he had originally envisaged and certainly no improvement on God’s originals.”47 Shan has continued to realize BioArt projects involving crops like rice and corn in a series titled Smear (2017) presented at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai. The artist aimed to set up the “conditions for gene’s random expressions, while gene modification has become the dominant control method for the conditions of creations.”48 He reversed the assumption that gene modification is a means of control over non-human beings, only achievable by powerful corporations and governments. Instead, he created the infrastructure to allow genes to interact without control.

Figure 2.4 Li Shan, Smear, 2017. Modified rice and corn. Power Station of Art. Shanghai.

92  Confronting Technology in the Field Even without genetic modification, seeds and plants have demonstrated agency and taken advantage of human technologies to reproduce, spread, and adapt. Seeds have traveled with ships and moved with people across the world for centuries. Canadian scholar and artist Natalie Doonan and Brazilian writer and artist Maria Thereza Alves, among many others, have elaborated on seed migration and resilience in their research and artistic projects.49 Both Doonan and Alves, who work independently from one another, look at the language applied to imperialist expansion, observing parallels with the vocabulary used to define the movement of plants and people. For example, they notice how the term “alien” is used to classify non-local plants, as well as non-citizen immigrants and even extraterrestrial beings.50 These observations show how colonialism on the one hand and border protection on the other become embedded into ways of speaking and thinking about land, vegetation, and agriculture. More specifically, in Doonan’s studies and performances with milkweed, she shows how a plant that is a necessary habitat for monarch butterflies and functions as food for other species has been considered an invasive weed, mostly because it competes with agricultural crops in monocultures. By educating people about milkweed and encouraging human interactions with this plant, Doonan counters the dominance of monocrops and industrial agriculture. The artist creates projects to help people learn about the complexities of milkweed and invites participants to exchange seeds, plant, forage, and cook this plant— with detailed guidelines and some necessary precautions.51 In her interview published in this book, Doonan further explains the intricate interrelations of plants that are considered “alien” or “invasive” by agricultural and governmental standards. Such terminology has been similarly challenged by Alves’s practice and research since the 1980s. A founder of the Brazilian Green Party in 1987 and an indefatigable advocate for Indigenous rights in Brazil, Mexico, and beyond, Alves creates long-term collaborative projects that complicate nature-culture binaries, investigate ecological histories, and involve seeds, plants, and agricultural technologies in cross-disciplinary endeavors, as further shown by the interview with the artist published in this volume. According to Indigenous Studies scholar and curator Richard William Hill, Alves’ “work interrogates existing narratives of human and plant migration and proposes speculative counter narratives that are investigated and tested through social and scientific research.”52 Her well-known series Seeds of Change (1999–present), which includes site-responsive pieces created for various venues across the world, is based on the study of ballast seeds in port cities and involves the transplanting of soil samples to verify what grows from them and why. The artist collaborates with botanists, excavating the histories of specific sites to see how they are connected to other sites: if non-native plants are found, it is likely that they were

Confronting Technology in the Field  93 brought by ships that traveled across the oceans for trade or colonial purposes. To keep ships stable and less vulnerable to storms, they were often loaded with ballast, including soil in proximity to the departing harbor; the ballast was unloaded once arriving at destination, thus delivering soil—with the seeds and plants that it culled—from one location to another. Thus, human travel is connected to seed migration. By unearthing ballast soil found close to harbors and creating the conditions for embedded seeds to grow, the artist presents botanical histories that function as witnesses of exchange as well as, sometimes, colonial invasions. As observed by art critic Jean Fisher: Ballast flora are of course illegal immigrants, and Seeds of Change presents an elegant allegory for complex human identities that expose Europe not as a discrete set of monocultures but as the result of ongoing intercultural exchanges that undermine fantasies of national identity.53 For Alves, such stories connect places far from one another and continue to showcase power dynamics rooted in colonial pasts. She makes this visible in a recent book that demonstrates the connections between the Pignatelli Cortes family in Naples, Italy, and the Indigenous community of Xico, Mexico.54 Through archival research, the artist reconstructs how the story of land ownership and accumulated wealth by the Neapolitan family—related to the family of the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés (c. 1485–1547)—is still indebted with local Indigenous populations in Xico. Alves then proposes that the public museum now housed in the Pignatelli Cortes family mansion sponsor representatives from Xico to have access to the institution’s archives. This would help recuperate documented knowledge about the community’s past. Alves and Indigenous collaborators in Xico learned about and recreated agricultural technologies that pre-dated contact in the project Return of a Lake (2012), the genealogy of which the artist describes more in depth in the conversation published in this book. In Alves’s words: As part of Alves’s installation, the Valle de Xico Community Museum organizes the recreation of a chinampa (human-made islands developed in around 1400 by Indigenous engineers and considered to be the most efficient agricultural system in Meso-America) in Tlahuac. There has been much destruction of chinampas by the Spaniards and their descendants.55 This project demonstrates that traditional technologies such as the chinampa could foster efficient irrigation and maintain high yields for the benefit of humans and larger ecosystems, thus promoting forms of resilience for the future of agriculture without having to rely on invasive forms of gene-alteration or industrial chemicals.

94  Confronting Technology in the Field Climate Change Adaptation, Historical Technologies, and Gardens: The Harrisons and Nida Sinnokrot Artist-scientists Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, a pair in life and professionally, have similarly recreated lost agricultural and ecological systems, sometimes in dialogue with Indigenous populations, across decades. For example, beginning in 2011, they created artworks called Future Gardens as part of their series The Force Majeure, which addressed ecological adaptation and resilience to climate change. The title The Force Majeure pointed to the inevitability of a change in climate, which led the artists to facilitate forms of plant survival in future environments. The Future Gardens embodied that concept by assisting the migration of plant species through time, and designing ecosystems that evolve to be resilient decades from the time they were planted.56 In an obituary of his wife and longtime collaborator Helen, who passed away at age 90 in 2018, Newton Harrison explained: In her final years, Helen worked with Newton on Sagehen in the High Sierra: A Future Garden for The Center for the Study of the Force Majeure, a research center established at UC Santa Cruz to continue this important work, bringing together artists, scientists, engineers, planners and visionaries to design ecosystem adaptation works in regions around the world that are nearing critical tipping points due to planetary warming. As with many previous works, Helen respected and understood the deep connection of Indigenous peoples to the land and environment, and in Sagehen she collaborated with the Washoe Tribe. Tribal elder Benny Fillmore notes that it was the first time he’d been asked by anyone outside the tribe to collaborate on an art project.57 This quote clarifies a few critical points: the Harrisons collaborated with people with diverse experiences and expertise. They brought together information and approaches that, combined, could imagine and promote resilient ecosystems. They saw art as interdisciplinary and understood it as a creative act that depended on relationships and shared knowledge. Their mindset allowed to apply technologies—understood as processes of experimentation developed together by university-affiliated biologists, botanists, agronomists, hydrologists, engineers as well as Indigenous communities with deep understanding of particular sites—to the selection, planting, and propagating of plant species in the interest of environmental and public health. I argue that their process for The Future Gardens can be framed as a form of agriculture, even if its goal is not directly that of feeding or serving humans, but rather fostering biodiversity. The Harrisons modeled a way of interacting with the land that placed non-human beings at the center. While human beings participated in an intentional design phase, the success of the project depended on plants and non-human animals’ ability to complicate the ecosystem across time.

Confronting Technology in the Field  95 Their group’s studies identified 16 species that resisted temperature changes and drought and lived at various altitudes in the Sagehen basin. They then propagated 13,000s of their seedlings with help from students from the University of California Santa Cruz at the UCSC Arboretum, in five different sites at varying altitudes. This allowed them to closely observe the seedlings’ growth during a particularly hot summer with temperatures 6 degree Celsius higher than normal. The plants demonstrated resilience, and the experiment was the basis for further discussions on how to develop similar attempts at higher altitudes in the Sagehen. The group found that moving the plants upward was another way of predicting their ability to adapt not only through space but also through time, in case of future climate changes. They were also convinced that any actual enactment of an ecologically minded rapid-response system needed to actively involve local Indigenous groups: “the best outcome would be the melding of a work of art, science, and ancestral ecological wisdom into an unexpected new form.”58 When Newton Harrison and Helen Mayer Harrison started working on The Future Gardens, they had practiced in the realm of Eco Art since the 1970s, as mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. In their countless projects involving plant and animal farming, they aspired to visualize and assist the interrelations embedded in ecological systems. Each of their series of works, like the aforementioned Survival Pieces, accomplishes this goal only partially and was later critiqued by the artists themselves as being unable to fully communicate the complexity and agency of the dynamics that they hoped to show. This emerges in their Survival Pieces, one of their first projects in the realm of Eco Art. Air, Earth, Water, Interface: Annual Hog Pasture: Survival Piece #1 (1970–71), was first designed to be seen at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, but the hog themselves never made their way to the galleries due to resistance from museum administrators. The Harrisons’ hope was to expose urban dwellers to the multisensoriality and performativity of agricultural landscapes, including smells, sounds, and textures that change as time goes by. As noted above, the rectangular container that framed the pasture nodded to the frame of a painting and the geometry of minimalist sculptures, which were both indexed and compromised as they were put into dialogue with the messiness of organic processes and beings.59 A similar dialectic can be seen in Shrimp Farm, Survival Piece #2, on view at the exhibition “Art and Technology” at Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1971. This installation appeared as a live color field painting, in which varying pigmentation was derived from the reaction of algae to the shifting salinity of the water and to the introduction of brine shrimp that ate the algae. The work was also constructed as a scientific experiment to demonstrate that salty water could provide farming environments. Due to unexpected rainfall, the water was quickly diluted during the span of the exhibit, diluting the results of the experiment and the colors of the artwork at the same time. Nonetheless, Shrimp Farm demonstrated the possibility of survival within an ecosystem that incorporated chance and was not fully controlled by human plans.

96  Confronting Technology in the Field As written by Linda Weintraub, in the subsequent Portable Fish Farm. Survival Piece #3 (1971): The bucolic sight of fish swimming about in the tanks was followed by the unsettling inclusion of an electrocution chamber and a skinning and filleting table complete with knives and cleavers. These components enabled the piece to account for the entire food cycle, which included people assuming the role of predators who killed prey in order to survive.60 Here, the artists placed the human viewers as implicated with predatory behaviors. This change of position implies coming to terms with the violence embedded in both farming and eating, and with the cycle that links life to death—an awareness that we have already seen in Baruchello’s practice at Agricola Cornelia S.p.A., among others. Another political level of meaning must be mentioned for the Harrisons: since the fish were killed by electrocution, the work was also intended as a critique of the death penalty in California. With Portable Farm and Portable Orchard, in 1972, the Harrisons brought fruit trees and farm crops inside gallery spaces and grew them through artificial light in a temperature-controlled environment. Nonetheless, some of the plants wilted and did not survive. The work showed that, as much as humans try, through technology, to make up for the ways that they alter soil, climate, and water supplies, ecosystems are too complex to be completely domesticated and unpredictable outcomes can trigger larger-scale problems. In later projects, for example the Lagoon Cycle, the artists used poetry to give voice and centrality to non-human agents, like a Lagoon and its Maker, who acknowledges that planning is impossible. The root of survival is not dominance, but dialogue and connection,61 as shown in the series Endangered Meadows of Europe (Bonn, 1994), in which the Harrisons reversed the destructive effects of industrial agriculture on European meadows. The introduction of monocultures—including lawns as well as edible crops—and intensive indoor animal farming disrupted the ecosystems that previously connected plants, insects, cattle, poultry, and wild animals. To counter that historical process, the Harrisons recreated a meadow with 160 different species on the 0.8 hectares rooftop of the Kunst Museum in Bonn, Germany. According to geographer Mrill Ingram: In their research on the area and its ecology they learned that Europe has been losing a “meadow mosaic” that once was very rich, with every meadow hosting thirty to forty plant species. “It was a collaborative adventure,” described Newton Harrison, “with foxes, frogs, birds, mice as well as cattle and people as part of a rich ecosystem. Then agriculture changed, and the meadows were cut five or six times a year. They got lots of silage, but the meadows were reduced to two or three species. Cattle were taken out of fields and put in barns, and synthetic nitrogen was used to fertilize things, which damaged the topsoil. It is one of those non-­ virtuous cycles at work.”62

Confronting Technology in the Field  97 In this quote, the Harrisons highlight how sometimes revisiting past histories of the Earth can help envision more just, inclusive, and healthier futures. Aspects of their practice are echoed and complicated by works-in-progress by artist, architect, and researcher Nida Sinnokrot—a professor in the Art Culture and Technology (ACT) program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and co-founder of the agriculture-based program Sakiya (2017– ongoing) just outside Ramallah, Palestine. Sakiya is an agricultural environment and pedagogical experiment cultivated by Sinnokrot in collaboration with local schoolchildren, Palestinian residents, and students from MIT on a site that retains the memories of pre-colonial botany and archeological Roman infrastructure and technologies. As further explained in the interview published in this volume, Sinnokrot’s work intends to learn from pre-modern agricultural techniques that allow multiple species to thrive on the same site. His research involves archeologies of knowledge that parallel some of the Harrisons’ strategies. That said, Palestine’s history is different from—if intertwined with—Germany’s, and Sakiya reflects the peculiarities of its site. In particular, Sinnokrot pushes against landscaping criteria imported to Palestine by English and German designers in the twentieth century. The artist critiques understandings of gardens and garden cities that are based on principles of order, private ownership, and intensive use of modern technology; for him, such principles indirectly alter indigenous approaches to the commons and to land cultivation.63 This is exemplified by the story of the Huleh Lake in Northern Palestine—a pool of freshwater that served migratory animals across Africa, Asia, and Europe while supporting local Arab farmers and shepherds; the lake was drained to be turned into intensive agricultural plots in the mid-1930s. According to Palestine Studies scholar Glenna Anton, cited by Sinnokrot, the land transformations of the Huleh region formed a dynamic process of interaction between the Arab farmers and shepherds who relied on the Huleh swamps for their livelihood, Ottoman and later British mandate bureaucrats in charge of imposing certain legal ordinances or reforms, and early Zionist settlers that shaped the experience of people in the region during the late-Ottoman and mandate periods.64 Draining the lake supposedly demonstrated the power of modern technologies available to European engineers, with their ability to contain “wilderness” through terraforming practices that made landscapes closer to gardens, as imagined by the Bible and modern urban designers alike.65 Aforementioned histories, researched by Maria Thereza Alves in the context of Mexico, come to mind: there, too, lakes were drained to support modern agriculture developments that benefitted settlers and dissolved already-functioning agricultural systems based on shared resources. The connection with water is interwoven with both practical functions and  mythological references at Sakiya; ancient forms of infrastructure and

98  Confronting Technology in the Field ancestral stories can help reimagine human–land relationships that depart from invasive, extractive, and individualistic approaches. One of the goals of Sinnokrot is to bring back stories based on collective labor that were erased by colonial and recent forms of occupation. One of the ways in which such stories are told is through the study of traditional technologies and infrastructure, including stone walls, the remnants of which are still visible at Sakiya. Such walls are made of stones that were removed from the ground in order to improve plant growth. The stones have a memory of the underground, where they co-existed with soil and perhaps mycelium as part of a network of materials. Once above ground, they retain traces of their life below, being keepers of narratives that can be unlocked through close observation and art. This is one of the starting points for pedagogical activities designed for Sakiya’s students. When they are assembled to create walls, stones help mitigate microclimates by releasing, during the day, the cool temperatures they stored during the night, thus providing respite for goats and humans on the farm. The spaces between the stones also generate dark, cool, and humid habitats that protect insects, fungi, and lichens, among other creatures. These traditional forms of technology help adapt to climate change by enabling symbioses of humans and non-humans on the farm. Sakiya’s idea, put into practice during the coronavirus pandemic, is to model community sufficiency, teach and learn skills, and empower a generation of Palestinian youth that carry complicated and often conflictual life experiences. Sakiya studies centuries-old agricultural practices, the signs of which are inscribed onto the land, to research pre-modern technologies and apply them today. Overall, the projects analyzed in this chapter try to plant seeds that envision imaginative applications of technology, showing that technology is not evil or good in and of itself, but can be applied in a range of ways, for a range of reasons, and with a range of consequences. Artist-farmers complicate the ethics and economics of agricultural technologies through creative experimentation.

Conversation with Maria Thereza Alves66

Silvia Bottinelli (S.B.): Among the plants that you cast light on through your work, can you tell the story of one species that you feel particularly close to? Maria Thereza Alves (M.T.A.): “Chenopodium botrys.” People would call it a weed. It is a plant that came up while researching Wake (1999–2000) in Berlin.67 It is considered non-native to Berlin, but it grows abundantly in the city when there is a war or when there are construction sites: it is quite happy when it is disturbed. In the early 2000s, there were many construction sites, so it grew everywhere. I started to like it very much, because this plant thrives on disturbance. S.B.: You appreciate this plant’s ability to adapt and maintain agency within disrupted sites. Does your art making process adapt and resist as well? M.T.A.: It does. With Wake, I would take samples of earth. The first one was in Berlin, and I was too ambitious: I went to 17 sites and took samples. Since I was new in town and did not know the area, I asked people if there was some place they were interested in, and I would sample the site and then research. In some cases, I visited sites I knew were important myself. I was curious. This was a way to get in and understand hidden stories. To take soil samples, I had a special tool made by a bicycle designer. Nowadays, after all of the stuff that is happening in the world, you would not be able to walk around with that anywhere. It looked very dangerous. I would sling a leather strap from the crossbar and hang it over my shoulder. I would go to the site and hammer, hammer, hammer, and take my sample. I would then place it in a pot and wait to see what would grow. Next, I would go into the archives and search what was on a site from the beginning to contemporary times, because I wanted to understand how plants arrived there. At the end of that work, I started to show the germinating seeds, witnesses to all the events in the city, at the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) offices in Berlin which had a skylight: I took a table,

100  Conversation with Maria Thereza Alves covered it with plastic to prevent leaks, put the little pots on it, and rigged an inexpensive fixture to give some additional light as it was deep winter in Berlin. Once you take a sample you have to plant it in three days because otherwise the seeds become confused: “Should I spring up, should I not?” It is not good to change location. But the architect of the building—it was his first building—was not pleased with the aesthetics of my installation and kicked my project out because he said it did not look good in his foyer. I was living in an attic apartment; there were basically no windows there. Eventually, the seedlings were placed in the Tiergarten but most perished due to slugs. So, it was a bit of a disaster. I continue to work with plants in my projects. I do not know what will come up because I like taking some earth and seeing what is there and studying it. Sometimes there is the possibility to speak with botanists if there is enough funding in a project. Although for many years, decades, there was no funding for my work, but there were two botanists who were most generous with their time and knowledge: Heli Jutila and Bernd Machatzi. The latter I met while working on Wake. Machatzi was the chief botanist in Berlin. I went to his office and made an appointment. Machatzi did not speak English, and my German was awful, and I said: “I need to know about these plants.” He replied that I was lucky, that he had just completed a ten-year study on the flora of Berlin. He wanted to walk with me to some of the sites I had researched. Machatzi is very knowledgeable about all of the plants of Berlin and also knows the year they were introduced to the city and where they were from. On the site on Voßstraße, he identified a plant from World War II, originally from Russia, which matches the history of the site, on what had been the Russian sector of the Wall. We work together every once in a while, and he continues to teach me about plants. Seeds of Change (1999, ongoing) concerns flora arriving in ports through the ballast on ships.68 I started this work after reading a text on ballast flora by the Finnish botanist Heli Jutila, who guided me on my first attempts at investigation. I go to a site and, if possible, samples are taken and then I wait to see what germinates. I am not particularly worried if there is ballast or not. What I am thinking about is looking and seeing what is in the soil in front of me, what is growing there, and what is the history of this particular earth. I see the plants as witnesses. That is my primary interest. Sometimes, like in New York, I was not able to take samples because the port has changed so much that there is just nothing that one can get to. There, I did much research into what had been known as ballast flora, and then we obtained the seeds, planted, and grew them in the gallery and in small amounts in other venues.

Conversation with Maria Thereza Alves  101 Generally, in the art world people are not aware of how long it takes for plants to grow, and that they like to be dormant during the winter months of November through February. Plant lights are usually necessary and good ones are expensive. Someone needs to water the plants, and it is not considerate to imagine that the artist would be available during a period of four months to come to the site to do it. There is still resistance to include these as technical costs in the production budget. I am learning to work with this situation and to help curators and institutions understand that there is a problem if they want plants to grow in the winter. I explain how to best work around those situations. To me, my most important work dealing with agriculture was the chinampa for The Return of a Lake (2012).69 The chinampa is an artificial island engineered by humans; it is considered the most efficient agricultural method in Mesoamerica.70 A 300-by-30-foot basket-like structure is constructed, placed on the waters of the lake, and then the rich soil on the bottom of the lake is scooped up and put on top. Ahuehuete trees are placed on the corners and on the sides; their deep roots go into the lakebed; and the chinampa thus does not float away, and seeds are then planted for maize, beans, tomatoes, chilies, and squash. I was in the area that had been Lake Chalco, which is one of two lake areas that had chinampas that fed 170,000 people. Tenochtitlan, which became Mexico City, was able to exist because of the stable agriculture production from these chinampas. They are impressive agricultural systems, sustainable and self-irrigating. They were often destroyed by Spanish colonizers; in the place that I visited, in 1906 a Spanish settler drained the lake and took over the land, which was 10,000 hectares. This destroyed the chinampas, and thus the local economy of 23 towns and pueblos which were severely affected by this ecocide. Whereas in Spain he is considered a great agricultural entrepreneur! In effect, he destroyed something that was functioning very well and created many long-lasting problems for the community, such as lack of water and food for all local beings, flooding, destruction of traditional agricultural practices, and land subsidence. Without the chinampa, local farmers had to set up ­labor-intensive irrigation. When I met with the community of Xico in 2009, I asked: “What do you want me to do? As an artist, there are certain things I can do well, others (like painting portraits) that I cannot do well.” And they said: “Tell our history.” The maquette of the lake, which the residents had made and was displayed in the Museo Comunitario del Valle de Xico, inspired my work for documenta, which consisted of several maquettes of various elements of the area. I also wanted to make a functioning chinampa on a small body of water that was visible from the main

102  Conversation with Maria Thereza Alves

Figure 2.5 Maria Thereza Alves, Return of a Lake, 2012. dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel, Germany. Photo Lüllitz. Courtesy of the artist. The installation is inspired by the community-based work of Alves, in collaboration with the Valle de Xico Community Museum, in Mexico (2009–12). A chinampa was re-created as part of the project.

road—and thus accessible to all residents. Permission was granted from the community to do this, but it did not work out as there was not enough rainfall to sustain the chinampa. Instead, another site was offered, and we dredged out landfill and the chinampa emerged. The community was happily participatory in recreating this traditional agricultural practice: they tested the water, which now is slightly saline. During the reign of the Mexica (commonly known as Aztecs), a dike had been constructed that separated Lake Xochimilco and Lake Chalco from the other lakes in order to guarantee freshwater. Because the Spanish destroyed all the dikes, the water lost its sweetness. We did not quite know what would grow, so we experimented and squash flourished, enough that the farmers could sell it at the market. We had two or three harvests, but then a horrible local person destroyed it. S.B.: What was the purpose of the destruction? M.T.A.: A man had it filled in again to sell as real estate plots, though it is highly illegal to have done so because it is ejido land, and thus supposed to be controlled by the community. That said, some people are powerful, and the community cannot fight them. Even if the chinampa was destroyed, I think that it was important to affirm that the method is still viable: the vegetables grew and they grew very well; there was enough to feed the farmers, and there was surplus for the market. The growing of the squash blossoms was an act of resistance.

Conversation with Maria Thereza Alves  103 The Return of a Lake has elements in common with other works that you created, for example, To See the Forest Standing (2017),71 in which you engage with reforestation issues, and Recipes for Survival (1983–2018),72 in which you reframe place-based narratives of Indigenous resistance. There are parallelisms in your approach: you combine collaboration with experts, archival research, and interactions with oppressed groups needing a voice.73 In conversation with local residents, you often study the history of a landscape, then identify a point of rupture, and try to reinstate a model that seems to be still viable and also healthier. You have used photography, video, drawing, mapping, recipes, writing, embracing different forms of communication to tell stories. I would like to hear more about To See the Forest Standing and Recipes for Survival, and learn about the reasons behind the choice of different mediums. M.T.A.: I think I will start with the earlier work, Recipes for Survival, which is mostly about my family. We are among those in Brazil that did not write our history, instead that history has been written for us. Thus, the format of the work had to necessarily be a book. I discovered libraries when I was eight years old. I did not know libraries existed before: my parents do not read much. But walking to school, I saw kids with books in their hands; I followed them and found the library. It was such an amazing thing to find a library… all these books, just there! I said: “If I make myself small and not bother anyone, maybe they will not notice I am here and then I can read everything I want.” My parents do not know these things, they do not come from places with libraries. I would tell my mom: “I am going to a place with books.” I would just spend my days there. I was happy. One day, as I was sneaking out—as I still thought I was not allowed to be in such a place—I overheard a conversation between a patron and the librarian and found out that I could have a library card and check out books. Books became important to me. I realized you only exist if your history is told in a book. So, Recipes for Survival took the form of a book. In 1984, during the military government in Brazil, there was hope for a democratic opening.74 At the time I was in art school in the United States.75 I realized that it was a good moment to go back to Brazil and tell the story of my family. So, I went to my father’s village, and I said: “Look, I know how to photograph, and I know how to write. What do we want to tell the world?” The community got together, and requests began to be made. My uncle came to me and explained that during the winter the men would have to go to work out of the village, very far away. A guy would come on a pickup truck, all the men would climb on it, and then they would go. My uncle said that he wanted me to go with the men and him. He asked me to make the guy believe I was an important journalist and he SB:

104  Conversation with Maria Thereza Alves asked me to photograph all of them, because if they were made into slaves, I would have proof that they exist. Everyone knew people were made into slaves.76 Years later, under the government of Lula, an anti-slavery task force was initiated.77 It has no power now, as you can imagine.78 So, I traveled with the men from my father’s village and photographed them. The guy in the pickup took me back to the village, and the guys were not made into slaves there. But it is something that is always in the air, and people are worried when they have to go to jobs away from the village. So, the community came to me with stories they considered important and asked me to photograph specific people and situations. Women talked to me about all the violence that was committed against them. People were worried about the decline of agriculture, because small plots were being overfarmed. Chemical fertilizers, when introduced in the area, were cheap, so people started using them, but then their price went up. Farmers started borrowing from the bank and struggled with debt. At that time, in Brazil, there was no help for people: if your crops did not grow, forget it; there was no money to help you get out of it, and you starved to death. It was a very bad year, the year I was there. It was the second year that it had rained too much, and the harvest was again ruined. The book is called Recipes for Survival because the recipes are always simple, as there is not much food: it is rice and beans, and pasta and bread. It is mostly carbohydrates when the vegetables are destroyed by heavy rains. For example: Rice cakes: take leftover rice, an egg, mix with flour and fry. Banana dessert: take banana and sugar, mix. One young woman was hired as a maid, and she had to make mayonnaise. She had never made mayonnaise. I mean, in my father’s village nobody would take eggs and beat them for a sauce, it is such a waste… She replaced the oil used in making mayonnaise with bleach; she did not know what bleach was because she had never seen it or used it. She was fired and had no reference to find another job. So, I am always dealing with these different worlds of food and total lack of security. S.B.: How does this play out in To See the Forest Standing (2017)? What mediums have you chosen to communicate ecological and food systems issues in that project? M.T.A.: I chose to use video, so oral interviews with 34 Indigenous forest agents could be heard, even before entering the exhibition space. Indigenous voices speak out about their land, their forest. The agents

Conversation with Maria Thereza Alves  105 are all from the state of Acre, and they are elected by their communities. Sometimes they get money, sometimes they do not. They are responsible in their area for knowing how many animals there are, how many trees there are, how many fish there are, and how many can be used for food. Some of these lands have been destroyed by non-­ Indigenous settlers, and thus no more forest is cleared to give time to the forest. It is the agents who have the responsibility to bring back the forest there through reforestation. I was witnessing this: they do not have high-tech tools, just two poles with a metal blade to dig holes to plant little seedlings. If you are planting and it is not the rainy season, you have to build a little house for the tree sapling to protect it from the sun. Forest agents also teach these methods to the children. There are discussions held with the community about which fruit trees to plant. Some are planted because animals, like the wild pig or birds, enjoy them. Then, there are different types of fruits, nuts, or berries that the community likes, and are planted throughout their area. Sometimes there are trees that are planted specifically for construction; those can be cut, but the agents determine how many. All of the techniques that they are using to bring back the forest, co-existing with other species, are quite remarkable. Brazilian anthropologists have historically allowed a small Indigenous population in the Amazon forest, arguing that the Amazon cannot sustain large communities. But recently, studies by American scientists used aerial images that could detect the traces of immense agricultural plots that existed before colonization.79 They were circular, and a path crossed them. So, it turns out that the Amazon has sustained a very large number of people that then the invasion killed. The forest was managed in ways that the Western eye does not acknowledge. It was a far more complex system and with much more thought dedicated to all the beings that inhabited the environment, considering how to negotiate their needs and human needs. Keep the wild pigs happy, plant a few things for them. S.B.: How do your personal history and identity guide some of your choices as an artist and activist? M.T.A.: First, it was difficult to have immigrated to the United States at an early age, coming from such a background where your parents do not have any negotiating skills. My mother is not very literate; she went to school up to the fourth grade. In her village, that is what you did, and then you would become a maid at the age of nine. You were a maid for no wages: it was food and a place to sleep. So, these things influence me: who gets access to things, who gets access to libraries, who knows about libraries, who gets access to museums, who knows about museums. I only know about museums because my high school took me to the Metropolitan Museum, and I remembered thinking: “Wow, this is what I want in life.” And then I tried to take my mother,

106  Conversation with Maria Thereza Alves who was always a cleaning lady, on Fifth Avenue, Park Avenue, or Madison Avenue. So, she lived close to the museums, but she had never gone into one, she could never take me because she had never gone. I took her to the Met. I had to drag her up the stairs, drag her in, and then the money that was requested was too much for us. But there is a very small sign saying that if you cannot afford the ticket, you can give a donation, which is like 25 cents. I gave her 25 cents and my 25 cents. She was humiliated, but I said: “We can do this, mom, it is legal and we can do it.” I dragged her toward the large entrance doors into the exhibition rooms where there was a security guard. She was terrified, but she went in. And then she became relaxed about museums and went every Sunday: when she had no work to do, she would go to the Metropolitan and visit one section of the museum. When you decide you are an artist or a writer, a poet… all these things I have done are in comparison to all that we did not have access to. How do you make work accessible to people in a way that deals with their reality? At the beginning of my practice, I made work accessible to people, yet I was not part of the international art discourse. I was not part of any exhibits because I was doing work in the middle of nowhere. Then, I learned how to deal with both these situations; to do what a community decides is important, and to do what I think is important as an artist. S.B.: Affecting change takes time, experience, and labor. What kind of advice would you offer to young artists and activists that are fighting for environmental justice, Indigenous rights, and antiracism now? How and why do you blur the boundaries of art and politics, human and non-human, artist and participant, art and research? M.T.A: One of the problems with Western culture is this idea that you get divided into your activist self, your art self, your writer self, etc. I think this is extremely problematic and unhelpful for life. What we are good at, we do. We combine skills sometimes. And that is going to be developing as you change in life: you acquire more skills, or realize that someone might be far better at something and you are better at something else. I had to be co-founder of the Brazilian Green Party in the state of São Paulo in 1987, because that is what had to be done.80 That was not a moment to do a performative work about the environment; the issue needed immediate practical politics and I did the work behind founding a Green Party, and registering it, and collecting thousands of signatures and all this stuff. So, you are part of your society at every moment, and this will lead to different paths, and it is all okay; you do not have to worry that some are not considered art. S.B.: In what ways does your art challenge the idea of borders, broadly intended?

Conversation with Maria Thereza Alves  107 For example, how are themes like colonization and botany interconnected? M.T.A.: Seeds of Change is a work that is very clear on that, especially the last iteration in New York in 2017.81 The project was supported by the Vera List Award for Art and Politics. I researched the site and realized that tons of ballast were deposited in New York throughout centuries, and similar amounts were dug there and left across European port areas. The actual earth was colonized, earth was removed from a place and relocated elsewhere, impacting local balances. The seeds and the plants transported in the ballast are part of the process of colonization. Europeans brought back empire plants, bounty plants, prize plants, all of this stuff to show: “Well, I conquered these people, see this beautiful palm tree, I conquer.” So that was the European decision that American plants arrive at their place, but it is not the Americas’ decision that European plants come here. We have the problem of wheat and all the destruction that wheat has caused all over the Americas to land and to our bodies. There is nothing joyful about these Seeds of Change gardens in New York; they are about destruction. It does not matter that some of these plants have interesting herbal and health qualities. You cannot say: “Okay, colonization, all this death, all this destruction of land flora, fauna, oh and by the way, this plant is really good for belly aches.” This is not quite it. So, I think the New York iteration of Seeds of Change has been the one that put the plants in the context of import-export, of slavery, of immigration, because every time people travel aboard a ship, ballast is needed to compensate for their movements and keep the ship afloat. Lots of ballast was used when enslaved people were forcefully taken to the Americas, or when immigrants traveled here, because that was the nature of the transportation means of the time. So that project is the one that exposed all the complexities of plant, of people, of commerce, of colonization. It all came together. S.B.: At a time of restricted travel due to the coronavirus, how have you reorganized your practice? M.T.A.: Just before lockdown, I finished a new book.82 Two years ago, I went to a museum in Naples: Villa Pignatelli. I walked around and I saw a statue of Hernán Cortés. It turns out that a descendant of Cortés, the conquistador, married a Pignatelli from Naples. From that moment, in the early 1600s, all the wealth of Cortés went to Naples. I started to work on the book, reading secondary sources as I was traveling much and I could not stay and research local archives. The book is a comparison between Villa Pignatelli and the Community Museum of Xico in Lake Chalco, which I have worked with since 2009.83 While researching, I found out that there is a Pignatelli Cortes archive in Naples. As soon as the lockdown was over in June 2020, I was ready. I stayed

108  Conversation with Maria Thereza Alves buried in that archive for a month, and I was able to uncover so much information. Xico and all its people used to be property of Hernán Cortés.84 In the book, I do not ask for reparations, but instead request that the 16th Marquess of the Valle de Oaxaca, who is to inherit the title of Cortés, desist from the title. Ironically, she works for her aunt who has an important gallery in Mexico City and Madrid. In addition, I asked that two people from the Xico community be invited to Villa Pignatelli to research their own history, since the archives have material dating back from the early 1500s. There are records of the time which details how much money came in as tribute from each property held by the Pignatellis in the 1600s and 1700s. From the 1800s, there are monthly tax records from plantations—for example, Cuernavaca—indicating profits, losses, and expenses. Then in the 1900s, documents frequently discuss the “negatives” of owning property in the Americas—the Mexican revolution was happening. I read private correspondence, which explained that some of these properties were really far away. The lawyers were based in cities or in large towns, and they were not willing to travel so far to receive what they considered small amounts of monies from villages that had not paid their tributes to the Pignatelli family. So, the villages figured out that they did not have to. Some of them did not pay tribute money for 60 years. Wonderful ways to resist. While I was in Naples during lockdown, I researched what European art and writers the Pignatelli supported with the tributes from Mexico. The art they supported with Indigenous gold was against Indigenous thought, culture, poetry, and writing. There is a total lack of knowledge, here in Naples, of the fact that there was this huge amount of money that came in from Mexico that helped make Naples what it was, a very powerful center. Despite the limitations brought by the pandemic, I hope to continue my project to show these connections.

Conversation with Natalie Doonan85

Silvia Bottinelli: You created works inspired by specific plants, like burdock, milkweed, and cloudberries. Are there other plants that you have been interacting with more recently? Natalie Doonan: Since 2017, I’ve been working on a project that investigates an area in Montreal called Verdun, one of the boroughs in Montreal. I’ve been looking at a segment of the St. Lawrence River and its waterfront, exploring human–plant relations. I’ve done about 40 interviews with various citizen activists, foragers, fishers, and plant biologists. The interviews have been rich sources for me for learning about plants. By going on walks with people who live in Montreal, I have learned about the neighborhood. Research and art practice are part of a collaborative process. I do not start with a specific objective. So, from those interviews, I end up learning about all kinds of plants and the relationships between them, rather than singling out a specific plant. Some of my initial forays along the waterfront were guided by foragers, and they highlighted apple trees. I’m especially interested in edible and medicinal plants and, of course, that’s what foragers tend to be interested in as well. Milkweed, for example, is very important because it’s an indicator species, it is a habitat for monarch butterflies and their caterpillars. It’s been documented, if informally, by one of the citizens who lives along the waterfront. He started, just of his own accord, going out along the waterfront and making inventories periodically, throughout the summer, of the milkweed plants that were growing there. It emerged that milkweed plants are disappearing because of another plant called phragmites australis or common reed. This is a plant with remarkable complexities in human–animal–plant relations. I’ve talked with biologists, and they helped to highlight some of those complexities. There is a tendency to categorize plants either as beneficial or as weeds, or as harmful to the environment or to human health. These categories reveal power relations among people, and between humans and other animals, humans and the environment, humans and plants. The common reed is

110  Conversation with Natalie Doonan really a great example of that. Lots of the citizen activists I talked to speak negatively about the common reed because it is decreasing biodiversity. Biologists, however, are interested in complexities; it’s always a matter of: “yes, and,” or “yes, but.” The phragmites or the common reed is in a sense detrimental to milkweed. The common reed grows well in this type of environment, which has shallow water and lots of direct sunlight, and it grows really densely. This dense growth makes it more difficult for other plants to thrive and decreases the number of places where animals can live, where fish can spawn, and so on. At the same time, if you look at it from another perspective, phragmites or common reed in Chinese medicine practices is referred to as lu gen, and it’s very prized for all kinds of reasons. Different parts of the plant are used for different purposes. For example, the stem can be used to create a decoction, which then can be drunk by people to prevent or address nausea. There are parts of the plants that can be eaten. I haven’t tried this, but the root of the plant can be dried up and then mashed and then rehydrated with water; it can be eaten, apparently, like mashed potatoes or as a kind of cereal… I imagine it being similar to oatmeal. You could even use it like marshmallows; it can be eaten as a kind of treat. There’s also a sap that comes out of the stem, and people have historically used that as a kind of chewing gum; it’s really thick and sticky. Nonetheless, some biologists in Quebec have been writing about common reed as a problem because warmer temperatures caused by climate change create even more wonderful environments for these plants to grow in.86 What’s fascinating about it to me is that Verdun was not heavily populated until the beginning of the twentieth century because it was flooded for about six months of every year. There was always historically a flooding problem there until they built a dike in the early twentieth century. So, actually what ended up happening over time later on is that they extended the waterfront and created a waterfront park built essentially of garbage and detritus, which was excavated to make the Montreal Metro in the 1960s. So, there’s this beautiful park that’s essentially made of garbage, and the slope into the water is where the common reed grows. I learned from my research that phragmites actually serve to reinforce banks at the edges of water and eventually over time build up the soil level. So, in essence, they end up serving the purpose that posed such a problem to settlement in that area for so long. There are lots of interesting poetic layers to that for me. I wanted to do some projects using the phragmites in public events where people consume the plant, because as a social practice and performance artist, I find that as soon as you get people to start eating you don’t have to direct the conversation in any other way.

Conversation with Natalie Doonan  111

Figure 2.6 Natalie Doonan, Milkweed with Monarchs, 2017. Digital Drawing and Collage. Courtesy of the artist.

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This reminds me of your incorporation of milkweed in other art projects.87 Milkweed is a plant with similarly complex nuances. On the one hand, it’s been considered a weed because it’s invasive and threatens industrial monocrops. Now it’s itself threatened by phragmites. Some of your interlocutors sympathize with milkweed now that phragmites is framed as the bully. In previous works, you have shared guidelines on how to eat milkweed, with a series of necessary precautions.88 Do you do the same with phragmites? I had wanted to do events offering people tastings of common reed, but my proposals were met with some dissensus among the biologists I was working with. They did not agree on whether or not it was a good idea to encourage people to eat these plants. The borough also

112  Conversation with Natalie Doonan

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has laws against eating the plants in that area because they grow from garbage. So, I couldn’t do that. I proposed some other ideas, like basketmaking or making birdhouses with the plants. For similar reasons, the biologists were afraid that this would encourage people to cut the plants and then propagate the seeds. The paradoxes are interesting to me because they reveal how we negotiate our place as humans within the so-called natural world. You implicitly highlight a tendency—with lots of variations—to see some plants as resources, others as weeds. How do the plants that you choose to interact with blur the boundaries of such binaries, showing the intricacies of the power hierarchies in which individual organisms are entangled, or the layered ways in which they participate in collective systems? A plant biologist explained to me that if you look at the Verdun environment from the perspective of a pollinator, it’s a food desert because it’s all grass. Local citizens petitioned the borough to “renaturalize” areas of the waterfront park, and they got the city to agree to stop mowing the lawn in those places. That’s it, just stop mowing the lawn and see how many different species will thrive. I really liked the way that the biologist put it: if you look at the landscape from the perspective of a human, it’s a great soccer field, a great place to picnic, but from the perspective of the monarch butterfly, for example, there is nothing to eat here. That is a good indication of some of the power relations at play, because, of course, we can’t help but to look at things from a human perspective. Yet, I’m really interested in collaborating with plants, in the idea that plants do exercise agency and they do have effects on human behavior, and the idea that maybe plants domesticate us as much as we domesticate them. In a way, this aligns with scientist and anthropologist Donna Haraway’s framework of sympoiesis, meaning “making with,” producing systems and worlds with other species, instead of autonomously.89 The idea of sympoiesis expands on the premises of Haraway’s Companion Species Manifesto, where she observes reciprocal relationships with companion animals, specifically referring to how humans train dogs and dogs train humans.90 You refer to Haraway in your podcast conversation with Coral Lee for Meant to Be Eaten,91 too… Absolutely. I think there are all kinds of power relations and the way in which plants are managed and categorized say a lot about whose interests are privileged, between humans as well. Human categorizations of plants have a lot to do with a plant’s impact on agriculture. So, milkweed is deemed a weed because it’s harmful to the production of plants that are more economically viable. Then, power relations among humans are linked to the ongoing dimension of colonialism, which emerges in language as well. For example, the

Conversation with Natalie Doonan  113

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common reed (phragmites) is designated as an “invasive alien” species. That’s very problematic because that same phrase is taken up to refer to people, too. These so-called invasive alien species that end up populating the banks of the St. Lawrence River have come on ships traveling along the St. Lawrence Seaway. They’ve been brought because of capitalist colonialism and trade. So, there’s a whole racist dimension to the naming and categorization of plants that is really dangerous. In my understanding, sympoiesis or world-building with other species would work to dismantle those oppressive and violent organizing systems. As a scholar, you write about seed dispersal through interspecies collaboration;92 and as an artist, you create long-term collaborative performances, in which you prompt seed exchange and migration; these works exemplify plant resistance and agency, as plants like tomatoes, milkweed, or burdock spread beyond the will or control of humans.93 How do seeds help highlight histories of trade, globalization, and their effects? Seeds were maybe the first motivation for globalization; the first explorers who went out on ships trying to find trade routes were looking for seeds to expand their culinary repertoire. This was a form of plundering, and it is ongoing. It makes me think about corn, for example, coming from Oaxaca in Mexico and being a really rich cultural resource with many varieties that have been maintained over centuries, and then being co-opted by the United States and turned into monocrops that are governed by industrial capital. What are the dangers of seeds traveling? In my own family history, the Great Famine in Ireland (1845–52) is often cited as one of the best examples of why monocrops are so dangerous; people who had taken potatoes from South America out of their context and cultivated only one variety, then became dependent on that one kind of food and ended up starving when it experienced a blight.94 That crisis is the reason why my family is in Canada to begin with. It’s interesting to compare this history with current scenarios: now, seeds cannot be legally brought into another country without phytosanitary certificates and import permits, for fear that plants become invasive or alter the local ecosystem in the host environment. These contemporary regulations enable forms of protections, yet they do not apply to seed appropriation and standardization that also alter the environment. As you say, danger could be triggered by the way that a new plant is used by humans, not necessarily by the plant itself. Monocultures, for example, turn plants into dominant species; they make plants become invasive, deeply altering pre-existing ecosystems; yet, monocultures are permitted.

114  Conversation with Natalie Doonan N.D.:

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I am not a biologist, and I cannot fully speak about these issues. That said, on a general level I feel like monocultures are a bigger problem than sharing and hybridization. We’re conditioned to think only in terms of our own individual lifespans, but if you look at changes over long periods of time, it is clear that environments around the world are in relation. There’s constant adaptation. One of my interviewees of Innu descent said to me that plantain, which is usually considered a weed but has lots of medicinal applications, is referred to as “white man’s footprint” in several Indigenous languages. This is because it has traveled around the world due to globalization. Most plants have these kinds of trajectories, people are moving around, animals are moving around; these are normal processes. I believe that practices of sharing seeds need to be encouraged and maintained. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, now we can see more evidently that we don’t only need local food systems, we also need to share in order to create resiliency. Biodiversity is really important. Paradoxically, that sounds counter to what I was saying earlier about the phragmites, because the biggest concern with the phragmites is its effects on biodiversity. Like I said, it’s complex, but that’s why in my work I really try to create situations that will encourage conversation, taking account of these paradoxes to make spaces where contradictory perspectives can be expressed, and the best solutions pondered. How do we balance, if we can, the needs to preserve biodiversity with the needs to preserve cultural and economic diversity at the local level? Cultural diversity and biodiversity—diversity of life—go hand in hand, as argued by physicist and environmental thinker Vandana Shiva.95 From the perspective of cultural geography, which is very important for my work, a place is not a fixed situated set of co-ordinates with particular stable boundaries, but rather a set of relations that are always in flux, changing, transforming, and in process. There is constant negotiation, and I would like to see communities of humans, other animals, plants, air, earth, and water being privileged over the needs of industry. Talking about local food systems, COVID-19 has really exacerbated problems with keeping food banks running, thus highlighting systemic and structural issues around access to basic resources. In my household, we get most of our groceries from an organization here in Montreal called Lufa; they have rooftop greenhouses throughout the city and partnerships with local farmers to expand the products that are available through the organization. It works similarly to a CSA, although that what you purchase can be delivered. Lufa creates a strong local food system, but it also sells select international products. I get items that come from around the world. I don’t think it’s a matter of only buying food that comes within 100-mile radius of your

Conversation with Natalie Doonan  115 home, because maybe you have the opportunity to buy indigenous rice that supports a small farmer in Thailand, who resists the impact of large seed companies and agriculture that come into their community and take over the indigenous rice fields there. It’s messy. There’s no silver bullet, it’s a matter of working thoughtfully with the resources that are available.

Conversation with Nida Sinnokrot96

Silvia Bottinelli: What is the story of Sakiya? When did you start working on this project and how did it shift from a nomadic to a sedentary model? Nida Sinnokrot: Sakiya is a story of survival that is embodied in its name. In Arabic every word is formed from a three-letter root. Meaning is relational in structure, encoded in this root. The root of Sakiya (‫ ساقيه (س ق ي‬relates to the stem of a mushroom, papyrus, an irrigation ditch, a water wheel, a cupbearer to quench someone’s thirst, the act of supplying or obtaining water. It also means to conclude a sharecropping contract or the right to access water, to tend to or care for, or to make flow. My partner Sahar Qawasmi came up with the name. Sakiya: Art, Science, Agriculture was the convergence of many interests I’d been engaged with for years. Growing up in Algeria we grew our own food and raised chickens, turkeys, rabbits, and often had a goat around. In college, I did the same and spent a lot of time in my garden. And back in 2001, I started working on a feature documentary, Palestine Blues, which is about a farming community’s resistance to losing their arable lands to the construction of Israel’s Security Wall. Making Palestine Blues, I witnessed the suffering and trauma that came with the loss of a way of life, increasing sense of helplessness and insecurity, and disenfranchisement. As an educator in Palestine, I had witnessed the privilege, rigidity, and shortcomings of our education system to cultivate criticality in our youth. Sakiya brings artistic practice, pedagogy, and heritage practices together on our rewilded hillside as a way to heal the rift between art and agriculture, between culture and nature, as an antidote to an increasingly hostile and alienating stage of late capitalism. Sakiya’s task is twofold: to provide a platform for alternative pedagogy within and for Palestine and to connect to a growing network of ecological struggles and artistic sites around the world. Overwhelmingly, sites of climate research are located far from communities where the effects of climate change will be most acutely felt. By connecting knowledge intimately to the land, Sakiya seeks to address these challenges

Conversation with Nida Sinnokrot  117 locally, while developing methodologies at the intersection of art, science, and agriculture, as part of a worldwide commons. Sakiya’s long-term approach maintains that through integrating farming and agrarian heritage into the fabric of contemporary arts and sciences, both sectors can be enriched, and we can challenge the class divide between urban and rural that characterizes many cultural institutions in Palestine. Of course, Sakiya is a soil-based project and land here in Palestine is ever scarcer. We dealt with this by working nomadically. In 2016, we approached the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in the heart of Ramallah with a proposal to bring Sakiya’s model to their allotment, making use of the land that surrounds their historic villa. With funding from SIDA, we put on a program during the third Qalandiya International biennial.97 The first phase of Sakiya was marked by the establishment of a Garden Laboratory with local agro-ecologist Saad Dagher for sustainable agricultural practices, botanical research, a compost center (innovatively made from modified cement mixers and serviced by local restaurants and residents), a Library Project (a regional, open source networked library featuring a custom built, portable book scanner courtesy of Marcell Mars, in collaboration with Beth Stryker and Cairo’s Cluster Group’s PILOT library initiative), as well as an inter-city Moving Garden project by the Danish artist Anika Barkan. Framing these components, Dr. Shela Sheikh and I curated Under the Tree—Taxonomy, Empire and Reclaiming the Commons, an academic roundtable on the colonial legacies of botanical classification, featuring the participation of local academics and farmers. We sought to underscore the connections between these practices and a co-operative ethos rooted in our indigenous agrarian culture. Sometime thereafter, the Zalatimo family contacted us about their hillside estate in the village of Ein Kinya. The historic buildings and spring on site had fallen into disrepair since the 1967 war. The Zalatimos were aware of Sakiya’s work and accepted our plan for its care. We are very lucky. Sakiya is an incredibly beautiful rewilded hillside—holy trees, shrines, a Roman spring—and it’s been untouched for 50 years. It’s a rare ecosystem in the heart of the region’s biodiversity corridor, just a stone’s throw from the Shuqba cave. The local community’s support, skill, enthusiasm, and their memories, stories and mythologies tied to these lands are essential to our story. But we always have in the back of our minds that Sakiya is in Area C, which comprises about 60% of the West Bank. While, based on the Oslo II Accord (1995), this area was committed to be progressively transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction, the transfer has not yet happened and infrastructure and construction are still regulated by Israeli authorities. Thus, Sakiya

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Figure 2.7 Nida Sinnokrot, Compost center with cement mixer modified by the artist to function as compost machine, 2016. Sakiya at the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah, Palestine. Courtesy of the artist.

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can be annexed for Israeli settlements or otherwise destructively developed. There is an old saying here that goes something like, “even if you know that the world will end tomorrow the best thing you can do is plant a tree today.” So perhaps we are semi-sedentary for the time being. Being nomadic is about survival. What are the specific political and historical meanings attached to land, agriculture, and foraging in Palestine? This is in large part a story of the various political regimes that have governed these lands over the centuries. Landscape is a story. In Palestine, this has been a story that parallels Ottoman and British enclosures and privatization of the commons (mashaa), the Zionist project of “making the desert bloom,” and the rise of neoliberal politics, bubble economics, consumer debt, and real-estate speculation sweeping the West Bank today. Continued and growing annexation, greenwashing, and destructive notions of progress have all but wiped out the memory of an indigenous mythology that was once deeply rooted in an embodied, balanced stewardship of nature. How can merging artistic methodologies with agricultural practices address this loss? How might collective action help decolonize the social, political, economic, and narrative structures that govern our relationship to nature and promote a sense of ecological intercommunalism? The story of Abu Ibrahim is worth noting.98 Abu Ibrahim was a Palestinian peasant (fellah) who wrote a column, the “Peasant Letters” in the Filastin newspaper from 1911 to 1912. He made an impassioned

Conversation with Nida Sinnokrot  119 argument that in order to modernize, Palestinian peasants needed to abandon lands held in common (mashaa) and invest in modern infrastructures and technologies. He argued that the mashaa hindered progress, that by investing in modern agricultural techniques, Palestinian peasants could become competitive and create a surplus rather than a sustenance economy. But the way mashaa worked was that you didn’t own your land: the land rotated among families, so why would one family invest in infrastructure if the next season someone else was going to use it? So, you can see there’s some kind of relationship between the loss of mashaa, the introduction of Ottoman (land deeds), and the loss of co-operative labor, all in the name of progress, modernization, and civilization. By the way, Abu Ibrahim was, in fact, a pseudonym for Menashe Meirovitch, a Jewish agronomist who emigrated from the Russian Empire to Palestine in 1883 to help establish one of the first Zionist colonies, Rishon LeZion. Similarly, around 1905, European ideas of landscape began to take root in the Zionist project of constructing Garden Cities in Palestine. A European idea of what a garden is took root in Palestine, and these green cities became the urban planning inspiration for modern Israeli settlements. To these architects and urban planners, they were making use of untamed wilderness, civilizing it and creating living conditions suitable for European immigrants who viewed the Palestinian village and city as unhygienic, crowded, unplanned, unsuitable for co-habitation, and lacking in infrastructure.99 By contrast, to the indigenous Palestinians this so-called wilderness was a thriving ecosystem that was bountiful, often held in common ownership, with rich customs and heritage practices and mythologies that informed the sharing and stewardship of the land. This loss of land associated with the Occupation is not only measured in lost areas but also in lost tradition, lost knowledge, and the loss of co-operation. In the last 50 years, building has replaced agriculture as the main source of employment with many young people seeking work in construction on Israeli and, more recently, Palestinian projects. As a result, there is a brain drain of sorts, a loss of knowledge as it relates to the land. In parallel, many of our historic architectural sites have agrarian roots, meaning the buildings themselves have a direct role in the production and preparation of crops. With the loss of land due to annexation and occupation and laborers seeking employment in real estate, the original role of historical buildings is lost, playing a large part in their disrepair. For this reason, Sakiya is committed to restoring the historic structures on our site. Today, Area C military laws and regulations govern any relationship to the land. Heritage knowledge has, as such, been systematically divorced from living tradition and memory. Rebuilding a fallen

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dry stack stone wall—rapidly becoming a lost art—foraging, relearning recipes for a variety of mortar mixes that don’t use cement, etc. are all acts of decolonization. Foraging has always been part of life here. There is no Arabic word in Palestinian dialect that has the same connotation. In fact, certain wild plants like zaatar, khubeze, accoub have verbs that are specific to the act of collecting them. The abundance of wild edibles here is amazing but foraging is shrouded in a criminal veil because it happens outside of the state’s designated agricultural lands. In that sense it is an outlaw action, and here many wild edibles grow on lands that Israel confiscated. Identifying wild zaatar or akkoub, a tumbleweed delicacy here, is more than picking a plant. It’s attached to story, tradition, medicine, care, and this disappears when foraging becomes illegal. These traditions prevented overpicking and the overgrazing of goats. In the eradication of that tradition, you find legislated protectionism rather than commoning. People do overpick at times to sell in the market but this is a symptom of a precarious socioeconomic system characteristic of late capitalism and compounded by living under occupation. Certainly, the solution is not criminalizing the practice. So, now, foraging is no longer defined by celebration, ritual, and care; instead, it’s about transactional survival in a marketplace. Foraging carries strong meanings at Sakiya. Can you speak more about the role of permaculture on the site, as well? Our site is rewilded and that offers a particularly rich and varied set of relationships across multiple microclimates. Maintaining a varied balance between wild abundance and cultivation is key to our permaculture approach. “Permaculture” is a term that occupies a particular register, and it’s worth mentioning that villagers that might not be familiar with the nuanced science of permaculture are nevertheless experts in its practice because of their traditional know-how and because of their powers of patient observation. So, digging a well, building a biogas generator, bringing solar power to Bedouin populations, rekindling a sense of pride in working the land, collectively rebuilding a stone wall with song and celebration have integral social components: these are radical, liberating, decolonizing, creative acts of defiance and maintenance. Permaculture as envisioned by Sakiya is a set of agricultural strategies but also a set of cultural practices that are essential to it. Understanding pre-colonial land management, and the traditional knowledge held by the Indigenous peoples who practiced it, provides an important basis for current re-engagement with the landscape and is critical to correctly interpreting the ecological basis for vegetation distribution. We hope to build upon the legacy of pre-capitalist technologies through hybridity with the aim of better understanding the efficacy

Conversation with Nida Sinnokrot  121 of these innovations while bringing them into the fold of contemporary technology. But to do this we have to acknowledge that the term “permaculture,” a conjunction of permanent and agriculture coined by Bill Mollison, is vulnerable to commodification if its roots of indigenous practices of observation, stewardship, and maintenance are not recognized and celebrated. In Palestine, heritage agricultural practices were similarly holistic, before being named as such. Over the years, I’ve taken issue with the “permanence” implied in permaculture and think often of permeability and ephemerality—in contrast to the idea of enclosure and permanence as it pertains to modernist concepts of garden and agriculture. “Permanent” in permaculture is synonymous with “sustainable” but sustainability is a practice in ephemerality. Polyculture is an element of permaculture that refers to how a variety of crops, intermixed, create a guild that is naturally resilient. So, we are interested in sustainable technologies and practices around food production but also sustainable mythologies that can address the loss of imagination or epistemicide accompanying monocultural practices that sundered deeply rooted mythologies associated with a more balanced stewardship of nature. Having someone well versed in contemporary green technologies work closely with someone who specializes in traditional dry-stone wall building can shed light on how these traditional structures function as heat sinks, regulating temperature, increasing harvest output, creating microcosms for reptiles and insects, etc. Bringing together various knowledge sets is a practice in permaculture, and we believe it’s the role of artists and cultural institutions to cultivate these benefits of sharing in contemporary culture. Working the land is also an inherent part of fostering creativity and culture production. With land seizures, occupation and the privatization of the commons, the art of practicing shared labor and much that goes into cultivating the commons has been lost. This cultivation is hard work, it’s a process of dialogue, negotiation, trust, and a willingness to compromise and learn, and it’s a fundamentally creative process. Last week we were talking to Hashim, a farmer we work with, and he was insisting that we need to plow, and of course we were saying that we are against plowing, citing studies—Masanobu Fukuoka’s take on plowing from his book The One-Straw Revolution, for example.100 Hashim laughed and said: “We are not in Japan! They don’t have stones like we do.” And his authority, like Fukuoka’s, is rooted in observation and experimentation. He only has to point to his orchard and the massive sycamore trees his father planted from seedling to validate his expertise. And so, we do experiments based on our research, on curiosity, on soil types, and, importantly, on local knowledge. We don’t plow but sometimes joke that we once did so to make

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a friend! But there is another layer to this story. The choice of not plowing here can be seen with suspicion, because there is an Ottoman law still in effect that gives the state the right to seize lands that are not cultivated. Historically, within mashaa there were lands designated as matruk meaning “left alone”—so again there is a lost, nuanced understanding of a healthy ecosystem. Sakiya offers opportunities for collaboration and dialogue in opposition with individualistic aspirations in a territory that is progressively becoming informed by neoliberal influences. Who gets involved in the collaborations established at Sakiya? Why are such collaborations important and what are the related challenges? Since the 1980s, there has been migration to seek work inside Israel and this process has drained away those who formerly worked on the land. The forces that have created this phenomenon also produce bubble economies, real estate speculation, mortgage imperatives, debt economics, and NGOization within the political economy. Accompanying this, and perhaps symptomatic of it, is the supplanting of the liberation dream for a neoliberal one. All of this has eroded the value of collaborative work and is related back to the loss of the commons. Sakiya is a collaborative project. We rely on the community of Ein Kinya, on people who love the site and frequent it for informative tours, workshops, events, and exhibitions. Our first action was to involve the community and supporters in imagining a plan of what the site could be. It’s often an organic process. The list of caretakers, ecologists, and artists that contribute to Sakiya is a long one: Natasha Aruri, Yara Duwani, Omar Tesdell, Imad Hussain, Samia Halaby, and many others. We’ve hosted a number of university classes, both local and international. Our Walks and Talks program draws large crowds, and many volunteer groups have helped us with renovation and maintenance. There are so many people here ready to share, and it’s great to be able to host them. The challenge is to cultivate the celebration and ritual, the story and mythology that lubricates and enchants collaborative efforts. Dina Amro, a former artist in residence, has been working on collecting traditional songs and made a beautiful performance with them across our hillside, and Jumana Emil Abboud, currently in residence, is collecting mythologies associated with the water spirit of our spring as part of her PhD research. Can you describe a few prototypes, images, stories, or ideas that emerged from Sakiya that you feel particularly connected to? Investigating how cultural production and food production have grown apart is a core component to the kind of artistic research that takes place at Sakiya. I like to fantasize about a world in which every

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farm has a museum and every museum grows food. What might that produce? We have an open call at Sakiya: Infrastructure as Art—Aboveground, Ground, Belowground, that draws upon Tawfic Canaan’s 1914 publication, Aberglaube und Volksmedizin im Lande der Bibel.101 In this book, Canaan loosely organizes Palestinian demonology as earth spirits, subterranean spirits, and hellish spirits. Here we reimagine these categories as aboveground, ground, and belowground and consider how infrastructure—those invisible technical and functional networks that govern and manage everyday life—might address, as did the spirit order, the anxieties that narrate our relationship to nature and to humanity. For my MIT class titled Common Ground—Art, Science, Agriculture, students come to Sakiya over spring break. For one assignment we looked at soil through the lens of metabolic time, for another we built a Reverend Moule’s earth closet as a timepiece using a Geneva mechanism—that intervalometer that you can find in every clock, camera, and gun for that matter. We read Laport’s History of Shit and investigated the rupture between natural cycles and infrastructure around fecal matter and how toilet design could address nitrogen depletion from soil.102 The design they came up with is quite beautiful, a sculptural, panoramic earth closet that rotates one degree every time it is used—a metabolic clock! So now we are working to build this toilet in collaboration with local artisans, and we imagine it will become a centerpiece of our infrastructure. There are a number of similarly interesting projects—for example, a wall that is made from stacking horizontally designed, modular zeer pots which can act as a cooling device as well as a water filtration and food storage system. It thrills me to no end that students have come back to the site to hold workshops and continue collaborations. We publish these contributions and then use the books as our curriculum for summer camp students. One of your goals is to study the ways that the structure of stories shifted through time. How is this connected to the relationship that people have to the land? My mother was a fortune teller. She would read one’s story in coffee grounds and would similarly read terrain—not unlike children seeing forms in clouds. That’s probably where my interest began. There is a link between the monoculture of narrative structures and the history of agriculture. I believe we’ve domesticated ourselves in the process of domesticating plants and animals. A decrease in biodiversity equates with a decrease in other forms of diversity, including our imaginations. On a global scale, the loss of languages, extinctions, the rise of extremism—these are trends toward enclosure and the

124  Conversation with Nida Sinnokrot loss of much of our human diversity. Consider the ideas present in dominant narratives that define our relationship to nature and in particular the garden. Enclosure is perhaps the main infrastructural component that defines a garden. In the case of Abrahamic creation mythology, the garden was fraught with the anxiety of expulsion and the binaries of inside and outside, threats of exile and the promise of return, scarcity and abundance, disobedience and control, transgression and punishment, often collective in nature. Stories that follow on from this are inscribed onto the landscape: exile, nostalgia, manifest destiny, a land without people for a people without land… return is an essential component of the promise of the garden, but what might be some alternatives to this story, to this narrative structure, to this infrastructure?

Notes for Section II

1 See for example: Pino Pascali, One Square Meter of Earth, 1967; and Jannis Kounellis, Fields, 1967; among many others. On Arte Povera artist Giuseppe Penone, see Chapter 1. 2 Craig Adcock, “Conversational Drift: Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison,” Art Journal 51.2 (1992): 35–45. 3 First shown at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, for the exhibition Earth, Air, Fire, and Water in 1970–71. On a later reinstallation, see Julia Bryan-Wilson, “Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974,” Artforum International 11 (2012): 269–70. The author notes that insects swarmed into the Museum of Contemporary Art of Los Angeles during the 2012 display of Hog Pasture, pointing to the live and unpredictable materiality of the work. 4 On subsequent urban design and public art projects in Lower Manhattan, see John Beardsley, Earthworks and Beyond (New York: Cross River Press, 1998), 150–6. 5 Agnes Denes, “Wheatfield—A Confrontation (1982). Commissioned by the Public Art Fund,” republished in Agnes Denes: Absolutes and Intermediates, ed. Emma Enderby (New York: The Shed, 2019), 256–7. 6 Mirella Bentivoglio, “The Materialization of Language,” in From Nature to Art. From Art to Nature, Catalogue of the 1978 Venice Biennale (Venice: Electa, 1978), 244. I speak more extensively about this topic in the talk “Make Art, Not Soup. Reconfiguring Domestic Labor through Collage and the Ready-made in Postwar Italy,” filmed at Magazzino Italian Art, Garrison, New York, April 2, 2022, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS281IVfmx4 7 Hans Ulrich Obrist with Agnes Denes, “Holding the Universe in the Palm of Your Hands,” in Agnes Denes, ed. Enderby, 14–7. 8 “Denes’s Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis for Rice/Tree/Burial,” figure republished in Enderby, Agnes Denes, 18. 9 Agnes Denes and Rattan Lal in conversation with Alexandra R. Toland, “Urban Farming. The New Green Revolution?” in Field to Palette. Dialogues on Soil and Art in the Anthropocene, eds. Alexandra Toland, Jay Stratton Noller, and Gerd Wessolek (Boca Raton, London, New York: CRC Press, 2019), 5–18; 12; Agnes Denes, “Wheatfield/Tree Mountain,” Art Journal 51.2 (1992): 22. 10 Caroline Jones, “Wheatfields and the Anthropogenic Image Bind,” in Enderby, Agnes Denes, 221–28; 224. 11 T.J. Demos, Decolonizing Nature. Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology (Berlin: Stenberg Press, 2016), 42–3. 12 In Denes’s words: “Working with the soil. Working on a landfill or a forest, or planting a Wheatfield, I always seemed to need to bring my own soil. And with it I brought life, a life-giving substance, fertility, fertile thinking. I see where soil lives as a thin layer around the globe beyond the mantle where all life takes place. Less than a hundred feet where we humans live and all the miracles take place, and only a

126  Notes for Section II fraction of that is soil. So little, so much. The ‘earth’ where things grow, giant sequoias, golden wheat, a thousand different fruits and trees and sustenance for billions. The rest is rocks, mountains, and substrate. This precious substance, more precious than any gem, any ore, soft, good smelling brown earth, an aroma to inhale and know it will bring forth a harvest, small green shoots that nurture you, your children and the future. The soil between the clouds and the mantle, a thin layer not covered by water. The soft soil, between air and rock, between mountains and the fire inside the Earth, this thin layer of heaven. THE SOIL.” See Toland et al., From Field Palette, 13. 13 Agnes Denes, unpublished email conversation with Silvia Bottinelli, September 5, 2020. 14 See for example Omar Faruk and Krista Larson, “War in Ukraine Adds to Food Price Hikes, Hunger in Africa,” Associated Press, May 30, 2022, https://apnews. com/article/russia-ukraine-moscow-black-sea-5fbafb9ea7403a5071f696f66c390180 15 “Paradox,” Oxford English Dictionary, accessed May 30, 2022, www.oed.com 16 Obrist with Agnes Denes, “Holding the Universe,” 14. 17 It must be noted that the work was recreated in Milan in 2015 during Expo 2015, which revolved around the theme of food. See: Kevin Benham, “Wheatfield—A Confrontation. The Work of Agnes Denes,” Landscape Research Record 5 (2016): 52–6, https://thecela.org/wp-content/uploads/BENHAM.pdf 18 Fritz Haeg, “Life with the Land,” Frieze 205 (September 2019): 31–2; Patricia Watts, “Earth as Arts Practice,” in “S.O.S. Action Guide,” Tattfoo Tan, accessed June 24, 2022, http://www.tattfoo.com/sos/SOSactionguide.html 19 N55, Manual for N55 Book (Copenhagen: N55, 2004), 37–57, accessed June 24, 2022, https://www.n55.dk/N55_BOOK_PDF/N55BOOK.pdf 20 Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017), 63. 21 See, among other sources, Taggart Siegel, Jon Betz, Garth Stevenson, Benjy Wertheimer, Gaea Omiza River, Martin Watkinson, Vandana Shiva, et al. Seed: The Untold Story (San Francisco, CA: Collective Eye Film, 2018); Daniel Reichman, “Cultures of Corn and Anti-GMO Activism in Mexico and Colombia,” in Food Activism: Agency, Democracy and Economy, eds. Carole Counihan and Valeria Siniscalchi (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 175–92. 22 Hugh Campbell, Farming Inside Invisible Worlds: Modernist Agriculture and Its Consequences (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), 11. 23 Sheldon Krimsky, GMOs Decoded. A Skeptic’s View of Genetically Modified Foods (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019), 79–92. 24 Brian Holmes and Critical Art Ensemble, Disturbances (London: Four Corners Books, 2012), 170. 25 Linda Weintraub, To Life! Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 148; Ashley Hutchison, “Roundup Ready: The First Widely Used Genetically Modified Crop,” Environment and Society Portal, accessed September 19, 2022, https://www.environmentandsociety.org/tools/ keywords/roundup-ready-first-widely-used-genetically-modified-crop 26 Emily Eaton, “How Canadian Farmers Fought and Won the Battle against GM Wheat,” in The New Food Activism: Opposition, Cooperation, and Collective Action, eds. Alison Hope Alkon and Julie Guthman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017), 55–79. 27 Holmes and Critical Art Ensemble, Disturbances, 124. 28 Ibidem, 172; and Nato Thompson and Arjen Noordeman, Interventionists: Users’ Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life (North Adams, MA: MASS MoCA, 2004), 115. 29 Holmes and Critical Art Ensemble, Disturbances, 14.

Notes for Section II  127 30 “Amerithrax or Anthrax Investigation,” Federal Bureau of Investigation History, accessed June 2, 2002, https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/amerithrax-oranthrax-investigation 31 Gabriella Giannachi, “Exposing Globalisation: Biopolitics in the Work of Critical Art Ensemble,” Contemporary Theatre Review 16.1 (2006): 41–5. 32 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). For Hardt and Negri, Empire is the “black hole” generated by international trades within the context of economic globalization, which governs the choices of nation states and corporations toward the goal of increasing financial growth, without concern for the loss or commodification of human and non-human lives that come with it. Because Empire is widespread and not linked to a single nation or company, it cannot be as easily regulated and proliferates in the background. 33 Vernon Cisney and Nicolae Morar, eds. Biopower: Foucault and Beyond (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2016). 34 Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991). 35 Giannachi, “Exposing Globalisation,” 44. 36 Janna Rose, “Biopiracy: When Indigenous Knowledge is Patented for Profit,” The Conversation, March 7, 2016, https://theconversation.com/biopiracy-when-indigenousknowledge-is-patented-for-profit-55589 37 Claudia Mesch, Art and Politics: A Small History of Art for Social Change Since 1945 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 164–5. 38 Roger Buergel and Ruth Noack, documenta Kassel 12, 16/06 – 23/09, 2007 (Köln: Taschen, 2007), 236. 39 Antke Engel, “The Surplus of Paradoxes. Queer/ing Images of Sexuality and Economy,” in Social Inequalities & the Politics of Representation: A Global Landscape, ed. Celine-Marie Pascale (London: Sage, 2013), 176–88. 40 See for example, Andrew Rees, Genetically Modified Food: A Short Guide for the Confused (London: Pluto Press, 2006), which argues that GMOs have unpredictable effects on human and environmental health, and are nonetheless promoted by businesses to serve the economic interests of a powerful elite. 41 Matti Häyry, “Ethics and Cloning,” British Medical Bulletin 128.1 (2018): 15–21, https://academic.oup.com/bmb/article/128/1/15/5094025 42 Victoria Davion, “Coming Down to Earth on Cloning: An Ecofeminist Analysis of Homophobia in the Current Debate,” Hypatia 21.4 (2006): 58–76. 43 Ibidem, 61. 44 Ibidem, 66. 45 Ibidem, 73–4. 46 “Studies for the Reading Series, Li Shan,” PSA, accessed March 15, 2023, https:// www.powerstationofart.com/psa-collections/studies-for-the-reading-series 47 Michael Young, “Chinese Contemporary Art. Li Shan,” Asian Art, September 30, 2019, https://asianartnewspaper.com/li-shan/ 48 “PSA Collection Series. Li Shan,” PSA, accessed June 1, 2022, https://www. powerstationofart.com/whats-on/exhibitions/li-shan 49 In addition to the artists whose work is closely analyzed in this book, I would like to mention artist Claire Pentecost and the collective Futurefarmers, who incorporate seeds as banks of knowledge and testimonies of histories in their performative and sculptural practice. See “Soil-erg,” Claire Pentecost, accessed June 2, 2022, http://www.publicamateur.org/?p=85; and Linyee Yuan, “On a Seed Journey with Futurefarmers. A Reverse Seed Migration from Oslo to Istanbul,” Mold Magazine 5 (2022), https://thisismold.com/seeds-issue/on-a-seed-journey-withfuturefarmers

128  Notes for Section II 50 Richard William Hill, “Borderless Histories. The Botanical Art of Maria Thereza Alves,” Third Text 32.2–3 (2018): 273–89. 51 Natalie Doonan, “Spreading the Word and Sharing the Seed: Collaborating with Milkweed,” Public Art dialogue 8.1 (2018): 5–10. 52 Hill, “Borderless Histories,” 273. 53 Jean Fisher, “The Importance of Words and Actions,” in Maria Thereza Alves, Mai Tran, eds. Alves et al. (Nantes: Ecole supérieure des Beaux-arts de Nantes Metropole and Musée du Château des Ducs de Bretagne, 2013), 9. See also: Potential Worlds: Planetary Memories and Eco-Fictions, eds. Suad Garayeva-Maleki and Heike Munder (Zürich: Scheidegger und Spiess, 2020), 41. 54 Maria Thereza Alves, Thieves and Murderers in Naples: A Brief History on Families, Colonization, Immense Wealth, Land Theft, Art and the Valle de Xico Community Museum in Mexico (Loreto Aprutino: No Man’s Land Foundation, 2020). 55 Alves, Thieves and Murderers in Naples, 36. 56 Newton Harrison and Helen Mayer Harrison, eds. The Time of the Force Majeure: After 45 Years, Counterforce Is on the Horizon (Munich: Prestel, 2016), 418. 57 Newton Harrison, “Helen Harrison: 1927–2018,” Leonardo 52.3 (2019): 321–2. 58 Newton and Helen Harrison, The Time of the Force Majeure, 425. 59 Francesco Manacorda and Ariella Yedgar, Radical Nature: Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet, 1969–2009 (London: Koenig Books, 2009), 160. 60 Weintraub, To Life!, 77. 61 Mrill Ingram, “Ecopolitics and Aesthetics: The Art of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison,” Geographical Review 103.2 (2013): 264. 62 Ingram, “Ecopolitics and Aesthetics,” 271. Newton Harrison’s quote in this passage refers to an unpublished interview with Ingram in Tucson, Arizona, in 2012. 63 Nida Sinnokrot, “Palestine is not a Garden,” video conversation curated by Ros Gray for Critical Ecologies, Goldsmiths, University of London, June 16, 2021. 64 Glenna Anton, “Blind Modernism and Zionist Waterscape: The Huleh Drainage Project,” Palestine Studies 35 (2008), https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/ 77857 65 Nida Sinnokrot, “Palestine is not a Garden.” 66 This conversation between Silvia Bottinelli and Maria Thereza Alves took place over zoom on August 31, 2020. It was then transcribed by Lilli Johnson, edited by Bottinelli, and reviewed by Alves. 67 Wake (1999–2000) was created during a period of intense urban renewal in Berlin. Alves collected and studied seeds mixed with Berlin’s soil, layered under the city’s stones and asphalt. The goal was to dig out the histories of those seeds and the events and trades that might have brought them to Berlin across time. See: “Wake for Berlin,” Maria Thereza Alves, accessed July 18, 2021, http://www.mariathere zaalves.org/works/wake-for-berlin?c=47 68 “Seeds of Change,” Maria Thereza Alves, accessed July 18, 2021, http://www. mariatherezaalves.org/works/seeds-of-change?c= 69 “Return of a Lake,” Maria Thereza Alves, accessed July 18, 2021, http://www. mariatherezaalves.org/works/the-return-of-a-lake?c= 70 See: Braulio Robles, Jorge Flores, Jose Luis Martínez, and Patricia Herrera, “The Chinampa: An Ancient Mexican Sub-Irrigation System,” Irrigation and Drainage 68.1 (2019): 115–22. 71 “To See the Forest Standing,” Maria Thereza Alves, accessed July 21, 2021, http:// www.mariatherezaalves.org/works/to-see-the-forest-standing?c= 72 “Recipes for Survival,” Maria Thereza Alves, accessed July 22, 2021, http://www. mariatherezaalves.org/works/recipes-for-survival-1983?c= 73 On Alves’s concern with highlighting often forgotten histories of Indigenous and Black people, see: Paloma Checa-Gismero, “Realism in the Work of Maria Thereza Alves,” Afterall 44.1 (2017): 52–63.

Notes for Section II  129 74 Mohammad Ali Kadivar, Adaner Usmani and Benjamin H. Bradlow, “The Long March: Deep Democracy in Cross-National Perspective,” Social Forces 98.3 (2020): 1311–38; 1329. 75 Checa-Gismero, “Realism,” 57. 76 On modern forms of slavery in Brazil, Daniela Issa argues: “slavery had continued even after its legal abolition in 1888. However, since the 1970s, it has become widespread in the Amazon because of these modernization policies and the isolation in which workers found themselves on remote, vast stretches of land and at a time when corruption, blatant violence, and the omnipresence of armed gunmen backed by an authoritarian regime were far more rampant […]. Until the state began seriously addressing the problem (1995–early 2000s), slavery in the Amazon region was a brutal practice that went largely unchallenged not just because it occurred during the dictatorship (1964–85) but because that is how things were done in the hinterlands even after democratization. Blatant and massive displays of violence were characteristic of twentieth-century slave labor.” Daniela Issa, “Reification and the Human Commodity,” Latin American Perspectives 44.6 (2017): 90–106; 91; 101. 77 “Brazil Unveils Anti-Slavery Plans,” BBC, March 12, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/ hi/americas/2842219.stm 78 Leonardo Sakamoto, “Modern-day Slavery in the Amazon,” New Internationalist, January 20, 2020, https://newint.org/features/2020/01/20/modern-day-slavery-amazon . After this interview with Alves, Lula was re-elected as Brazil’s president in 2022. 79 Michael Heckenberger, Christian Russell, Joshua Toney, and Morgan Schmidt, “The Legacy of Cultural Landscapes in the Brazilian Amazon: Implications for Biodiversity,” Philosophical Transactions. Biological Sciences 362.1478 (2007): 197–208. 80 Hill, “Borderless Histories,” 278. 81 “Earth, stones, sand, wood, bricks, and whatever else was economically expedient was used as ballast to stabilize merchant sailing ships in relationship to the weight of the cargo. Upon arrival in port, the ballast was unloaded, carrying with it seeds native to the area where the ballast had been picked up. Seeds of Change unearths historical ballast sites and ballast flora. It is an ongoing investigation of ballast flora in numerous port cities. Projects have been developed for Marseille, Reposaari, Dunkirk, Exeter, Liverpool, Bristol, and now New York.” In “Seeds of Change: New York – A Botany of Colonization, 2017,” Maria Thereza Alves, accessed August 3, 2021, http://www.mariatherezaalves.org/works/seeds-of-change-new-yorka-botany-of-colonization?c= 82 Alves, Thieves and Murderers in Naples. 83 Irmgard Emmelhainz, “Chronicle of a Visit to the Museo Comunitario Del Valle De Xico, Or: Cultural Solidarity in the Globalised Neoliberal Age,” Afterall 43.1 (2017): 46–57. 84 Ibidem, 52. 85 This conversation between Natalie Doonan and Silvia Bottinelli took place on September 29, 2020. It was then transcribed by Lilli Johnson, edited by Bottinelli, and reviewed by Doonan. 86 See for example Marie-Andrée Tougas-Tellier, Jean Morin, Daniel Hatin, and Claude Lavoie, “Freshwater Wetlands: Fertile Grounds for the Invasive Phragmites Australis in a Climate Change Context,” Ecology and Evolution 5.16 (2015): 3421–35. 87 Natalie Doonan, “Spreading the Word and Sharing the Seed: Collaborating with Milkweed,” Public Art Dialogue 8.1 (January 2, 2018): 5–10. 88 Ibidem. 89 Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016), 33; 59–98.

130  Notes for Section II 90 Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003). 91 Coral Lee, host, “Natalie Doonan on the Fiction of ‘Wild’ Cuisine,” Meant to Be Eaten, episode 35 (podcast), October 14, 2018, https://meant-to-be-eaten.simplecast. com/episodes/3e21edf1-3e21edf1 92 Natalie Doonan, “A Study in Dissonance: Performing Alternative Food Systems,” Canadian Theatre Review 157 (2014): 39–42. 93 Natalie Doonan, “From What I Gather: Burdock,” Canadian Theatre Review 162 (2015): 88–89; Doonan, “Spreading the Word.” 94 On the role of colonial trades in spreading potatoes globally, see Rebecca Earle, Potato (New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 27–42. For corn, see Chapters 1 and 2. 95 Vandana Shiva, Monocultures of the Mind. Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 1993). 96 This conversation was premised by a non-recorded dialogue between Nida Sinnokrot and Silvia Bottinelli in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in October 2019. A continued exchange of ideas was crystallized in this interview. A first version of the text was developed over email while Sinnokrot was quarantining at Sakiya in the Spring 2021. Ongoing revising and editing culminated in the published version included in the volume. 97 Starting in 2012, Qalandiya International is a biennial art initiative that takes place across Palestine. 98 Samuel Dolbee and Shay Hazkani, “Impossible is not Ottoman: Manashe Meirovitch, Isa Al-’Isam and Imperial Citizenship in Palestine,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47.2 (2015): 241–62. 99 Yossi Katz and Liora Bigon, “Urban Development and the ‘Garden City’: Examples from Late Ottoman-Era Palestine and the Late British Mandate,” in Garden Cities and Colonial Planning: Transnationality and Urban Ideas in Africa and Palestine, eds. Yossi Katz and Liora Bigon (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), 144–66. 100 Fukuoka, Masanobu, The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming (New York: New York Review Books, 2009). 101 Tauflik Canaan, Aberglaube und Volksmedizin im Lande der Bibel (Hamburg: Friederichsen, 1914), accessed October 10, 2022, https://wellcomecollection.org/ works/z4sjbc5x/items?canvas=10 102 Dominique Laporte, History of Shit (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000).

Section III

3

Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art Labor, Memory, and Healing

Extraction, Exploitation, and Colonial Trades Global food systems expanded with modern trades, expeditions, and colonization. This process began in the late 1400s and intensified into the 1700s and 1800s.1 Crops and skills (along with illnesses) traveled back and forth on ships that crossed the Atlantic Ocean to connect Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Beyond the Middle Passage, similar dynamics affected geographies across the world as a consequence of the expansionist programs of European countries like Britain, Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, and Germany. Colonial travels altered ecosystems through the global trades of plantation cash crops such as sugar, coffee, tea, tobacco, cocoa, and peanuts as well as through the import of crops and animals present in the European continent to the Americas, Australia, and beyond.2 In addition, sea travels fostered the circulation of seeds in ballast soil, as addressed by artists Maria Thereza Alves and Natalie Doonan, whose practices are discussed in Chapter 2. Importantly, another cause for seed circulation was tied to human survival; on their forced journeys across the Middle Passage, enslaved people brought staple and sacred seeds with them from African regions, as manifested in the work of Cuban artist María Magdalena Campos Pons and Senegalese Italian artist Binta Diaw, discussed later in this chapter. Plants and animals were introduced to new environments, shifting the food chain by causing proliferation in some cases and extinction in others. Human diets were affected by the introduction of new animals and crops: for example, potatoes, originally from South America, became a staple in Ireland and the Netherlands, and were portrayed in nineteenth-century representations like Vincent van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters (1885), an iconic painting showing a group sharing a simple meal of potatoes, sitting at the table under a dim light. Varieties like the white potato were a source of nutrition at times of crisis, from long and cold winters to wars.3 Ironically, crops like potatoes were also vulnerable to disease and blight; and due to monocropping, they impoverished the soil and augmented

DOI: 10.4324/9780367200800-7

134  Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art the risk of famine in case of bad yields. As described by food scholar and potato historian Ellen Messer: All European potato varieties in the first 250 years were derived from the original introductions, which constituted a very narrow gene pool that left almost all potatoes vulnerable to devastating viruses and fungal blights by the mid-nineteenth century. S. tuberosum varieties, introduced from Chile into Europe and North America in the 1800s, represented an ill-fated attempt to widen disease resistance and may actually have introduced the fungus Phytophthora infestans, or heightened vulnerability to it. This was the microbe underlying the notorious nineteenth-century Irish crop failures and famine.4 Thus, the introduction of crops during colonial exchanges yielded wealth and  stability for some but could result in nutritional loss and financial vulnerability. Biodiversity is, indeed, a form of protection for humans: it is advantageous not only from an ecosystem point of view but even from a human-centric perspective. Unfortunately, the value (in economic and social terms, not only ecological) of biodiversity can only be appreciated on in the long term, while monocropping’s apparent efficiency multiplies short-term yields that allow surplus for trades, thus becoming particularly desirable in the eyes of landowners. The origins of contemporary monocropping, artistic responses to which were analyzed in Chapter 2, can be seen as rooted in colonial plantation systems that were established to extract as much wealth as possible, both from the soil and from people. As explained by historian and environmental humanities professor Frank Uekötter, who began a long-term project for the study of the history of monocultures: The global history of monoculture is a centuries-long stumble with its origins in the sugar plantations of the Caribbean as far back as the 17th century. The traditional methods of subsistence farming were more diverse and ecologically sound, but export to Europe driven by money and profits bolstered by cheap slave labour provided the starting point for the world to wander through a catalogue of labour conflicts, soil exhaustion, fertility issues and meteorological threats.5 In the context of European colonies, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, vast portions of land were cultivated with exotic (from the colonizer’s perspective) crops meant for export, and relied on cheap, often enslaved labor. The success of these enterprises was grounded in labor exploitation, a demand which fueled slave trades.6 While slavery and plantation agriculture took on peculiar forms in different areas and under different powers, they participated in a global system, the

Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art  135 l­egacy of which still informs contemporary economies, societies, and rural landscapes. The pervasiveness of colonialism and imperialism was such that their consequences are widespread. Thus, around the world, agriculture-based approaches to art are often prompted by the need to confront colonial legacies—as seen throughout this book, for example in the work of Palestinian artist Nida Sinnokrot, Indigenous artists and scholars from North America like Jolene Rickard and Elizabeth James-Perry, and Brazilian artist Maria Thereza Alves, among others. The analysis of artistic practices in this chapter continues unpacking the impact of colonial legacies on today’s subjects and ecosystems by observing how visual and material forms can embody active resilience and regeneration. Honoring Diversity through Plants and Food in Australia: Lauren Berkowitz By recreating pre-colonial landscapes in gallery spaces, Lauren Berkowitz, an artist based in Melbourne, Australia, aims to honor the lands of the Wurundjeri peoples as well as the histories of migration. She refers to her own Jewish community’s experiences of diaspora, and more broadly to flows of migration, in installations that juxtapose living organisms and plastic objects. Berkowitz speaks extensively about her process, trajectory, and genealogy in the conversation published in this volume. Through works like Verdant (2001), Manna, (2009), Sustenance (2010), and Physic Garden (2013–14), she presented indigenous and exotic edible and medicinal plants inside gallery spaces. For example, critic Natalie King describes Verdant as such: The environment at Herring Island is the inspiration for Berkowitz’s indoor sculpture. Verdant is a three-metre square, floor sculpture composed of interlocking segments that evoke the worn terrain of the island. Visually expansive, this patchwork of hues is reminiscent of an aerial view of paddocks. Like an abstract landscape painting, Verdant recalls that familiar perspective glimpsed when flying over rural land. Indigenous and exotic plants, salt and bluestone gravel are components of this site-specific ephemeral sculpture. Form, colour and natural materials are used subtly to reflect the layered histories as well as the spatial qualities of the island. While closely observing Herring Island, Berkowitz researched its complex histories of Indigenous presence, flora and ambience.7 Like other artists discussed in this chapter, Berkowitz engages with the abstract patterns of aerial views, which she reproduces with precision, sometimes by filling outlines with plants and edible matter that she consistently forages, accumulates, and researches. Through her installations, Berkowitz intends to point to the stratifications of histories—at the same time traumatic and

136  Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art regenerative—legible within the Australian landscape. She shows the role of humans in introducing new plants with each wave of colonization and immigration. As she clarifies in notes from her personal archives, in Manna I incorporated yam daisies with multiple tubers that were a staple of the diet of the Wurunjderi of the Eastern Kulin Nation of the past and present. Other plants included greenhoods and chocolate lilies that had similar tubers akin to a potato. Carpobotis, an indigenous succulent with edible leaves, was displayed together with samphire, a pinkycoloured herb that the First Nations people used on fish. Warrigal greens (which is like spinach), as well as celery and mint were featured amongst the sustainable foods. Most of these indigenous plants are drought tolerant as opposed to the introduced food crops into the Australian landscape such as wheat, lettuces, broccoli, cabbage, pumpkin, radish and onions, staple foods that comprise our diet.8 Berkowitz builds visual narratives that highlight environmental remediation and amplify Indigenous stories, although her own identity and story are not Aboriginal. Berkowitz’s interest in inserting patches of historical, sometimes pre-­ colonial landscapes within contemporary spaces recalls the practice of United States artist Alan Sonfist and Brazilian art collective BiJaRi. Sonfist, acknowledged for his decades-long work in the context of public art and Land art, created the canonical Time Landscape (1965–78, ongoing), a rectangular park where he reintroduced the flora that thrived in Manhattan before the arrival of Dutch settlers.9 Similarly occupying urban environments with living vegetation, artists and architects of the collective BiJaRi (formed in 1996) have transformed abandoned cars in São Paulo’s streets into sites for public art installations, where indigenous rainforest plants seem to reclaim city environments.10 By comparison, Berkowitz’s artworks are mostly exhibited within gallery spaces, yet her goals remain tied to an interest in affecting change, especially to prompt a reconsideration of local edible varieties that require less intensive agricultural methods and limited use of water and chemicals.11 Jewish traditions and values, in particular the concept of Tikkun Olam, inform her practice, guided by the principle that small deeds carried out by individuals can trigger chain reactions, which ultimately may affect systemic change. Colonial Histories and Today’s African Diasporas: Binta Diaw The work of young Senegalese Italian artist Binta Diaw shows some points of intersection with Berkowkitz’s: both women reference past histories of migration through mapping, and incorporate live plants often complemented by plastic materials. Nonetheless, the artists’ positionalities allow them different perspectives. Berkowitz is a White artist based in Australia, while Diaw’s experience as a Black woman living in Europe fully informs her artistic journey. In an unpublished conversation with me, Diaw disclosed that, for her,

Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art  137 Art is a necessity. It expresses a personal interest in investigating my own roots, my past, where my ancestors come from, the notion of diaspora. I am part of a diaspora and I experience what it means to be Black in the almost completely White Italian context.12 When Diaw shared the words above, we were sitting in front of her installation titled Dïà s p o r a (2022), on view at KW Institute for Contemporary Art for the 12th Berlin Biennale. This work is a site-responsive piece, a previous version of which was created for the Galerie Cècile Fakhoury in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. At both sites, the artwork is composed of a network of ropes stretching from wall to wall at about one foot from the floor, where mounds of soil support seedlings of live plants. The materiality of the work is telling: the ropes are made of artificial Black extension hair. The crops are rice and millet, both staples of Senegalese cuisine necessary to sustain local food sovereignty. And soil, for the artist, is symbolic of the Black body. If one looks more closely, each material embodies personal and collective histories, which Diaw avidly researches in the face of challenges, including the scarcity of resources about colonialism and modern-era imperialism available through Italian libraries and academic institutions. As pointed out by historian Nicola Lablanca, neither scholarship nor public discourse has yet fully pondered Italy’s involvement with imperialist enterprises from the 1880s to the

Figure 3.1 Binta Diaw, Dïà s p o r a, 2022, detail. Artificial extension hair, soil, millet. KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 12th Berlin Biennale. Photo Silvia Bottinelli. Courtesy of the artist.

138  Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art mid-1940s, that is almost since its first decades as a nation.13 Various factors contributed to this problematic historical amnesia. According to Lablanca, the country entered the colonial arena late, and held a small portion of the total lands occupied by Europeans.14 Also, the end of the Italian empire has been associated with the end of fascism, as by 1943 Italy had lost its colonies due to military defeat. That said, diplomatic and political negotiations continued until late 1940.15 Instead of deconstructing Italy’s participation in the violence of colonialism and imperialism, postwar historiography has mostly focused on highlighting the role of internal resistance against fascism. Starting in the 1960s, history textbooks and school curricula paid very limited attention to Italy’s responsibilities as a former colonial power that had left a traumatic mark on the populations and territories that it once controlled.16 Fortunately, scholars, activists, and artists—often afro-descendants, the children of former Italian colonies’ residents, or recent immigrants to Italy—have begun to investigate the experience of non-White people in the context of late nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century Italian imperialism and into the present, by reclaiming their own narratives and reframing broader histories and politics of the Mediterranean, also questioning stereotypical representations of Black migrants as either victims or invaders.17 Being born in Milan in 1995 and growing up in Italy as a Black woman of African descent, Diaw was not exposed to Italian colonial histories in school and had to look for related information independently. As she states: “For a while, I have been interested in working with archives and archival material. A large part of the history of humanity has been hidden, not included in Italian textbooks, and not recognized by Italian institutions.”18 These often-hidden histories are the ones in which she grounds her art practice. Diaw’s work emphasizes the importance of taking care of others and forming a community, especially with women of African origin based in Europe, as a way to counter the isolation and racism that she witnesses at systemic and personal levels. In Dïà s p o r a, the use of artificial extension hair nods to acts of reciprocal care among Black women through braiding. To Diaw, artificial extensions are a familiar material that she values for its ability to vehicle forms of creative expression for Black women, fostering a sense of shared identity. The artist incorporated extension hair in several artworks, including Don’t (2019), Uati’s Wisdom (2001), and of course Dïà s p o r a (2021, 2022). In the display of the latter artwork at KW in Berlin, the hair is braided to form sturdy ropes that recall mooring lines and almost seem to grow out of the walls, as if they were part of the building’s body. Through the network of braids that intersect and connect in her installation’s structure, Diaw establishes a parallelism between the body and the environment. She explained to me that “women actually had the creativity and intelligence of using hair as a language to escape plantations.”19 According to Diaw, enslaved women braided their hair to form maps of the plantation in which they stayed to help others plan their escape. In this way, women’s hair formed embodied representations of exploitative agricultural sites, and mapping helped them navigate difficult realities, exercise a level

Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art  139 of control over violent spaces, and retain a sense of power despite their harsh living conditions. By referencing the complex functions of hair braids, Diaw casts light on the role played by women in the enslaved communities of colonial plantations. Women used their hair to foster resilience across the Middle Passage as well. As written by curator Marie Hélène Pereira, “it was very common to hide seeds within their braids as a means to regenerate life in future settlements.”20 Through the inclusion of live plants in her installation, Diaw evokes this attempt to foster food sovereignty in order to prepare for unknown circumstances and survive forced removal. The spelling of the work’s title, Dïà s p o r a, emphasizes the etymological roots of the term “diaspora,” indicating “dispersion of seeds.” In the installation, the artist inserts literal reference to seeds and their movement across oceans and lands, as green shoots of grains emerge from the canopy of braids. The choice of crops is intertwined with the traditions of Diaw’s Senegalese community: rice (specifically the O. glaberrima variety), which was included in Dïà s p o r a’s version in Abidjan, likely originated from West Africa before becoming a staple in Central and Southern American cuisines.21 In addition, according to African-American culinary historian Michael W. Twitty, Throughout the rice-growing region, the ceremonial rice spoons, mortars, pestles, hoes, winnowing baskets, and calabashes had sacred meanings that were in turn transferred to the rice plantations and patches of the New World. Rice represented a key cultural niche for West African women who were responsible for most of the work associated with growing, preparing, and cooking it.22 Thus, in Diaw’s installation, rice points to women’s role in agriculture, as well as their support to the physical and spiritual sustenance of their communities. Similarly, millet, which was included in Dïà s p o r a’s version at KW Berlin, is a staple of Senegalese cuisine, and pearl millet’s botanical history is rooted in West Africa.23 Diaw uses this grain to communicate about her family origins and broader diasporic experiences of seeds and people. In both versions of the work, rice and millet seedlings are planted in small mounds of soil formed on the gallery’s floor. The soil is molded in collaboration with groups of local women of African communities that Diaw involves in the creation of her installations, underlining again the importance, for the artist, of forming connections and fostering care. Soil itself, as a material, indexes specific places with loaded histories and refers to the links of Black bodies and their labor with agriculture. This pertains to the historical enslavement of African people that were brought to the Americas to work in cash crop plantations, as is directly shown in the version of Dïà s p o r a created in Abidjan, for which Diaw used the soil taken from the island of Gorée, the point of departure for many enslaved captives that crossed the Middle Passage on board cargo ships.24

140  Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art In installations like Nero Sangue (2020), Chorus of Soil (2019–21), and Chorus of Zong (2021), the artist goes beyond historical narratives to show the links between colonial forms of chattel slavery, Italian fascist imperialism, and the reality of contemporary Black labor in the Italian agricultural sector.25 Nero Sangue (Black Blood) involves the display of two black tomatoes, as well as sound and archival images of Black people from the fascist magazine La Difesa della Razza (The Defense of Race) imprinted on cotton fabric.26 In Difesa della Razza, which Diaw considers a manifesto of the racial and colonial politics of Italian fascism, Black bodies are presented as immersed into natural landscapes, in ways that stereotype them as technologically and culturally inferior to White people. By photocopying, cutting out, and transferring to fabric the human figures found in the pages of the magazine, Diaw removes them from the diminishing context in which they were inserted; rather, she presents the sitters as subjects that regain individual and collective dignity.27 As written by race and cultural studies scholar Angelica Pesarini in the curatorial text that accompanied Nero Sangue’s exhibition at Museo MA*GA Gallarate in 2020: Blood thus becomes a central element of the narrative: the shed and honored blood of the “fallen,” those who die to defend the race and to give Italy that aguishly coveted place in the sun through the misappropriation of land and resources, the creation of concentration camps, the use of torture and chemical weapons. Blood, however, is also what unites and gives citizenship to Black children born in colony, ius sanguinis, the right to blood. Blood is, today, the exclusive element, the one that prevents thousands of people born/arrived and raised in Italy from being citizens of this country. And blood is also the blood shed by the Black Body, bent in the fields picking tomatoes, bodies that die for lack of drinking water, for lack of health care, burned in fires caused by dangerous situations in dilapidated housing, or for illegal working conditions.28 In Nero Sangue, tomatoes stand for the Black bodies that cultivated and picked them in a system of exploitative labor. Diaw discussed with me that the idea for the work came to her during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown that overwhelmed Italy in March 2020. She explains: All the supermarkets were full of food, vegetables, and fruits. I asked myself, who is actually planting these vegetables? Everyone had to stay at home, cities were empty, but the supermarket was full all the time. Who was behind that food? Of course, migrants, Black bodies. You have no papers; you won’t be considered “normal;” you’re not supposed to stay at home. This is how the project started, and the idea was to focus on how the Black body is still exploited. It feels so in relation to agriculture in terms of labor. And still, the relation between the tomatoes and the

Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art  141 body—the effect of planting the seed, you know, watching the plants grow, taking care of the plants, picking the fruits—was very important, I want to reflect on the organicity that unites the tomato and the body. This relational and experiential connection with agriculture can be compared to the spiritual and phenomenological values that were observed in the projects discussed in Chapter 1, where artists often dedicated themselves to farming as a tool to enable human/non-human interactions. Similarly, comparisons with artworks created in the realm of Arte Povera (1967–72)—an Italian movement that was mentioned in Chapter 1 and that emphasized the juxtaposition of artificial and natural materials, among many other aspects—can be established. Diaw was undoubtedly exposed to the visual language of Arte Povera in her studies and lived experience in Italy. She is aware that viewers find echoes of artworks by Luciano Fabro, Giuseppe Penone, and Pino Pascali, among others, in her visual vocabulary, and appreciates the ways that simple materials gain complex meanings in Arte Povera’s works.29 Nonetheless, there are peculiarities to the context addressed by Diaw, as the connection with organic materials, as well as with soil, takes on a different and layered dimension when framed by prolonged violent and forced interactions with farming. Diaw underlines the overlapping temporalities of the violence on Black people through her installations. For example, Chorus of Zong, often displayed together with Nero Sangue and Chorus of Soil, is a sound piece that imagines the voices and songs of enslaved people—insured by slaveholders as cargo— who were thrown overboard by the crew of the British ship Zong in order to receive insurance in 1781.30 Visually, Diaw recreated the image of an eighteenth-century slave ship in the installation Chorus of Soil, where she traced the plan of such ship out of soil and seeds. The soil is packed in the shape of ovals, and their arrangement on the floor mirrors the setup of cots inside the ships. Once again, soil stands for the Black human body.31 For Diaw, Chorus of Soil is about creating a space of memorialization for the Black people whose lives were lost at sea, and she does so through the incorporation of earth, a material that not only is organic and alive but also fosters the growth of other organisms. Melon seeds are planted in the installation’s soil. Diaw states: I planted melon seeds because of their link to the Mafia-operated plantations in Southern Italy, where thousands of migrants are systematically exploited and live under the threat of the “caporali.”32 This is a situation also denounced, among others, by Time Magazine journalist Aryn Baker, who describes the mechanism by which migrants often get caught: They had been ensnared by an ancient Italian system of press-gang labor called caporalato that enables farmers to outsource their labor needs to middlemen for a set fee, avoiding payroll taxes, work-safety requirements,

142  Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art and minimum-wage payments in the process. It is illegal, widespread, and dominated by organized crime. A 2018 report commissioned by Italy’s trade unions estimates that some 132,000 workers suffer from the most exploitative aspects of caporalato, including nonpayment of wages and physical abuse.33 Migrants are pressured to embark on dangerous trips across the African continent and, in ways that are chillingly reminiscent of historical slave trades, on boats that sail from Northern African ports to the Italian island of Lampedusa. The reasons for their decisions to leave their places of origin are entangled with the legacies of colonialism and subsequent forms of extraction, often perpetuated by agribusiness. In Senegal, yields of peanut farms that used to support local economies have shrunk due to climate change and soil exhaustion, as well as the end of governmental subsidies. Thus, sustenance has become impossible, and many have decided to leave the country in search of means of survival,34 only to find themselves once again locked into patterns of violent exploitation once in Europe. This is the background context of Chorus of Soils: through the planting of melon seeds in soil mounds shaped like slave ships, Diaw visualizes the ways that contemporary scenarios are rooted in historical narratives. Connecting Cuba, China, West Africa, and North America: Edible and Medicinal Plants in María Magdalena Campos-Pons’s Practice Binta Diaw’s work can be placed in dialogue with the practice of Cuban artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons, who is similarly interested in eliciting personal narratives and highlighting the continuity of past and present through multimedia works that evoke her family experience. Campos-Pons grew up in a family of Yoruba and Chinese origin: her ancestors were Black enslaved people and Asian indentured laborers brought to Cuba to work in the sugar production industry. Her home was in former slave barracks in the town of La Vega, in the region of Matanzas. In Campos-Pons’s art, vivid childhood memories are embodied by immersive spaces that activate the viewer’s senses, including smell and taste. Visual representations of sugar plantations that circulated in the nineteenth century function as points of reference that Campos-Pons subverts through artworks that revolve around edible and medicinal plants, such as The Herbalist Tools (1993–94), Imole Blue (2011), Imole Blue II (2018), and Intermittent Rivers (2019–ongoing). I argue that, through multisensoriality, Campos-Pons constructs a counter-narrative embedded in the materiality of experience and builds a counter-visuality that plants seeds of empathy, resistance, resilience, and sovereignty for oppressed groups. Nineteenth-century plantation paintings and prints usually adopted distanced points of view, allowing an overall representation of the landscape that incorporated enslaved figures as part of the whole, to highlight the efficiency and supposed naturalness of forced labor while concealing its dehumanizing

Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art  143

Figure 3.2 Eduardo Laplante, Ingenio St. José de La Angosta. Print published in Justo Cantero, Los Ingenios: Colección de Vistas de los Principales Ingenios de Azúcar de la Isla de Cuba (Habana, Cuba: Litografía de Luis Marquier, 1857). Reprint (Aranjuez, Spain: Ediciones Doce Calles, 2005), 245.

oppression. Visual representations helped romanticize the institution of slavery in the eyes of European colonizers. Similar visual strategies can be found across the Americas. In the Cuban context, a significant example is offered by prints with vistas of sugar refineries and plantations that illustrate Justo Cantero’s book Los Ingenios: Colección de Vistas de los Principales Ingenios de Azúcar de la Isla de Cuba, published in Havana in 1857 and illustrated by French artist Eduardo Laplante.35 As shown by Latin American history and economics scholar Alejandro De La Fuente, Los Ingenios’s images and text participated in conveying the idea that well-fed and efficiently managed enslaved people were content. The book presented the supposed health of enslaved and indentured workers as in the interest of Europeans, as it lowered the risks of revolts.36 According to art historian Rachel Stephens, Laplante’s prints were commissioned by aristocratic plantation owners and were meant for a public of wealthy entrepreneurs. To hide the environmental and social costs associated with the plantation complex, Laplante represented orderly and harmonious views that conveyed nationalistic pride. Los Ingenios hoped to entice investments by presenting the Cuban sugar industry as modern and efficient.37 As further argued by Latin American art scholar Emily Sessions,38 in Laplante’s vistas, Black bodies are depicted as part of an efficient machine system, signaling the plantation owner’s aspiration to automation and industrial progress at a time in which, by the mid-1800s, plantation economy was in decline.

144  Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art Compared to nineteenth-century plantation landscapes, Campos-Pons’s artworks introduce the perspective of the plantation worker, including the artist’s ancestors and immediate family. Her multisensorial installations and performances occupy space and invite viewer experience in ways that convey embodied memories and challenge the supposedly rational and distanced visuality of vistas. Not only do Campos-Pons’s projects incorporate reference to cash crops, like sugar and sugar products, but they also include herbs and plants, as shown by the installation The Herbalist Tools (1993). As Campos-Pons clarifies in the conversation published in this book, the early piece is dedicated to the figure of the artist’s father—an herbalist of Santería. A syncretistic religion that is still thriving in Cuba, particularly in Campos-Pons’s home region of Matanzas, Santería is rooted in the Cuban experience of Black enslaved communities, who matched Yoruba deities with Catholic saints in order to camouflage their beliefs to the eyes of plantation owners. Santería demonstrates cultural resilience and creative adaptation to hostile environments through rituals that foster the continuous activation of collective memories of diaspora.39 In an interview with art and visual culture scholar Lynne Bell, Campos-Pons describes The Herbalist Tools as follows: The three columns stand for the three different trees in my backyard in La Vega: la ceiba is a sacred tree, la palma is the national tree and the almacigo just happened to be in my backyard. On the top of each column is a glass bowl inscribed with the name of each tree. On the walls are drawings of different plants and frames that contain live plants from Cuba. In Cuba people put offerings in the bottom of a tree, they create a little temple in which they reproduce everything that was outside, inside. When I was a little girl, I wanted to make a house like this—now I’m doing it in this piece! I open up the trees to make a little place to contain offerings; you can look inside and the texture looks like the skin or bark of the tree. I was trying to reverse the dynamic of inside and outside. One of the columns contains a bowl of cornmeal: my father used to give corn as an offering and this is why I use corn in this particular piece. The installation combines sound, sight and smell too—with all the fresh plants.40 The columns echo the verticality of sacred trees that grew close to the artist’s home; their concave bases emphasize the relationship between inside and outside, the domestic space and the backyard, and evoke the lush forest where the artist’s father foraged plants. Plant drawings and actual specimens populate the installation. Fresh herbs, regularly replaced to maintain their strong scent, were displayed on traditional stools, as further described by the artist in the conversation included in this volume. Multisensorial involvement is the tool that Campos-Pons uses to counter the visuality of plantation landscapes by immersing the viewer in a space where bodies are not hidden and rather

Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art  145 become central to the work. The artist positions the viewers as witnesses of her experience as a child, that is of an Afrocuban girl whose existence was not lost within the gears of plantation machineries. Rather, she was present, strong, and alert, as conveyed by The Herbalist’s Tools: the piece elicits personal memories to be shared with the participants, especially thanks to the pervasiveness of scents in the gallery space. In fact, according to chemosensory scientists Maria Larsson and Johan Willander, childhood memories are more effectively triggered by smell than by visual or verbal cues; smell affects stronger emotional reactions capable of eliciting deep associations with a past phase of one’s life.41 The plants included in The Herbalist’s Tools—the royal palm, the ceiba, and the almacigo, and the iroko—are relevant for their medicinal and spiritual power: they show how Yoruba traditions traveled to Cuba with enslaved people crossing the Middle Passage. Despite their different generations, both Campos-Pons and Binta Diaw have made material choices that show how cultural continuities across African diasporas remain preserved in seeds, vegetation, and landscapes. Plants continued to be central to Campos-Pons’s practice in the 2010s and 2020s. For example, hyacinth bulbs, golden and round, line grooves in the soil in Imole Blue (2011), created at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. A group of people wearing white outfits stamped with the text Imole Blue position the plants carefully in a neat pattern. Months later, the flowers bloom marking the ground with blue. The blossoms form a geometric outline, like a three-dimensional blueprint. They draw the map of a town far from Tennessee: Manguito, in the heart of Cuba, in the region of Matanzas. Like Diaw and Berkowitz, Campos-Pons traces maps with soil and plants, turning them from sites of oppression to forms of empowerment and rebirth. In this garden, one place becomes embedded into another, merging sites that speak to Campos-Pons’s diasporic experience: Manguito, the Cuban town where the artist grew up, and Nashville, where she is now based—both places that are scarred by the legacy of colonial plantations and slavery. Imole Blue refers to the artist’s personal narrative and larger geopolitical histories by pointing to places, events, and language that shaped her life and that of her ancestors. In Yoruba, Imole means “earth”; thus, the title combines two languages to signify “Blue Earth.” Together with Imole Blue II: Fields of Memory (2018)42 and Ríos Intermitentes (2019–ongoing),43 Imole Blue employs distinguished visual and participatory strategies that complicate temporal and spatial dimensions, ideas of authorship and participation, and perceptions of historical violence and healing. These works can be seen as monuments that, through gardening, rethink the verticality, permanence, and individual focus of public statues. The horizontality of the plots, the cyclical nature of the plants’ temporality, and the collaborative process of gardening propose alternative models of monumentality that foster memory through embodied experience. In Imole Blue II (2018), created for the Montalvo Arts Center in California, the elements of Imole Blue (2011) re-emerge: the artist and a team of volunteers wear a white outfit with a blue text, and they arrange blue plants

146  Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art on the ground according to a pattern inspired by a map. In both cases, the participants actively contribute to the creation of the piece by working the soil with spoons. These visual components are ripe with symbolism: white robes indicate spiritual rebirth, referring to Santería rituals. The spoons can be associated with care, to feed the earth that feeds us. The color blue—of the title, flower pigmentation, and printed text—refers to water: water separates the artist’s two homes, the United States and Cuba; and water embodies the postmemory of the Middle Passage and slave trades.44 In Imole Blue II, Chinese forget-me-nots replace hyacinths, enriching the color symbolism with a reference to Campos-Pons’s Chinese ancestors.45 The name of the flowers encourages one not to forget, and their planting helps remember through actions, connections, and kinship, to process the trauma of displacement. Collective trauma is embedded in the maps that inform both gardens’ outlines. Plantation economies shaped the landscape of Manguito, the map of which, as mentioned above, inspired Imole Blue. For Imole Blue II, the garden shape replicated the forms delineated by an “aerial photograph of a Soviet medium-range ballistic missile installation taken by a US Air force plane during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962,”46 emblematic of Cuba–United States tensions during the Cold War and beyond. Campos-Pons noticed that, from afar, the image of the military base recalls a mandala, creating space for meditation and spiritual healing.47 Instead of abstracting from reality to erase the bodies of those who labor, Campos-Pons’s gardens reinvent the meaning of images of destruction and extraction. The artist repositions knowledge within the body, up close and on the ground. Conflictual historical memories are overturned thanks to the ephemeral process of gardening, with all its potential for subsequent regeneration. Campos-Pons has expanded on the premises of both versions of Imole Blue with Ríos Intermitentes (Intermittent Rivers, 2019–ongoing).48 Planting is incorporated within the broader framework of this large-scale reconstruction project for Matanzas, Cuba. The inaugural garden incorporated 13 royal palms at the University of Matanzas in 2019. Campos-Pons and her collaborators, including her family members in Cuba, are reintroducing plants from the artist’s childhood in a home nursery located in the backyard of the artist’s sister Amparo and niece Amor. The artist and her team are also in the process of creating the infrastructure to plant eight public gardens to be accessed by all residents for food, medicine, spirituality, and beauty. The project was spearheaded by an effort to identify plants that used to thrive in the Cuban environment when the artist was a child, and that are now unavailable for complex historical and political reasons, like the government’s abandonment of agricultural lands and difficult international trade relations. Campos-Pons remembers that during the Special Period, at a time when food and other resources were extremely scarce in Cuba, her mother planted a garden with chiqua—similar to zucchini—and fed the family with this homegrown vegetable. While it was not sufficient to fully meet the nutritional needs of her relatives, the garden complemented their diets in significant ways.49 Thus, to address the current lack of

Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art  147 access to traditional edible and medicinal varieties on the island, the artist initiated collective efforts to find seeds, plant them, propagate the specimen, make crops available in public spaces, and maintain them so they can continue to thrive through time. As mentioned above, Campos-Pons plans to grow eight urban gardens in Matanzas within the frame of Ríos Intermitentes’s 2024 edition. The sites will function as laboratories for the future, to test the country’s potential for food sovereignty despite the legacies of plantation agriculture, as well as economic isolation and climate change.50 Such a plan requires discussions with local communities and with experts in various fields, from scientists to urban planners, public administrators, and artists. Threading the project together is, as a consequence, a process of negotiation, through which diverse stakeholders aspire to achieve multiple and at times divergent outcomes. As I gathered through on-site research in January 2022,51 priorities and visions encompass a range of goals, from the reactivation of personal and collective memories to the practice of agroecology for sustainable development, adaptation, and food security for Cuba. Based on reflections that farmers, artists, environmental administrators, and local residents in Matanzas shared with me, after the fall of the Soviet Union and with the embargo of the United States, Cuba has not been able to keep up with agricultural technologies; thus, production of cash crops has not yielded enough to be economically sustainable. Many plantations and agricultural fields were abandoned and remain uncultivated to date, and the country has become dependent on imports from Vietnam, Venezuela, and Brazil for staples like rice, beans, chicken, and even tropical fruits, despite ideal soil and climate. Campos-Pons’s project is affected by this complexity, even further complicated by the public health emergency of the pandemic, rising inflation, and political tensions. Nonetheless, the work is in progress, demonstrating the community’s determination. The long-term goal is to eventually recreate a distributed urban food forest where locals can forage fruits and vegetables that are part of their national identity and ethnic histories.52 Campos-Pons affirms the right to the land and cultivates food sovereignty in Cuba by exposing younger generations to the tastes and smells that made the fabric of her everyday life while growing up in the same places. In her work, sensorial knowledge allows a reappropriation process based on community-building to build strength and resilience through slow, repetitive, and embodied experience. Food Security and Artistic Cross-Pollination at Yinka Shonibare’s Ecology Green Farm in Nigeria Fostering local autonomy and food sovereignty has been embraced by artists not only in the context of the African diaspora but also in African countries. For example, British Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare CBE recently opened Ecology Green Farm (2020–ongoing), a 54-acre farm and residency program in a rural area around the village of Ikise, close to Ijebu Ode, a two-hour drive from Lagos, Nigeria.53

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Figure 3.3 Free-range chicken at Yinka Shonibare’s Ecology Green Farm, 2020–ongoing. Ikise, Ijebu Ode, Nigeria. Courtesy Yinka Shonibare Foundation.

The land was acquired by Shonibare in 2020: the farm has been productive since, while the establishment of a residency program on site, part of the artist’s multilocation Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.), has been in progress. Shonibare’s goal is to bring together artists, agronomists, writers, and scholars—in particular from African countries or of African descent—on site to cross-­ pollinate, inspired by each other and by the farm environment. Residents stay at an earth-brick barn house designed by Papa Omotayo of MOE+ Art Architecture, with interior designs by Temitayo Shonibare.54 The farmhouse blends modernist and Yoruba aesthetic and functional principles.55 Around the house, there are six gardens, two of which produce edible varieties to feed artists-in-residence and other guests. Free-roam chickens are raised in the areas around the farmhouse as well. In addition, acres of land are part of the campus: in some areas, conservation and reforestation projects are the main focus, while in other areas Shonibare involves local workers in the production of foods that are grown sustainability in five greenhouses and distributed locally to benefit circular economies. Job creation and food security are important components of Shonibare’s mission; he aims to avoid establishing an insular artist residency program that excludes local communities, and rather sees local residents as directly involved in Ecology Green Farm. Cashew trees, maize, cassava, plantain, yams, peppers, and more are produced with organic methods on the farm.56 Shonibare is alerted to the fact that Nigeria cultivates nutritious crops that are exported to other countries, while staple foods for the support of Nigeria’s own population have to be imported.57 This dynamic is one of the legacies of colonial trades and corporate agriculture, as highlighted by

Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art  149 environmental policy scholars such as Harry Barnes-Dabban, Kris van Koppen, and Arthur Mol.58 The link between current food systems and colonial plantation histories in Nigeria does not go unnoticed for an artist like Shonibare, whose internationally acclaimed practice has revolved around the visual and material cultures of colonial empires since the 1990s.59 Like Campos-Pons in Cuba, Shonibare is aware that there are the soil and climate conditions to successfully produce crops locally, and intends to model this process through his farm. He connects the lack of economic opportunities in Nigeria with the pressure to emigrate and wants to reverse such mechanisms by facilitating professional paths in the arts, agriculture, and broader economies at home.60 In Shonibare’s vision, in their three months at Ecology Green Farm, artists in residence will respond to the farm environment by creating works that incapsulate interdisciplinary discourses, enabled by interactions with agronomists, architects, performing artists, traditional artisans, and farmers. While the first cohort has yet to present the outcomes of their experience, the program has been welcomed locally, generating hope for future international exchanges and local renewal. Abolition, Imagination, and Community Gardening in the United States: jackie sumell and Seitu Jones The legacy of colonialism on contemporary United States agricultural systems is highlighted by Louisiana-based artist jackie sumell and Minnesotan artist Seitu Jones. Sumell has dedicated the past two decades to abolitionist creative practices, using the language of plants to educate the public about mass incarceration and labor in prison. The artist discusses her story, research, and methodological approaches in more detail in the conversation published in this volume. She elaborates on how her work helps nurture the imagination and resilience of those in solitary confinement, generates professional opportunities after reentry, and envisions prevention programs for youth. A major project by sumell that employs gardening and agriculture is titled Solitary Gardens (2013–ongoing). This series involves the construction of garden beds that have the shape and size of solitary confinement cells in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as the Angola prison in Louisiana. The reference to the African country of Angola is due to the fact that the penitentiary used to be a plantation where enslaved people of Angolan origin lived and worked. The same lands continue to be cultivated by prison laborers now, as further discussed later in this chapter. In Solitary Gardens, the garden beds are made with a rammed-earth technique, by incorporating milled-down crops like sugarcane, cotton, and tobacco. As previously discussed, these crops are associated with plantation agriculture: through the materiality of the raised beds, sumell illustrates the links between historical chattel slavery and contemporary prison labor. In this sense, her visual vocabulary presents points in common with the work of Binta Diaw, who adopts soil and seeds to connect contemporary migrant labor in Southern

150  Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art Italy to the violence of the Middle Passage. The use of maps and plans to index both forms of oppression and ways of imaginative resistance is another point in common for Diaw and sumell, as well as Campos-Pons and other artists discussed in this book. In Solitary Gardens, the garden beds are planted with varieties selected by current prisoners—the Solitary Gardeners—who communicate with volunteers over mail to share guidelines. Based on the wishes expressed by the Solitary Gardeners, volunteers cultivate plants that have personal and historical significance for those incarcerated. In addition, the very process of imagining their own garden helps people in solitary confinement find motivation to endure daily life and find hope for human connections outside of prison. This participatory structure fosters empathy across generations, living conditions, and sometimes races; it provides relief through dialogue and encourages a sense of purpose for everyone involved. The genesis of sumell’s work itself originated from meaningful relationships: her commitment started with an epistolary friendship with Herman Wallace, a member of the Angola Three together with Robert King and Albert Woodfox. Affiliated with the Black Panther Party, the Angola Three helped organize Angola prisoners to achieve better living conditions for themselves in prison and their communities outside. Food was central to their struggle due to the use of hunger strikes as tools for protest, and also because of the lack of food security inside Angola and beyond.61 As maintained by Gabrielle Corona: Prior to their incarceration, King and Wallace faced hunger and turned to shoplifting and robbery to provide for their families. Whether incarcerated or not, people in poverty could seek relief from groups such as the Black Panther Party through community food drives, by connecting to the BPP free commissary for prisoners program, or through resource pooling.62 Wallace spent 41 years in solitary confinement in Louisiana before his sentence was overturned, and enjoyed three years out of prison before cancer caused his passing.63 He and sumell had corresponded while he was in jail. Their pen friendship lasted 11 years and began when sumell first wrote to Wallace, asking him: “What kind of house does a man who has lived in a 6′ x 9′ box for over thirty years dream of ?” sumell and Wallace eventually co-authored The House that Herman Built (2001–13), a book, an exhibit, a film, and an activist campaign that raised awareness about life in solitary confinement. sumell created Solitary Gardens after Wallace’s death, to keep his memory alive. The project’s personal meanings are paired with abolitionist efforts. In 2010, just a few years before sumell’s Solitary Gardens project started, legal scholar Jerone Browne described the genealogy of prison labor, highlighting the case of Louisiana’s Angola prison: In 1865, the 13th Amendment officially abolished slavery for all people except those convicted of a crime and opened the door for mass

Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art  151 criminalization. Prisons were built in the South as part of the backlash to Black Reconstruction and as a mechanism to re-enslave Black workers. In the late 19th-century South, an extensive prison system was developed in the interest of maintaining the racial and economic relationship of slavery. Louisiana’s famous Angola Prison illustrates this history best. In 1880, this 8000-acre family plantation was purchased by the state of Louisiana and converted into a prison. Slave quarters became cell units. Now expanded to 18,000 acres, the Angola plantation is tilled by prisoners working the land—a chilling picture of modern-day chattel slavery.64 The conditions that lead to the persistence of such patterns of exploitation are addressed by legal scholar Michelle Alexander in the volume The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness. Alexander argues that African Americans continue to be kept at the margins of society with very little access to economic and class mobility. She finds that the status quo remains a racial caste system, which is enabled by a prison system that inherits forms of control and exploitation modeled on slavery, as well as by subsequent policies from the Jim Crow and segregation eras. Alexander further argues that the direct goal of systems such as historical and contemporary slavery is not necessarily direct violence over Black bodies but rather the preservation of the economic and social status of those who have privilege. That said, both slavery and present systemic racism do trigger violence and pain, which should not be ignored. As Alexander writes: The institution of slavery did not require plantation owners or countless bystanders to be filled with racial hostility; so long as plantation owners and a critical mass of white Americans remained indifferent to the suffering inflicted on Black slaves, the racial caste system could endure.65 Alexander’s argument highlights the importance of empathy and activism for those in positions of privilege and power. As a White person outside of the prison system, sumell models ways of facing responsibility, using her art as a vehicle for change. sumell’s work educates broader publics about the politics of incarceration through immersive spaces. Her Solitary Gardens foster empathy through experience, rather than picturing mass incarceration from a bird’s-eye view, so to speak, as something distant and imbued with some sense of logic and efficiency like the landscapes of historical plantations. From Louisiana to Minnesota, edible gardening is a tool for remediation, a way to help heal the collective trauma of African American communities despite the complex links of present agriculture and historically enslaved labor. In fact, growing food and medicine carries multiple associations, including the memory of spiritual and cultural practices that made their way through the Middle Passage. St. Paul-based artist Seitu Jones illustrates a multigenerational

152  Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art commitment to gardening by Black Minnesotans. As highlighted by garden writer Susan Davis Price: Seitu sees himself in a long line of Black gardeners reaching back to his great-grandfather, a slave who fought in the Civil War and then came upriver to farm. The line includes his farmer grandfather; an uncle who gardened in St. Louis; his father and aunt, who grew vegetables and flowers in the Twin Cities; and “all the marvelous, unsung Black folks who’ve been gardening for years.”66 Jones shares more about his family history and art practice in the conversation published in this volume. The artist’s great-grandfather cultivated a so-called “slave garden,” a space where he could grow his own crops to complement the standard diet available through plantation owners. Historians Dwight Eisnach and Herbert C. Covey show the role played by “slave gardens” to keep afrodescendants connected to their ancestral lands and cultures: Slaves adapted to their bonded circumstance out of necessity but in ways that embraced their African cultural heritage, and their gardens not only added value to their lives and improved their diet but also reflected African customs and mores that illustrated their beliefs, often through symbolism that had deep meaning to them, even if obscure to an owner. The traditions and very essence of their souls which gardening encapsulated for antebellum slaves has been handed down through generations of African Americans.67 Seitu Jones is part of this history. His great-grandfather continued to keep a garden as a free man, and so did his children and grandchildren for six generations. Jones himself is a skilled and passionate gardener. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Landscape Design, a graduate degree in Environmental History, and a certificate in Baking, and has practiced as an artist for decades.68 For him, edible gardening and cooking are creative tools to illuminate food histories and bridge cultural and racial divides in local communities. His Seed Bombs, created in a number of editions including one for the Ghetto Biennial in Haiti (2009) and one for the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (2017), are a mix of soil and seeds that are thrown in areas lacking vegetation, especially on sites experiencing the consequences of deforestation due to colonialism.69 In Haiti, for example, local ecosystems were affected by pre-Columbian slash-and-burn agricultural practice, and subsequently deforestation was heavily intensified due to plantation agriculture.70 Jones found that guerrilla gardening could be a symbol of liberation by generating new hope, especially after a devastating earthquake that left the country in crisis. The seeds that Jones chooses to incorporate into his Seed Bombs are a mix of  nutritious crops associated with African American cuisine—including

Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art  153 black-eyed peas and collard greens—and native plants.71 In the United States, Jones distributed his Seed Bombs as a form of “greenlining,” a concept introduced by Dr. Robert Bullard in a response to redlining, the process by which communities (mostly of color) are isolated and underserved by public administrations.72 By planting culturally-significant seeds in areas affected by redlining, Jones physically and metaphorically reclaimed spaces for the Black community. Pursuing the same mission, Jones co-created a large and long-lasting endeavor: Frogtown Farm, a project that began in 2013 and is ongoing. An experiment in urban agriculture, the farm is a 12-acre environment in the heart of Frogtown, where residents from various backgrounds and cultures converge. The farm offers the community plots and structures to grow crops from a range of places and cuisines, thus showcasing the cultural richness of the area. Even more, urban farming brings people together and facilitates the exchange of know-hows and ideas. Frogtown Farm includes baking and cooking spaces where nutritious recipes are sampled to help address health challenges, which are a reality in this economically disadvantaged area. Black curator and foodbased art writer Nicole Caruth notices that: Today, the area boasts the city’s greatest racial diversity, with significant African American, Hmong, Vietnamese, Somali, and Mexican residents, and a wide range of eateries that reflect its population. By most accounts Frogtown is a low-income neighborhood, and its residents have some of the typical signs: high rates of Type 2 diabetes, lead poisoning, and asthma. Frogtown is by no means a “food desert,” as is popularly assumed of areas where residents face economic difficulties and diet-­related illnesses. Jones calls Frogtown a “food swamp” instead, explaining that it has a mixture of foods that are not always of the best quality.73 Frogtown Farm—together with other notable community-based projects that Jones describes in the conversation published here—alters inequities in the food system and puts food production in the hands of local residents, in order to facilitate the consumption of a variety of vegetables and fruits and educate about healthy cooking and eating. The Politics of Urban Agriculture in Hong Kong. HK FARM Urban gardening reaffirms control and agency over food systems on sites across the world, sometimes functioning as a recipe against the legacy of colonial-era extractive land use principles that left a trace on present built environments. Artists are often involved in urban edible farming, as in the case of HK FARM, the name of both a collective and a project founded by Glenn Eugen Ellingsen, Michael Leung, and Anthony Ko in Hong Kong in 2012. The social and cultural scenario of Hong Kong is stratified, as the territory’s multicultural reality is the result of histories of colonization, occupation, and political tensions. Hong Kong was governed by a British colonial administration from 1842—the end of

154  Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art the First Opium War—to 1997—the year in which, based on the Sino British Joint Declaration, Britain transferred governance over the territory to China. Hong Kong is currently a special administrative region of China, although Beijing’s increasing control over Hong Kong is met with resistance by local groups. Recent social unrest against China seems to echo the 1967 leftist riots that targeted colonial powers, as in Hong Kong youth strive for autonomy.74 During the one-and-a-half centuries of colonial rule, British presence undoubtedly left a mark on the built environment. Accounts on Hong Kong’s colonial history often identify two factors that characterize the territory’s modernization process in the second half of the twentieth century: the hard-working attitude of local populations and the British determination to put order into a supposed state of confusion.75 Those factors led to the geography of the city of Hong Kong, where tall cement skyscrapers shoot from the ground and intricate infrastructure entangle the city. In this almost-futuristic scenario, housing is overcrowded, and residents live in what feels like a dungeon of streets pullulating with informal markets. Hong Kong’s land is overwhelmingly occupied by cement, and open spaces are rare and regulated. To reconnect the residents with plants and non-human animals, thus indirectly countering the results of a modernization process that emerged under British rule, HK FARM cultivated edible gardens and initiated beekeeping on city rooftops. According to art critic Mimi Brown, HK FARM created multiple initiatives during a residency at Spring, an organization that promotes contemporary art innovations. In 2014 only, HK FARM rescued generations-rich topsoil from a New Territories farm on their backs before it could be covered with concrete by developers. This soil filled hand-built planters on our terrace in Wong Chuk Hang, as well as on rooftops in Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok where they sowed edible crops that are tended by the neighbourhood. They created a station where you can record yourself talking and singing to plants. These messages are then played to the plants using audio players and futuristic little round speakers, hanging from clear lucite posts inserted into the planters like tiny, colourful beehives.76 In the open-access almanac that they published in 2015,77 as a way to propagate the knowledge gained through the experience at Spring in 2014, HK FARM included texts, zines, videos, and more to present a toolkit for future urban farmers in Hong Kong. The work is mindful of the territory’s specificity, as shown, for example, by a map of the rooftop edible gardens that had sprouted in the city, which amounted to more than 20; or an illustrated growing calendar in Chinese and English with recommendations on when and how to plant a cornucopia of crops. In HK FARM’s narrative, rooftop gardens provide opportunities to reconsider rurality, nature, and landscape, which become one with the urban environment. HK FARM takes a distance from programs and approaches that see the city and countryside as two separate spheres.78 In fact, their project

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Figure 3.4 The HK FARMers’ Almanac, 2014–2015. Photo Michael Leung. Founded in April 2012, HK Farm is an organization of Hong Kong farmers, artists, and designers led by Glenn Eugen Ellingsen, Michael Leung, and Anthony Ko. After a one-year residency at Spring in 2014–15, their collaborations with local and Chinese agricultural initiatives and activists culminated in a collection of zines entitled The HK FARMers’ Almanac.

embodied more fluid possibilities that allowed a degree of food sovereignty in a community that aspires to forms of independence. By collaborating with local farmers and organizations, the collective was able to produce organic foods on site, thus facilitating a level of control over food systems, which otherwise make urban dwellers dependent on supplies determined by governmental oversight. Such attempts at autonomy and self-determination are not always seen positively by Beijing, and tensions with the Chinese government is another layer of Hong Kong’s urban agriculture, which HK frames as a tool for resistance. In the words of Elaine Ho: The HK FARMers’ Almanac immediately becomes a highly political document, where we cannot but consider farming and an insistence to organize the means of our self-sustainability upon this land as an act of resistance.79

156  Colonial Legacies in Agriculture and Art These words could apply to many of the projects overviewed in this chapter. In the hands of artists, agriculture becomes both a language to express cultural and personal identities and a lived experience that models alternatives to overimposed systems of power. Colonialism—despite being an economic, ideological, and political enterprise that involves a myriad of variations—devised mechanisms of extraction and control often aimed at food production and trade. Agriculture was implicated in the colonial agenda, and yet agriculture can also provide tools for resistance and rebirth. The artists discussed in this chapter oppose plantation and monoculture systems with small biodiverse gardens; respond to corporate and governmental land use approaches that separate urban and rural with distributed projects of urban agriculture; and help communities regain sovereignty of their own food, spaces, and health through participatory works. The cultivation of historical memory and the dissemination of know-hows are crucial to the ethos of art farming’s future, as further shown by the focus on education and embodied pedagogy discussed in the next chapter.

Conversation with Lauren Berkowitz80

Silvia Bottinelli: How is Australia’s history, pre- and postcolonial, incorporated into your art? For example, how do your works address the environmental changes caused by contact between European colonizers and Indigenous peoples like the Wurundjeri? Lauren Berkowitz: The Australian evolution and transformation of the landscape is incorporated into many of my artworks. The dramatic change that occurred from pre- to postcolonial times can be viewed in my earliest installations. In Twig Cluster (1989), a series of wooden totemic sculptures grew in a ghostly manner in a European inspired garden within the grounds of Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne. Situated in a gully, the assemblage of found branches was accumulated from a nearby indigenous habitat. The cluster bore traces of an absent landscape that vanished with colonization. After a flood in the park, the work evoked a reflective and transient mood with the twigs mirrored in the rippling water. With the following installations Manna (2009), Sustenance (2010), and Physic Garden (2013–14), I transformed the gallery into a sensory greenhouse of indigenous and exotic fruits, vegetables, and herbs that also had restorative qualities. These works could be compared to a still life painting that contemplates the passing of time and fragility of life. They also reflected the layered history of the Australian landscape as one of complexity and change. All these works acknowledged that Aboriginal people lived in harmony with their environment for millennia; they sustainably managed their food and land until colonization, which brought destruction to their landscape and their traditional way of life. Both Manna and the Physic Garden paid homage to the original inhabitants of Melbourne, the Wurundjeri people of the Eastern Kulin Nation, through edible leafy greens and tuberous plants. Scented native plants with respiratory and antibacterial qualities, such as eucalyptus and paperbark tea tree, were also incorporated into my botanical compositions.

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Figure 3.5 Lauren Berkowitz, Physic Garden, 2013–14. Medicinal and edible plants, 2 × 3.45 × 0.7 meters. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Photo: Selina Ou. Courtesy of the artist, copyright 2020.

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Introduced plants used in these artworks acknowledged the subsequent waves of immigrants to Melbourne since colonization. Lavender represented the early English settlers, and ginger and garlic the Chinese immigrants. Mediterranean herbs, succulents, and fruit trees recognized the Italian and Greek immigrants who arrived in Melbourne between the 1940s and 1960s to live and work. I spent 20 years living in the neighborhoods of South Yarra and Prahran observing edible gardens of older migrants. A familiar sight at community gardens would be vegetables growing out of recycled pots on the front porch. Indian herbs such as curry leaves, Vietnamese mint, and medicinal African herbs including aloe vera reflected more recent immigration to Melbourne. The title of one of your installations that incorporates planting, Demeter’s Garden (2007), evokes classical mythology. Can you explain why? Demeter was a fitting muse for an installation where I collected plants seasonally from the grounds of Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne. In pagan mythology, Demeter was the ancient goddess of the harvest and seasons. All-powerful, when her daughter Persephone was abducted by Hades, she expressed her grief by making the fruits of the Earth wither and the soil sterile. Once Persephone returned, Demeter regenerated all vegetation. This cycle was repeated as Persephone was forced back to the underworld for six months every year creating autumn and winter. On her return, Demeter made spring and summer flourish, and the Earth was laden with leaves and flowers.

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Demeter’s Garden drew together cultural and botanical narratives. The work’s title also referred to Sunday Reed, the previous owner of Heide, and her strong identification with her garden, as well as her modernist house that framed the landscape. The sculpture reflects the Demeter myth, marking nature’s cycles of growth, decay, and renewal through plants. The work involved the process of collecting flowers, seeds, and leaves seasonally from the Heide grounds. This accumulated material was dried and preserved, and then revitalized into sculptural form. The Demeter legend could also be interpreted as a contemporary musing on our imperilled landscape, once bountiful, now rapidly becoming barren due to global warming, deforestation, drought, and salination. Yet the myth also contains a message of hope for reconciliation and regeneration of our fragile environment. In the grounds of Heide Museum of Modern Art, I also created Karakarook’s Garden (2005–20). A vital deity in Aboriginal mythology, Karakarook taught the Kulin women to dig out plants with edible tubers and assisted them in learning about the therapeutic qualities of plants. With its indigenous bush foods, Karakarook’s Garden provided a counterpoint to the European-inspired kitchen gardens at Heide. Many of the plants used in both gardens had nourishing and curative qualities. In Demeter’s Garden, this was evident with herbs such as lavender, love-in-the mist and garlic, together with the many native plants such as silver and blackwood wattles. What is the role of multisensoriality in your art, and why is it relevant to a practice that values planting and agriculture? My work uses color, smell, and texture to create an immersive and sensorial experience for the viewer, activating memory and references to the past, together with cultures other than my own. Foods and plants can be symbolic, stimulating olfactory associations and reflections on different histories and ideas, as seen in Follies (1997), Verdant (2001), Salt and Honey (2002), and Demeter’s Garden. Plants in the indoor gardens and seed installations Cornucopia, (2007), Drift (2008), and Manna, speak of the overlaying of many cultures and their influence and impact on our landscape, both agriculturally and in our cuisine. Aromatic herbs and spices elicit associations with multiculturalism. I am interested in how evocative materials and plants reveal the story of changing landscapes and peoples. For example, Salt and Honey was a sensory installation comprised of plant foods and liquids that related to Jewish ritual, history, and memory. In this circular work, I was interested in the symbolism of seasonal foods eaten for different festivals, once connected to pagan celebrations of the harvest, but since overlaid with Jewish historical and commemorative narratives.

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In Salt and Honey, food tells the history of the Jews from the changing seasons to their experience of exile and displacement. Joy and sorrow are expressed through foods that are sweet and bitter. For the festival of Passover, parsley, or any green herb, represents the growth of springtime, hope and renewal. Bitter herbs, such as horseradish, and salted water recall tears shed in times of suffering and hardship. Seed-based dishes represent the festival of Tu B’Shevat, which is associated with tree planting—a symbol of ecological revival. At the festival of Rosh Hashanah, honey symbolizes the hope for a sweet New Year. The white salt recalls the purity of the Sabbath tablecloth, which becomes a metaphorical altar when bread is placed upon it. How do you incorporate the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam into your practice? The Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam is about small gestures and good deeds an individual can perform to help heal a broken world. This idea emphasizes maintenance, preservation, and sustainability. I have taken on this notion through my artwork in terms of creating an ecological awareness to suggest actions people can take to bring about positive change. My work embraces recycling and planting strategies to articulate ideas of restoration and regeneration. Often my work taps into existing grass-roots movements such as community and school vegetable gardens. I would hope that my practice builds on this growing ecological sensibility. In works such as Manna and Physic Garden, I was also inspired by the Victory gardens of the First and Second World Wars, when people were encouraged to grow their food and become self-sufficient due to food shortages. Many public and private gardens were made productive. It is crucial now to reduce the stress on our environment and commit to reducing our carbon footprint. I often recycle old artworks and sometimes work in collaboration with children and communities to plant and collect materials while talking about my work process and ideas. Many indigenous plants in Sustenance were planted by children from a local school in Sydney. Seeds used in Drift and Cornucopia were recycled into Manna and donated to a school. After these exhibitions, the plants were dispersed to various gardens. For Bags (1994), staff at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, salvaged plastic bags, and there was also a call to the wider community for collection. Plastic Topographies (2018–9) and Fragile Ecologies (2019) emerged and grew from hunter-gatherer activities: during artist residencies in New York City in 2018 and Sydney in 2019, I collected plastic postconsumer waste in walks to and from my studio.

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Salt is used in many artworks with its myriad of associations including aiding in the healing of wounds, as seen in Subterranean (2016), as well as signaling a desire to reconcile the landscape of the past and present as articulated in Verdant and Tide (2004). Many works also incorporate nutritive and medicinal plants used in Western, Eastern, and First Nation cultures, generating ideas around ­rehabilitation, through the sensory, therapeutic, and immersive experience of the work, as realized in Manna and Energy Fields (2015). We can frame your work involving planting as a remediation process; how does this differ from 1960s and 1970s Land art? My work has an underlying interest and concern for taking responsibility for one’s carbon footprint as opposed to some Land art that I find ecologically problematic. These large-scale costly interventions into nature were about spectacle and imposing on the landscape, often causing damage. Yet, I have deep respect for visionary artists such as Ana Mendieta, Joseph Beuys, Robert Smithson, Richard Long, Walter De Maria, Agnes Denes, and Alan Sonfist. These artists moved beyond the confines of the studio, utilizing nature as a medium for art, addressing the history and materiality of the sites in an engaged and sympathetic manner. These artists created works within nature and brought them into the gallery. They were sensitive to their surroundings and our inherent interconnectedness to nature. Transforming natural materials into a dynamic poetic visual language, these artists articulated our need to raise awareness of our symbiotic relationship with our environment and concern for the harm we are creating. Can you describe the intentions and the challenges of working both indoors and outdoors, with both plastic and organic materials in your installations? I often explore the symbolism, history, and poetry of materials concerning sites. I create immersive and experiential artworks that the viewer can observe or become enveloped within. These materials are evocative and can act as triggers for a sensory memory of the past and present. Before living in New York in the 1990s, I was utilizing wood offcuts and constructing abstracted walls that had a topographical feel of a landscape or cityscape. I was using industrial machinery for cutting and sanding along with toxic glues, requiring me to wear goggles and a respirator. I lived in New York from 1991 to 1993, where I studied and immersed myself in the city’s culture. This prompted a shift in my way of thinking toward my art practice. I decided that I was going to make do with materials that were readily available to me in the city. Many of these discarded and expendable consumer objects had an embedded history. I accumulated,

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stacked, and folded plastic and brown paper bags, newspapers, and telephone books into large-scale installations that became physically dense crowded spaces. Monumental sculptural columns and fragile structures relate to ideas of transience and ephemerality, while invoking a human presence and absence. When I returned to Melbourne in 1993, I continued working with everyday objects, but later with many commissions located in landscapes I began utilizing organic matter collected from my immediate environment, including soil, sand, and plants, such as in Strata (1999), Verdant, and Colour Field (2002). When I returned to New York in 2018 and 2019, I collected plastic bottles and lids from the urban landscape including from my daily walks through East Williamsburg and Prospect Park in Brooklyn, acting as a caretaker and tidying up the mess. As mass-produced products, these materials were plentiful and in frighteningly endless supply. I am often attracted to the materiality, use, and qualities of objects that take on other associative characteristics, often negative and positive attributes. Plastic is a relevant and ubiquitous material to sculpt, stack, and accumulate. I am interested in the “use by” date stamped on the packaging. Plastic bottles and bags have a single temporary use to contain food and liquid, yet they last forever in landfills. Presently, much waste plastic is not contained; it proliferates at an alarming rate filling our waterways and urban landscape. Plastic is ephemeral yet permanent, transparent, delicate, and durable. Plastic breaks down into nanoparticles and microplastics and infiltrates the food chain adversely impacting animal and human health. Why is your process of collecting materials relevant at the conceptual level as well as in terms of materiality itself ? The activity of collecting is important and relevant because it is part of my regenerative process of rehabilitating materials. Plastic gathered for my works was salvaged and retrieved from family and friends as well as the landscape to clean it up. I washed and cleaned the material before reuse. For me, the process of gathering or harvesting the materials allows space for quiet reflection and meditation within the landscape. This could be a daily, weekly, or monthly activity that often encompasses the passing seasons. The plants I used were dried so that they would be preserved. Initially I may accumulate material and intuitively begin building forms organically, stitching together or layering material in a painterly manner, for example using clusters of flower petals, leaves, or lids as pigment that I will slowly weave into an abstract composition. Making the artwork is a contemplative process and often echoes women’s traditional domestic rituals, labor and activities, including the ingathering of flowers and foods, textile production, and still life genres.

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I have a taxonomic engagement with local materials from sites that are often incorporated into abstract and minimalist-inspired compositions. Strata, Colour Field, Demeter’s Garden, Cornucopia Drift, Energy Fields, and Plastic Topographies are all imbued with an ecological narrative framed within modernist grids, circles, arcs, and geometric structures that restrain chaotic matter. As the work progresses, I research my materials to acquire a deeper understanding of them, including studying texts, listening to podcasts, audible books, and Google searches. Forms grow and emerge through the daily material collected. There is an element of the unexpected as I do not know what resources I will have from day to day, and this determines the character and direction of the work. The time I spend in landscapes allows me to closely observe the plants or non-organic matter that is integral to that environment, either soil, sand, gravel, plants, coal, or plastic. Often through the collection of plants from a site, I become more intimately aware of the subtle scents, colors, and textures of a landscape. I enjoy the physicality of organic and non-organic matter. Through collection of my materials, I become familiar with their sensory, formal, and aesthetic qualities, including softness, pliability, brittleness, variations in hue, transparency, and opaqueness. Often, I find an excess of a certain bottle or lid in a neighborhood or site that reflects different socio-­ economic realities. What public would you like to reach, and how is this selection informed by the choice of exhibiting within museum and gallery systems? I wish to reach a large audience, ideally through a public art museum that draws different ages and demographics through its galleries. Museum talks and publicity can often reach a broad cross-section of the community. More recently, I have used social media, including Facebook and Instagram, to reach an expansive local and international network of people who may operate outside of the art world, for example environmental and sustainability groups. Many of my works have been created in rural communities, and I have researched local histories that draw attention to past and present ecological issues. Drawing from the region’s materials and histories gives the work potency. For example, I created the artwork Shadows and Light, (2005) at Lake Macquarie Gallery in NSW, utilizing the shavings of eight different species of wood laid in bands of color. These represented all the trees that once existed in the region before colonization and have since become extinct. Surrounding this work was black coal, as the area is a large coal-producing region. The carbon rock evoked energy, life, and death. Should artists aim to affect social and environmental change, in your opinion?

164  Conversation with Lauren Berkowitz L.B.:

I believe that artists should have the freedom to express whatever they feel passionate about, including reflection on universal themes that impact on humanity. I am not interested in didactic art. I am for an art that has visual engagement, poetry, and multiple narratives. If it can also reflect on social and environmental change, I think it can make for a thought-provoking and meaningful work that may resonate with a larger audience and provide a prompt for activism on an individual basis. For me, the use of evocative materials and the physical and sensory experience of different spaces with varied histories can expose a dialogue and confrontation with ecological concerns that can reach a wide audience. I cannot claim that my work can change attitudes, but I would hope that it has the potential to provoke a questioning of existing beliefs and create doubt to open new ways of thinking regarding our relationship to the environment.

Conversation with María Magdalena Campos-Pons81

Silvia Bottinelli: I would like to focus on two projects that involve plants and gardening within your vast body of work: the 1993–94 installation titled The Herbalist’s Tools and a more recent, ongoing reforestation project that began on the occasion of the 2019 Havana Biennial, along with your broader constellation of initiatives titled Intermittent Rivers (Ríos Intermitentes). In an interview with Derek Conrad and Soraya Murray, you asserted that you are mainly interested in the now, and that the past is only relevant to you if it unveils the root of today’s contradictions and points to future directions.82 What readings of history emerge in The Herbalist’s Tools through reference to gardening, food, and herbalism? María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Well, that’s so interesting that you went back all the way to 1993: I started doing The Herbalist’s Tools in 1993 when I was at Harvard University, as part of the Bunting fellowship. This piece is connected to an entire series titled History of People Who Were Not Heroes: Growing Up in a Slave Barrack. It includes three parts: A Town Portrait (1994), Spoken Softly with Mama (1998), and Meanwhile The Girls Were Playing (1999).83 The Herbalist’s Tools is in conversation with this series, because it structures a narrative about a site and its people, trying to construct an idea of portraiture that is beyond the traditionality of the portrait, to create a portrait of an animist tradition. My father was a herbalist. My father was an individual who worked in agriculture—with livestock and plants—all his life. Aside from agriculture, he had this particular introduction to the mysteries of the living forest, which is a very rich connection back to the land of Africa. My father used to tell me in casual conversations as we were walking in the fields in Matanzas: “Your grandfather who came from Nigeria to Cuba used to tell me ‘this, this, and that’.” In that tradition and in that continuum of history, I was introduced to the beauty, to the care, and to the extraordinary value of nature.

166  Conversation with María Magdalena Campos-Pons Every time that I went to the forest with my dad to get a branch of a tree for healing, for cleansing, for medical treatments, my father would ask the forest, the tree: “With permission”; and he would knock on the trunk of the tree one, two, three times, and he would drop either corn or pennies. It was something very beautiful. That brought for me, very early on, a very keen understanding and interest in the proximity to all these plants and trees that were surrounding my life. Herbalism is a very important tradition in Yoruba practice; it is not only a spiritual connection to the land and to the universe, but it’s also formally understood and accepted as a medical practice. So a herbalist would have a remedy, with a plant, for almost every malady that one may encounter. You have a headache, here’s something for your headache. You have a cramp, here’s something for your cramp. You have a stomach ache, here’s something for your stomach ache. You have muscular pain, here’s something for muscular pain. In my family, there was a very strong tradition of drinking a beverage that we used to call tisana. Later on, in the United States, people have thought that my love for tea imitates Victorian traditions. No. I am coming from a place in which every single night the day is ended with a very particular and beautiful beverage. The names of the plants and the names of the beverages are still with me. The memory that I have of my grandmother is of her not only making drinks but also surrounding herself and the house with plants that were old, valuable, and rich in nutrients and functions. For example, a bunch of albahaca, basil, would take care of all of the little flies and insects, because the smell and the aroma of basil repel them. So back in time, well, I could answer David and Soraya’s question exactly in the same way now… The past is valuable if it allows me to understand some direction of the future and function as a clarification to problems of the present. So this is the origin of The Herbalist’s Tools. Now, what is in the piece is important. The piece elicits the presence of three very important arboreal species in Cuba: the royal palm tree, which is considered sacred by some particular practitioners of Afro-religions in Cuba; the almacigo tree, which is a medicinal plant that was in front of my house; and the ceiba tree, which is a sacred tree in Cuban Santería, in the same family as the baobab tree from West Africa. The ceiba is everywhere in Cuba; it is so respected that nobody takes it down, wherever it grows. So if there is a ceiba tree in a particular territory, everything is going to be built around the tree; that tree will not be cut. What an incredible understanding of beauty and permanency and presence. Three things happened with those three that were important for me. For the ceiba and palm trees: in the animist practice and in the Santería practice, there is a tradition to put offerings to the spirits

Conversation with María Magdalena Campos-Pons  167 inside the root of the tree. When I was a child, I thought that they were like little houses, with all the offerings left by the door. That was something that was absolutely wonderful and magical. These trees are not only trees; they contain habitats. They are the receptacle of other life, of other entities, of other energy. We protect it, we keep it alive. The almacigo tree has a medicinal sap: if you have any infection on your skin, if you cut yourself, if you step on a piece a metal, you put almacigo sap and it helps. I know that from experience. Those three trees were so important in daily life but also so important in the formation of culture. So what I was trying to do with the The Herbalist’s Tools was to construct a conversation starting from the intimacy of a family experience—a personal experience—to the cultural implications for a nation in which these three particular plants are fundamental to the formation of identity, of selfhood, and nationhood. S.B.: Would you like to describe The Herbalist’s Tool’s installation? What does a visitor entering the sculptural space encounter? M.M.C.P.: There are three columns made of wood; on the outside, they are lined with fresh bark. They have small openings cut out at the bottom, like little doors. Around midday in Cuba, when the sun hits the countryside, almacigo trees showcase radiant, relucent surfaces that look like copper. It is almost like a miracle in the landscape. I recreated that effect inside the columns of my installation. And then, there are holes that pierce the treelike columns; if the viewer peaks through the holes, they can read texts revealing animist beliefs about the life of the forest. The trees feel, the trees talk back to you, the trees take your prayers, the trees listen to what you’re asking them. That’s the

Figure 3.6 María Magdalena Campos-Pons, The Herbalist’s Tools, 1993–94. Mixed-media installation, shown as installed at Indianapolis Museum of Art. Courtesy of the artist.

168  Conversation with María Magdalena Campos-Pons reason that my father would not take anything from the plant without asking for permission. You knock on the tree trunk and then you ask for permission; if you are going to take a branch, you offer food. Because you should not take; you cannot take without giving something back to nature. The beauty of that for me as a child, and the beauty for me as an adult woman now, is the sense of gravity and respect, and the understanding that one must honor the complete entity of this other life, this other form of existence. I get chills when I tell you this now because I think I cannot imagine a lesson more profound for a child than to tell them to respect nature. Treat it like you treat a human because you both are entities living parallel existences; it is one continuum and we sustain one another. That was, for me, a gift; that was the gift that my father, my family, offered to me. So, in this installation there are also benches that recall those where the herbalist used to sit on when selling or giving away plants… and also where they put the plants both in the house of the Osainistas—the people who practice herbalism in Santería84—and at the market. So, I was trying to imitate that, and here is what I did: I transferred onto the surface of the benches photos of many trees that grow in the Cuban forest, and they all are covered in very soft layers of wax. Ideally, I would have wanted to have candles on every little bench, but no museum would allow that, it would be a fire hazard; but plants are placed on top of the stools, and museums and institutions commit to replacing them with fresh ones when they dry out. So, when a visitor enters the installation room, the smell is very powerful, the air is filled with scents from the plants. The viewers encounter this entire range of plants from the forests in Cuba. Also, they see all these hooks, the herbalist tools. There are two herbalist tools that my father always carried with him. The machete, which he used to cut the plants, and the hook, which is a stick with a V shape at the end, that held the grass together when he cut it with the machete. In the installation, I placed a machete inscribed with the words: “with permission.” At the bottom of the columns symbolizing the trees, there is a casserole: it is a casserole used to prepare food for the Orishas in the Santería tradition. The inscription on the casserole says: To the departed, you offer food in a brand new pot, that is: “A los difuntos les ponen comida en un caldero nuevo.” Each plant, each tree, has the name of one departed member of my family. I need to tell you a funny story about this piece. Somebody stole the machete and a casserole from an installation, when the piece was installed in Miami. My artistic intervention gathered this kind of response from believers! Anyway, on top of each tree there is a glass container; the bottom one is made of aluminum, and the top one is made of glass. Each glass container is filled with water and has an

Conversation with María Magdalena Campos-Pons  169 inscription with the name of the corresponding plant in Yoruba: iroko, árbol de ceiba, almacigo, and palma. S.B.: You mentioned animism, Santería, and Yoruba traditions. About History of People Who Were Not Heroes, you once said: “Africa was in my backyard. My father talked about my great-grandpa who came from Nigeria in such a way that we don’t even talk about Nigeria. Nigeria was in my backyard. We didn’t have any idea of going back to Africa. We didn’t need it. Africa was there”.85 Do you find that your work is connected to that of contemporary Nigerian artists like Bright Ugochukwu Eke and Ifeoma Anyaeji, especially concerning human–non-human relationships?86 M.M.C.P.: When I mention animism, from Nigeria and other places, I mean that there are entities in the universe that can sense, can feel. They have their own energies, their own auras; that creates balance. What we have lost, with postmodernity and post-industrialization, is an understanding of the balance of us humans and everything else. Nigerian artists who use post-industrial materials do a contestarian action in response to the violation of the principle of balance, which is so important in Africa. You need to go back to Chinua Achebe and his novel Things Fall Apart.87 Do I consider myself an African artist? Yes, if we consider Africa not only in its continental existence but as a diaspora. We can find Africa in Cuba, Africa in Colombia, Africa in Haiti, Africa in Brazil, Africa in Peru, Africa in Venezuela, Africa in London. Amazing, how amazing. So Africa is not a continent, Africa becomes an extensive set of islands dispersed in communities around the world. Of course, the first time that I went to Africa, my reaction was: “But this is home!” I was in Senegal and there I found the same plants that I had in my backyard in Cuba. It was unbelievable. For example, I saw a plant called marilope, which is very green and has these little yellow flowers. Marilope is medicinal: if you have menstrual cramps, that is all that you need. I hadn’t seen a marilope in a long time, because I had not visited my home town for a while. Finding marilope in Senegal raised emotions I could not describe… Or, sitting in a hotel watching TV, and suddenly hearing the tune of a traditional song, and thinking: “I know this song. We sing that song, we play that song in Cuba.” S.B.: Fast forward 25 years, your recent reforestation project that began with the 2019 Havana Biennial and continues today does not only work at the discursive level but also actively affects change through a reinvention of the Cuban landscape. What inspired this “interventionist” approach? M.M.C.P.: The piece that you ask me about is a part of the project Intermittent Rivers (Ríos Intermitentes), which I led in the city of Matanzas as part of my participation in the 13th Havana Biennial. It was a big

170  Conversation with María Magdalena Campos-Pons shift because I decided not to enter the Biennial as an exhibiting artist but rather create a very large collective satellite project in Matanzas: there were 46 artists from 25 different countries, and also many Mantanceros. One of the aspects of the project was the garden: we haven’t given it a particular name yet. Inspiration for it comes from when I was younger. When I was at the Havana Institute of Art in Cuba in the 1980s, one of my professors and mentor Antonio Vidal one time asked me for a particular banana that’s typical of Cuba but has almost disappeared: platano Johnson. My father helped me find it for my professor. It was a difficult task due to the impact of deforestation in Cuba. Deforestation started with the Spaniards and continued afterward, during the Republic, and with Castro in the 1970s—when he decided to invest in sugar production.88 Disaster. So, a place like Cuba that was a paradise of edible fruits became flat. Because I grew up on a farm, I grew up knowing many Cuban fruits. So, during a conversation with a friend my age, I mentioned the name of a fruit that I ate, and my friend responded: “You are such a liar. Why do you make up stories?” I never forgot the fact that someone from my generation didn’t know about Cuban fruits. Imagine what has happened since then. So, as part of my connection with the city of Matanzas, I went to the high school for the arts for a conversation with the students. I surveyed them, giving names of fruits that I ate when I was their age in Matanzas, and asking that they raise their hand if they had tried the fruits or knew about them. In a room of 40 students, only 1 kid knew at least three of the fruits. I realized that this was the death of the heritage of the land. One of my younger nieces is an environmentalist, a distinguished professional. I told her: “We are going to replant—in this city, this province, this region, this valley—the fruits that I ate and that your son, who is thirteen years old, doesn’t have any idea of.” It’s a patriotic and revolutionary thing to fight for reforestation. This is a fundamental form of identity, this is what makes us, the Cuban, who we are. This is also a social response to the shortage of food and lack of high-quality nutrition in an environment that is a tropical paradise. This is a conceptual intervention about animism of another sort. If we return to Matanzas the forest or part of the forest that was there, it is good for the environment, it is good for the coast, because those beaches were surrounded by trees that were all removed. That garden is in progress: we planted 13 palm trees, because the palm tree—the national tree of Cuba—is endangered, too. The ones that we planted are thriving. And we have land now, and a greenhouse, in which we have delicious edible species. I am not alone in this, I am with Joseph Beuys, who planted 7,000 oaks in Kassel.89 I took a lot of pictures of

Conversation with María Magdalena Campos-Pons  171 those trees when I was at documenta. So, my project is not a radically new gesture; its importance is in its educational value; may the kids carry on traditional knowledge. S.B.: Institutional reforestation is sometimes seen as a solution to offset carbon emissions and has been critiqued, in this sense, as ineffective and insufficient: pollution on one site cannot necessarily be balanced by reforestation in another; and reforestation often replaces grown and diverse forests with young trees of the same variety—for convenience according to capitalist criteria.90 Capitalist mentality, as well as colonial exploitation and slavery, also informed plantation agriculture and monocropping. How does your project reject, resist, and revise these exploitative forms of land use? M.M.C.P.: I imagine that the garden will raise awareness about what was on our land, because there has been an erasure of the collective memory of the place. I have, I admit, a perhaps romantic idea about creating a place of freedom for the individual. All the produce that is grown in Cuba is under the control of the state. For the most part, you cannot go and start picking, let’s say, mangoes, because they are going to be exported. I found out that here in the United States I could eat every single fruit that I want to plant in Cuba, that is originally from Cuba, but cannot be found there anymore, and that breaks my heart. This is capitalism at its peak. We want to bring back fruits that do well along the beach, in the climate and soil of Matanzas. We are trying to create a vivero—a nursery—of the family of plants including chirimoya, annona, guanabana, which are superfoods, very rich in nutrients. They smell like you can’t imagine. What grows well in one land does not do as well in another. I want to grow plants that are original from that particular place, and I imagine people walking in the park and being able to pick and eat fruit out there, and have a system in which they can keep the seeds and replant them. This project is primarily born out of my passion, it is about the loss of tradition, the loss of knowledge, of something so essential as what is coming out of your ground, out of your soil. From an aesthetic side, I imagine the garden as a kind of paradise, a garden of all of the sublime things, but feasible on a local and site-specific level. It could be expanded: how about we turned every abandoned plot in this city into something that could give us nutrition and that could make this place more habitable and more cared for? This is a hard task. We may stumble into the same problems we want to resolve. But I think that there is radicality just in my attempt and in that of the artist working with me on this project. We are not coming to this from a romantic and idealistic point of view. This is a community-centered endeavor, rooted in sanación not

172  Conversation with María Magdalena Campos-Pons only of the land but also of the people. This is about restoring selfagency and faith for a population that has been victimized by histories beyond their control. This small project moves people; it may take time, but it is irreversible.91

Conversation with jackie sumell92

Silvia Bottinelli: How does your art practice show the connection between plantation slavery and the present US prison system through the language of gardening? jackie sumell: There are many different ways that Solitary Gardens (2015–ongoing) directly addresses the history of chattel slavery in the colonized United States.93 The most obvious is probably the way that we are building the garden beds: these six-foot by nine-foot beds maintain the same size and blueprint as isolation cells that are used in the Angola prison here in Louisiana.94 You can see the bed, the desk, the chair, the toilet, the sink, anything that is concrete or steel in the actual cell is part of what we call the walls of the solitary garden; those walls are made out of sugarcane, cotton, and tobacco that we

Figure 3.7 jackie sumell, Solitary Gardens in Charlottesville, VA, 2021–22. In collaboration with the artist-run gallery and studio space Visible Records. Photo Eze Amos.

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grow on site; the crops are milled down and then collectively formed through a process of rammed earth. The walls of these prison cells turned garden beds illustrate the evolution of chattel slavery into mass incarceration. We also are very much a teaching garden: we look at the history of forced enslavement practices from the Middle Passage into mass incarceration—or into the current practices of, arguably, enslavement.95 We use plants to tell that story, and we do this literally on the ground. You can come visit and see how okra was braided into the hair of the enslaved body and made its way across the Middle Passage into the colonized United States, or how the flowers of okra became beacons as folks were forced into sugarcane and other plantations. Then, you can walk through the gardens and be in relationship to sugarcane, cotton, tobacco, and indigo—the first of the chattel or forced labor crops here in Louisiana—and soybeans, which is the largest crop now, in terms of forced labor.96 Just letting the plants tell those stories through signage, seed packets, and conversations are some of the ways that we are hoping to address these issues. At the heart of this work is abolition or the notion of not using harm to respond to harm, which is antithetical to the forced enslavement of predominantly Black and Brown folks and what has grown into police surveillance and mass incarceration. We transcend the human constructs of prisons by creating relationships between incarcerated folks and the volunteers on the outside who actually grow these gardens; Solitary Gardens challenges perceptions of criminality and restitution in the same way that it might challenge that particular history of colonization and enslavement. That particular history includes deforestation, which was practiced to make space for plantations. Does your work counter that process of alteration of the landscape, which has been seen by scientist, thinker, and ecofeminist Donna Haraway97 as a turning point leading to the current ecological crisis? We are really interested in rewilding and working with native plants, so when we speak with our Solitary Gardeners or share our growing almanacs, we prioritize native plants. Our growing chart is organized around native plants to this growing zone (9B). That said, we work with folks that are incarcerated from all around the country, so their memories of plants, their intimacy with plants, what they might want in their garden, might not be native to New Orleans. I don’t want to exclude that. I don’t want to police their imagination. We’re asking folks to consider some of the language they have around plants and growing; and around what is good, what is bad, what is right, what is wrong, what is a weed, and what is unwanted. We’re asking to really unpack that and see how that’s part of a colonized way of thinking and that the complexity of value of something that we might deem a

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weed is just as relative as the complexity of value of someone we might have categorized as criminal or prisoner or inmate.98 For people of color in the Americas, agriculture is, in some cases, an emotionally tolling activity, because it may be connected to collective memories of slavery, forced or indentured labor. How do you address this kind of complexity in your projects? I’m very aware. I have been doing this work for over 20 years, and the sensitivities that I have are gifts from the tutelage of my elders, from Herman, Albert, and Robert, and also Mwalimu, Norris,99 and all of the folks—all of them formerly incarcerated—who have really invested lifelong patience in the belief that this work is valuable. The way that we link with Solitary Gardeners is really word of mouth and it’s more, at this point, people reaching out to me to grow a garden. We are hoping to be in a position to pay a living wage to a formerly incarcerated person to work the land, but it’s harder than you think, because of exactly what you illustrated, because folks are coming home and they may never want to be in a garden again. Or simply because when folks are inside, growth or educational opportunities are next to nothing, and then they come home and they are starting from zero. So, we are building the Solitary Gardens into a much larger project called the Abolitionist’s Apothecary (2020–ongoing) and ApotheCafe (2021–ongoing),100 which will work as a diversion program with the newly elected progressive district attorney, Jason Williams, here in New Orleans. The idea is to provide training and a stipend for folks as an alternative to incarceration. I am planning to gift this project to those who are directly impacted, so they can lead it. Herbal medicine has such rich and important histories for people of African descent, as well as Indigenous people. Do the recipes that you source and prepare for Abolitionist’s Apothecary incorporate aspects of these histories? In what specific communities are the herbal medicines distributed and how are they received? The project is born out of a relationship with someone inside who was really drawn to creating remedies through his solitary garden. For The Abolitionist’s Apothecary, we collaborate with a community school of herbalism here in New Orleans.101 Members of the school, as part of a scholarship, are working with folks inside and sharing their education. My wish is to be able to share all of the recipes we’re getting from the Solitary Gardeners in a book. In the current phase, those recipes exist with the volunteers who are writing them, and we are working with the school to create the plant medicine remedies which will be distributed. Also, we are organizing very small outdoor conversations at the intersection of health care, sovereignty, plant medicine, and abolition, asking folks to taste, to feel, to meet different herbs that we grow at the Solitary Gardens. Finally, what I’m putting the gas on is a brick-and-mortar Abolitionist’s Apothecary, the

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ApotheCafe. We have the building, we have the land, we have the funding; we are just putting it together now. It should be open by September 2022.102 I am working with two formerly incarcerated folks, Jerome Morgan and Robert Jones of FreeDem Foundations.103 The youth that Jerome and Robert already work with will be learning about plants and creating medicinal snowballs, as we call them in New Orleans: teas and syrups for coffees to serve at the cafe. This project can be seen as a form of health sovereignty, combining community care and public health with self-care and skill-building before and after reentry. Yeah, we’ve had two Solitary Gardeners use their solitary garden as part of their parole package, and they’ve both come home. Another focus is to look at plants that one can buy with an EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer) card, that is covered by the SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance) program: we look for things that can be purchased with food stamps and can also be used as medicine. This helps fight against the criminalization of poverty. I’m very conscious of the fact that herbalism can be inaccessible: the reevaluation of alternative and plant medicine has created a capitalist market that has become really exclusive. I hope that Abolitionist’s Apothecary undermines that. Continuing to underline the connection between colonialism, slavery, and the current prison system in the United States, it can be noted that herbalism enabled forms of resilience, resistance, and empowerment for enslaved people, who oftentimes offered health care through herbal medicine. Herbalism helped them reclaim independent knowledge and keep connections with forms of ancestral spirituality. Beyond overall historical associations, you sometimes describe the gardens that you co-create as portraits. Can you share a few examples? Here is one of the most memorable examples: When we first started this project, we found some abandoned kittens at the gardens’ site and tried to rehome them. Zulu, a Solitary Gardener who had spent 28-consecuative years in solitary confinement at that point, asked that we start planting catnip, because he understood that abandonment comes with tremendous anxiety and that catnip helps with anxiety. I think that this is just an incredible way to access the humanity and dignity and compassion of someone like Zulu, we are complicit in his torture. There are beautiful stories that come out of these gardens. Another one is embedded in Jesse’s garden. Jesse got married while he was incarcerated to a woman who had a daughter, and the biological father passed while Jesse was inside; Jesse wanted to scatter the ashes in his solitary garden, planted with roses, to honor the man who fathered his stepdaughter. Jesse committed an egregious crime; he’s incarcerated because of this crime that he does not deny, but what we’re talking about through the Solitary Gardens is everything else that Jesse offers—not just the good, not just the bad.

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There are infinite stories like that, and what we are looking at through the lens of a garden bed is the resilience of one’s imagination and humanity and compassion, in spite of the human constructs of torture through incarceration or solitary confinement. These stories show how gardening and herbal medicine help nurture deep relationships. Can you tell us of transformative encounters between the Solitary Gardeners and their collaborators, who correspond with them and enact their wishes by planting and caring for their gardens? My own lived experience of my relationship with Herman Wallace shows that these gardens are meaningful. I discovered my own humanity in visiting a man who was 40 years my elder in solitary confinement over the course of 12 years; that changed the scope of my life and my ability to love in ways I have infinite amounts of gratitude for. Beyond this, volunteers forge connections with the Solitary Gardeners. For example, a young woman, Kennedy, is volunteering with an incarcerated woman named Shonda here in Louisiana. It’s really a beautiful, quirky relationship: they just joke about the garden all the time. When Kennedy had a heartbreak, broke up with her partner, and then got in a car accident, Shonda was concerned and asked her daughter to look for and after Kennedy. We’re creating family; we are forging relationships in the most unexpected ways, beyond that garden bed. Two Solitary Gardeners that have come home so far have intimate relationships with some of the volunteers. Your projects often involve a nomadic component: vans and trucks have been equipped to travel to sites where gardens are planted and medicine is made. How does the work change in relation to different places and communities? We’re seeding these ideas, but not finishing the piece, and so the ability to move is critical because I have very different conversations in different places: the conversations you have around slavery in Connecticut, for instance, and in Louisiana are incredibly different. It feels really important to me to have all these different perspectives and to recognize complicity as a strength: you’re implicated in the problem, so you are also implicated in the potential solution. One final question: What role does materiality play in the construction of your projects? Do you see materials as carrying cultural and symbolic associations? Do materials express their own agency in the context of your work? That holds a central space in what I’m doing and how I feel like the natural world advocates for abolitionist ideas. The practices that we adopt are influenced by Indigenous technologies and, in particular, by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass.104 We believe in the idea that we have to ask for permission. All of that is a practice of consent. Part of what we want to do is embed a crypto language

178  Conversation with jackie sumell inside these gardens as a way to call people into a safe or brave space for conversations around landscapes. I’m deep diving into Floriography105 right now and then Flowers and How They Got Their Names,106 because I hope that the garden beds that we’re building around the ApotheCafe in collaboration with the youth will allow them to message each other outside the ways we think that youth connect. The newest addition to my work is the Abolitionist Field Guide, a book with very practical suggestions inspired by the Solitary Gardens, fostering observation and mutual aid, and showing the different ways that plants teach us to be better humans.107

Conversation with Seitu Jones108

Silvia Bottinelli: How have your family and your personal history influenced your interest in agriculture as a form of art practice? Seitu Jones: I’m a fourth-generation Minnesotan. With the birth of my grandchildren, my family has been here in Minnesota for six generations. My family began its history here with my great-grandfather, who was born into slavery in 1837, and at the time of the Civil War he was able to escape slavery. He joined the Union Army during the war, remained in the army for a few more years and then came to Minnesota. We don’t know exactly where he was between the time he left his service until he arrived in Minnesota in 1877. He arrived in a little river town coming up the Mississippi River. That was his grand highway and landed in a little river town called Red Wing, Minnesota. There’s a hotel that still exists where he worked as a porter: the St. James Hotel. He earned enough money as a porter to start a farm in Rochester, Minnesota, where he was one of the first Black residents. My grandmother was born there. My grandmother, my father’s mother, who I knew and loved. I never knew growing up, and I’m not sure how much would it have impacted me, that this woman who I loved was the daughter of a man who had been enslaved, that she was the daughter of a Civil War veteran. My great-grandfather married a woman who was 40 years his junior—my great-grandmother—when he was in his 60s, and she was in her 20s. My grandmother moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where my father and his siblings were born and raised. Now I’m saying all that to set this context: I was so fortunate to have landed in the family that I did. My grandfather worked for the railroad as a sleeping car porter and that earned him a middle-class existence; I say middle class, but of course the disparities existed even then between Black folks and White folks. He had a middle-class income; it still was lower middle class when you look at the context of the American economy in the 1920s and 1930s. Anyway, I  grew up in this family that had a set of middle-class values, that valued education: the whole way I was always encouraged and never discouraged from following my path as an artist. I was drawing even

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S.B.:

S.J.:

as an elementary school person. I had an auntie who called me little George Washington Carver. I would bristle every time she called me that: Why would I want to be like that old man who died just a few years before I was born? She put this in my mind because she knew I was tied to nature and that also my father, my uncles, my grandfather were all outdoors people. We were always on a boat, always out hunting, and doing that for sustenance. I mean, now I do what my father would have called White folks fishing, and that’s catching and releasing. That never, never, would have been a concept of mine at that time; we would have all this fish to last us through the winter and even go out ice-fishing to catch more. I am saying all that to show that I was very passionate about art, and nature and well, but I would just scream inside every time my aunt called me little George Washington Carver. Of course, we all know about his history in agriculture, but I didn’t know until I became an adult that George Washington Carver was also a painter. My auntie knew that. Art was the thing that led him into the study of botany. He painted nothing but plants, and one of his teachers said: “you should study botany,” and the rest was history. And so here was this person that took this multidisciplinary approach to solving the world’s problems and really helping, in particular, southern farmers, with the challenges of growing in the South, after the Civil War, after a lot of the nutrients of the land had been depleted from this big-scale farming that came with slavery. People were exploited, but the land was also exploited, and George Washington Carver was trying to come up with all these solutions to remediate the soil.109 So, this was my family background and that led me on my educational path. I have been making art for 40 years. I don’t have a degree in art. I’ve got a Bachelor of Science in Landscape Design, and my graduate degree is in Environmental History. Those are the tools that I use in my work, and when I’ve taught for the university from time to time, it has generally been in food science, not in art at all, looking at food policy, looking at issues around the food system, and how we can change it. How does the context of systemic racism emerge through your work within the context of food sovereignty, sustainability, and mindful eating? What crops have particular significance to your work with food and agriculture, and why? I have been passionate about growing for a long time. My grandmother literally had a farm in her backyard. There are a couple of pictures of me there. One of the things that I remember are these plum trees and the massive amount of plums that they generated. Twenty years ago, I ended up planting a plum tree, submitting the plums it made to the Agricultural Exposition at our state fair. That’s not going to happen this year, but I’ve won ribbons for my plums grown right here in my backyard, and that’s part of my family legacy,

Conversation with Seitu Jones  181 this line that connects me all the way back to my great-grandfather Joseph Parker, who was a farmer and escaped from slavery. You know, I recognize that we need to gain control over aspects of the food system, and I try to do that in as many ways as I can as an artist. I tried to frame my involvement and my interventions in the food system through art, do it in a way that is artistic and do it in a way that also calls upon the times that we exist in right now. I was born in the middle of the last century and came of age during the later parts of the civil rights struggle and the Black Power movement. Living here in Minneapolis right now, I never thought that I would have to watch the city erupt the way that it has, 50 years after the death of Martin Luther King. But after Martin Luther King was assassinated, there was this explosion of art that ended up being called the Black Arts Movement, which is a cultural component of the Black Power Movement. I’m seeing inklings of that explosion happening again here. But during that time period I was deep in this rich mix of politics: I studied Islam and Buddhism. I read Marxist Leninist thought. There were times when I wanted to be Jimi Hendrix, and there were times when I wanted to be a Black Panther. The Panthers recognized that in order for the Black community to progress politically and culturally, folks had to have good nutrition. And that was part of the reason that folks ended up creating the Free Breakfast Program, and that has been an inspiration to me.110 I’ve got a philosophical foundation that has all these different layers and one of the layers is the Free Breakfast Program. I am doing this work to hopefully be able to control the food that comes in and out of my community, and also to change the world. In the late 1980s, the term “environmental racism” was coined by Dr. Robert Bullard, who at that time was at Clark Atlanta University; he introduced the idea of greenlining in direct opposition to the old practice of redlining.111 Where a community was African American, or of color, or White and poor, banks and insurance companies circled maps of the neighborhood with red lines and government services were denied to those areas; we’re still seeing the legacy of the redlining that was done, institutionalized and legalized in the 1930s.112 And so greenlining is a way that we can use plants, farming, agriculture, landscape design, to really help transform the community in positive ways. I mean, there are all these other things that need to be looked at: housing, jobs, health. But the thing that I focused on is using plants to change the community and change the world. I have been focusing not just on annual crops but also on trees, planting fruit trees here in my neighborhood, in Frogtown, working with neighbors over the years… Planting fruit trees throughout the Twin Cities, and thinking about these fruit trees as a way to help improve access to good quality food.

182  Conversation with Seitu Jones

Figure 3.8 Frogtown Park and Farm, co-founded by Seitu Jones, 2013–ongoing. Detail of Harvest. St. Paul, Minnesota. Courtesy of the artist.

S.B.: S.J.:

In 2013, you co-created the Frogtown Park and Farm. Are there fruit trees there? Absolutely. I should show you the fruit that we’ve harvested just this year! Frogtown Farm began as an idea by artists: three writers and myself as a visual artist. We are two couples that came together to fight and argue with each other, as well as fight and argue with the powers to be about using 12 acres of vacant land to create a park and farm. Within the 12-acre park, 5 acres are dedicated to a farm that uses permaculture practices. The farm’s frame was designed by artists: there are three entrance points, and there is a sculpture at each of them by Gita Ghei, who works in metal, so that you have to go through these artwork-sculptures to get into the large artwork-farm. That’s the way we conceptualized the farm: as a work of art. We ­recognize that this five-acre organic farm could never feed all of Frogtown’s 15,000 residents, the farm is only partially going to solve a problem, but it can function as a model like a work of art does. And so this is our fifth season, and we are still arguing and fighting about

Conversation with Seitu Jones  183

S.B.: S.J.:

the best way to feed the residents and how to do that this year during the pandemic. Because our soils are urban and have been depleted, after working with soil scientists we decided to rest the soil in a good part of the farm. And after producing between 10,000 and 15,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables over the last few years, the farm will produce maybe about 2,000 pounds. We are giving the soil a rest and are also working toward plotting and planning for next year. We planted a number of perennials: we’ve already had a couple hundred pounds of cherries from the fruit trees and honey berries from the honey berry shrubs. We have already harvested garlic scapes, garlic that was planted last year. We looked at Frogtown Farm as a demonstration farm. Through the farm, you show the potential of growing food independently from systems that continue to iterate environmental racism and classism. Absolutely. The food that we are growing organically stays right here in Frogtown. And it’s hard to grow food, even in the summer. For example, as we speak it’s about 94°F here and it feels like 101°F. I can’t tell you how much I pray for rain, or get mad when the irrigation system doesn’t work, or we have pests. I’m not responsible for all that myself. We were all smart enough to hire a farm manager and farmer, but I’m there as a volunteer. There are different ways of experiencing farming, with all its challenges. We want our residents to see it to understand where their food comes from, to use urban farming as a tool to improve health and well-being all together. This farm has all these different layers attached to it. We received a grant, not too long ago, to build an outdoor kitchen: so we have a small wood-fired oven and I have been using it to bake. We have tied in many of the baking traditions of this diverse neighborhood. There is a Japanese artist who lives here who worked in a bakery during high school and learned from a master Japanese baker. We make pies from the fruit from the farm. We have done crackers there. Last year there were volunteers from the Bahamas, and we baked bread using a recipe that they had grown up with. All these traditions have been coming together, and we are going to do a cookbook soon, but right now it’s just been fun baking. Baking is an organizing tool! Once the smell of the bread baking in the oven is out, everybody comes and wants a piece. We are working with a chef now, a Black woman that focuses on Afro-vegan cooking. We are going to be working with her over the next year to really expand and refine this kitchen and to attract people and transform folks. I haven’t really even talked about diet at all and all of the pathologies that exist here in this poor neighborhood where folks are suffering from high rates of type-two diabetes, high rates of obesity. You can get almost anything to eat here; you can find

184  Conversation with Seitu Jones

S.B.:

S.J.:

S.B.: S.J.:

a lot of ethnic foods, but a vast majority of these foods are fried. We just want to be able to demonstrate how people can begin to take back their lives. You use different food-based strategies to achieve that, from planting to cooking and baking, to working with seeds. You incorporated seeds in multiple projects: for example, seed bombs during the 2009 Ghetto Biennial in Haiti; cards with collard green seeds in Collard Field; and seed-covered silhouettes of Maḣpiya Wic̣aṡt ̣a (Cloud Man), Harriet Robinson Scott, Eliza Winston, Siah Armajani, and Kirk Washington, Jr. in the recent project Shadows at the Crossroads (2019). What are the symbolic meanings and formal aspects (like texture, embodiment of time) that draw you to seeds? I created seed bombs, for example in Port-au-Prince in Haiti, as a way of greenlining the city. For the Walker Art Center, I also did a series of 40 seed bombs that probably will never go into the ground. That said, the vast majority of the seed bombs that I have created have been launched: they contain vegetable seeds or native plants. I encourage folks to do this in workshops as another tool to help greenlining neighborhoods. I have also included seeds in handmade paper, and I plant seeds. I have been working on a series of seeds that are from the South: field peas, which have a connection to African-­American cuisine. I grew up calling them pole beans, one of my great-grandmothers called them pole beans: these plants would wrap around a pole. There are field peas of different varieties; many that originated in Africa were used to nourish folks who had been enslaved. Slaves would have their own garden, sometimes, outside of the slave cabins and folks would grow these field peas.113 I have been growing field peas and different varieties of field peas and pole beans as a way of tapping into my story and the story of those that came before me. Collard greens too? Collard greens, as well. I work with all kinds of brassica, including different varieties of collards, and use collards as a way of accessing African American cuisine.114 In the 1960s and 1970s, food really was consciously politicized. There were foods and cuisines that were tied to political movements. The Nation of Islam leader, Elijah Muhammad, wrote a book called How to Eat to Live,115 which is focused on eating. The Nation of Islam really developed restaurants, foods, and diets that were tied to their view of the world; and Dick Gregory, a great comedian and civil rights activist, wrote a book called Dick Gregory’s Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: it was the first time that I read something on vegetarianism.116 He also politicized food; the Black Panther Party politicized food. They wanted to give people access to quality food and food with whole ingredients, so many times they worked with farmers and with distributors to get food that was as fresh as they could for their breakfast program. What they

Conversation with Seitu Jones  185 were doing was introducing folks to something that was not new, but something that took people away from the commercial and the corporate food and helped change the food system from after World War II up until the early 1970s. SB: Let’s go back to your seed bomb project during the 2009 Ghetto Biennial in Haiti. Can you tell us more about it? S.J.: Unfortunately, you won’t find too much on the Ghetto Biennial in Port-au-Prince. It is still going on, there was one that happened just in November 2019. It’s organized by an artist based in the United Kingdom to bring artists from across the world to work with artists in Haiti and particularly Port-au-Prince, to exhibit after the earthquake, to help transform the city. There were artists that were lost in that devastating earthquake. If you look at Haiti on maps and on Google Earth, you can see the devastation that still exists from deforestation. To counter this, I created the seed bombs using collard green seeds. I worked with a small community organization that involves young people, and we made over 200 to 300 seed bombs. Using soil from Haiti and using the seeds that I brought down with me, we created bombs and just tossed them into spaces that needed some greening: on roadways and sometimes on people’s yards, over a fence, and they would explode with soil and seed and hopefully those seeds will germinate right there on the spot. That’s actually an old agricultural technique that, in the modern world, was further developed by Masanobu Fukuoka, a microbiologist/ farmer in Japan. S.B.: Your decades-long work deals with feeding communities both mentally and physically: what have been some outcomes of your practice that you feel positive about? S.J.: That’s always a hard question to answer for me as an artist. Generally, my answer is: the thing I’m working on right now. Today I’m excited about making pear tarts. I’m actually going to take these to the Longfellow Community Council, in the neighborhood where my mother lived and that is the epicenter of the Black Lives Matter protests after the death of George Floyd.117 But I’m also working on a whole series of self-portraits and thinking about all the ways that the Black male body has been in danger: I’ve painted myself as an enslaved man; I’ve painted myself as part of the Great Migration, when many of my family members came up from the South enduring pain. Now, during the pandemic, I am creating a series of portraits of myself with African masks on the flag of a particular country in Africa. I’m also pulling back away from a lot of the socially engaged work that I did. I’m leaving the board of Frogtown Farm, for example, because I need to get back into my studio. Elka Sorensen: This is understandable. Just one last question about your public artwork! We’ve mentioned your use of seeds in Shadows at the Crossroads (2019).118 I am interested in the role played by materials in

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S.J.:

this project. Only when you pour water on one of the shadows, it becomes visible; other shadows, flat on the floor, remain unseen until people step over them. To me, the project becomes about the idea that history is not being acknowledged, yet we use it as a stepping stone. I was just wondering if you could speak more about that piece… It’s all together seven shadows that are on display at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden that is administered by the Walker Art Center. These pieces vary in shape and size. I tried to work with natural elements and natural systems. Each one of the shadows is lined up to a solar event, like the winter solstice, summer solstice, and fall equinox. You stand in the shadows of these folks who came before. The viewer may encounter the sculptures on the day when their shadow lines up with the one of the person represented in the work. There are poems that tell a powerful narrative related to the person that the shadow is supposed to represent. Now, about me and materials: I love working with my hands as much as I can and a part of the reason why I didn’t make it in art school is because I couldn’t focus on one particular medium at that time. There was nothing about taking an interdisciplinary approach or a multidisciplinary approach. When I was in art school, folks said, “Jones, you got to focus. Where do you want to be? You want to be a potter, you want to be a photographer? You can’t be both. You can be a painter. You got to do one thing.” And I couldn’t. So I focused on my passion and went into the agriculture school there, but I love working with materials. If you were to come into my studio, right behind me… I’ve got a wall that I set up like that’s my easel, and I hang canvas up on that wall and I paint. I’ve got a wood shop here. I also have a potter’s wheel downstairs, and so I work with all of these different materials and I love it. I love the feel and the smell of all of that stuff. Working on Shadows at the Crossroads at the Walker Art Center Sculpture Garden… that was a way that I could play with these different materials etching into the sidewalk. I will work on a piece with a material that’s appropriate to the theme and the narrative of the site. Does that answer your question? You know what, Silvia and Elka? If you were to interview me tomorrow I would have different answers for you. I’m gonna be different.

Notes for Section III

1 Fabio Parasecoli, “World Food: The Age of Empire c. 1800-1920,” in A Cultural History of Food in the Age of Empire, ed. Martin Bruegel (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 199–208. 2 Ibidem; see also, among others, Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT Greenwood Press, 1972). 3 Ellen Messer, “Potatoes, White,” in The Cambridge World History of Food, eds. Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 187–201. 4 Ibidem, 190. 5 “What Can History Teach Us About Monocultures and Food Security in the 21st Century?” Quest, University of Birmingham, accessed June 10, 2022, https://www. birmingham.ac.uk/research/quest/preserving-and-creating-culture/a-global-historyof-monoculture.aspx 6 See among others: Dale Tomich, Reinaldo Funes Monzote, Carlos Venegas Fornias, and Rafael de Bivar Marquese, Reconstructing the Landscapes of Slavery: A Visual History of the Plantation in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2021). 7 Natalie King, Verdant, essay for printed catalogue. Archival document from the personal archives of Lauren Berkowitz. 8 Lauren Berkowitz, unpublished notes on Manna, 2009 (edited 2020) from the artist’s personal archives; see also, Andrew Brown, Art and Ecology (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2014), 239. 9 Among the vast literature on Alan Sonfist, see: Lawrence Alloway, Alan Sonfist: Time and Nature in Sonfist’s Work (Boston, MA: The Museum of Fine Arts, 1977). 10 BiJaRi (formed in 1996) is a collective of artists with an urban studies background living in São Paulo. The members are: Eduardo Loureiro, Flavio Araújo, Frederico Ming, Geandre Tomazoni, Giuliano Scandiuzzi, Maurício Brandão, Olavo Ekman, Rodrigo Araújo, and Sandro Akel. The mega city, for them, encapsulates the contradictions and tensions of contemporary society, including stark social differences, tensions and violence among ethnic groups, and fractures between pre-colonial landscapes and contemporary sites affected by pollution. Through their interventions, the artists insert unexpected elements into the urban environment to highlight the distance that urban residents from different classes and races take from what they perceive as “natural,” from farm animals (chickens) to tropical plants. For a critical overview of BiJaRi’s practice, see Vanessa Espínola Coutinho, Ativismo e Poéticas no Espaço Urbano: Uma Abordagem Comunicacional do Grupo BijaRi (PhD Diss., São Paulo: Pontifical University of São Paulo, 2012). Many thanks to Claudia Mattos Avolese for suggesting this source.

188  Notes for Section III 11 Rachel Kent, “Lauren Berkowitz,” in In the Balance, Art for a Changing World (Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2010), 30–3. 12 Binta Diaw, unpublished conversation with Silvia Bottinelli on occasion of the 12th Berlin Biennale, June 9, 2022. KW Museum, Berlin, Germany. 13 Nicola Lablanca, Oltremare: Storia dell’Espansione Coloniale Italiana (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002), 7–13. 14 According to Lablanca, Italy controlled 4% of colonial lands occupied by Europeans in 1913, when Italy’s colonies included Lybia, Somalia, and Erytrea. Italy had also unsuccessfully attempted to invade Ethiopia in 1896. Italy’s empire continued to expand from 1936 to 1943, under the fascist regime. In addition to colonies, the empire included protectorates and concessions: Lablanca, Oltremare, 23. 15 Antonio Morone, “Quando Finì il Colonialismo Italiano? Tre Decolonizzazioni a Confronto,” Istituto Lombardo, Accademia Di Scienze e Lettere, Rendiconti Di Lettere 153 (2019): 45–64; 47. 16 Francesca Gallo, “Temi e Vicende della Decolonizzazione nelle Ricerche Verbovisuali Italiane,” From the European South 6 (2020): 23–41; 25. 17 See for example: Gabriele Proglio, Camilla Hawthorne, Ida Danewid, P. Khalil Saucier, Giuseppe Grimaldi, Angelica Pesarini, Timothy Raeymaekers, Giulia Grechi, and Vivian Gerrand, The Black Mediterranean Bodies, Borders and Citizenship (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2021), 12. 18 “Chorus of Soil,” Binta Diaw, accessed June 11, 2022, https://www.bintadiaw.com/ chorusofsoil/ 19 Diaw, unpublished conversation with Silvia Bottinelli. 20 Marie Helene Pereira, “Binta Diaw,” in Present! Still. Berlin Biennale of Contemporary Art, ed. Kader Attia (Berlin: KUNST WERKE, 2022), 66. See also Londa Schiebinger, Secret Cures of Slaves. People, Plants, and Medicine in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017), 46. 21 Te-Tzu Chang, “Rice,” in The Cambridge World History of Food, eds. Kiple and Coneè Ornelas, 132–49. 22 Michael W. Twitty, “The Transnational Dish of the Motherland: The African Roots of Rice and Beans,” in Rice and Beans: A Unique Dish in a Hundred Places, eds. Richard Wilk and Livia Barbosa (London: Berg, 2012), 19–34; 21. 23 J.M.J. de Wet, “Millets,” in The Cambridge World History of Food, eds. Kiple and Coneè Ornelas, 112–121; 115. 24 Mark Hinchman, Portrait of an Island: The Architecture and Material Culture of Gorée, Sénégal, 1758–1837 (Lincoln: UNP - Nebraska, 2015). 25 On artistic responses to migrant labor in Italy, see also: Emanuele R. Meschini and Elisabetta Rattalino, “Unraveling Nico Angiuli’s Tre Titoli: Labor, Migration and Socially Engaged Arts in Rural Italy,” Field. A Journal of Socially-Engaged Art and Activism 7.20 (Winter 2022), https://field-journal.com/issue-20/anguili-post 26 Sara Benaglia, “Intervista con Binta Diaw,” ATP Diary, March 18, 2021, http:// atpdiary.com/intervista-con-binta-diaw/ 27 Diaw, Unpublished Conversation with Silvia Bottinelli. 28 Angelica Pesarini, “Nero Sangue,” Binta Diaw, accessed June 12, 2022, https:// www.bintadiaw.com/nerosangue/ 29 Diaw, unpublished conversation with Bottinelli. 30 The massacre of the Zong was one of the causes of the abolitionist movement and inspired subsequent representations and reflections on racism. A recent philosophical and ontological analysis of this violent episode is included in: Christina Elizabeth Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016). 31 Artist and writer Markues Aviv sees Diaw’s installation as aligned with Filipa César’s reading of agronomist Amílcar Cabral’s anti-colonial struggle. Cabral led liberation efforts from Portugal in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde in the

Notes for Section III  189 1960s. According to César, for Cabral the flat geographies of the lands where he organized successful anti-colonial flights were a metaphor of the people themselves, and the non-hierarchical structures that informed their labor. The people were like mountains, strong and standing with dignity. See Markues Aviv, “‘Soil is an Inscribed Body. About Sovereignty and Agricultural Poetry’ at Savvy Contemporary, Berlin,” Texte Zur Kunst 117 (2019), https://www.textezurkunst. de/116/erosion-und-wachstum/#id7 and Filipa César, “Meteorisations: Reading Amílcar Cabral’s Agronomy of Liberation,” Third text 32.2–3 (2018): 254–72. 32 “Chorus of Soil.” 33 Aryn Baker, “‘It Was As if We Weren’t Human,’ Inside the Modern Slave Trade Trapping African Migrants,” Time Magazine, March 14, 2019, https://time.com/ longform/african-slave-trade/ 34 Steven Colatrella, “Structural Adjustment and the African Diaspora in Italy,” in African Visions. Literary Images, Political Change, and Social Struggle in Contemporary Africa, eds. Cheryl B. Mwaria, Silvia Federici and Joseph McLaren (New York: Hofstra University, 2000), 29–48; 36–7. 35 Justo Cantero, Los Ingenios: Colección de Vistas de los Principales Ingenios de Azúcar de la Isla de Cuba (Habana: Litografía de Luis Marquier, 1857); Reprint (Aranjuez: Ediciones Doce Calles, 2005). 36 Alejandro De La Fuente, “On Sugar, Slavery, and the Pursuit of (Cuban) Happiness,” in Sugar: Magdelena Campos-Pons, eds. Linda Muehlig and Alejandro De La Fuente (Northampton, MA: Smith College Museum of Art, 2010), 36–45. 37 Rachel Stephens, “Plantation Paintings in Cuba and the U.S. South. National Identity Versus Slavery Justification,” paper presented at the symposium Landscape Arts of the Americas. Sites of Human Intervention across the 19th century (Universidad de Los Andes: Bogota, May 21st 2021), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIUlM2 fdNL4 38 Emily Sessions, “Los Ingenios and the end of Cuban sugar,” paper presented at the panel “Cheap Nature” in Visualizations of Transatlantic Exchange, chaired by Maura Coughlin and Emily Gephart, College Art Association Annual Meeting, February 13, 2021. 39 I am grateful to Emilio O’Farrill Almendariz and to Raúl Domínguez (Quimbo) for helping me understand aspects of Santería during my visit to the neighborhood of La Marina in Matanzas, Cuba, in January 2022. 40 Lynne Bell, “History of People Who Were Not Heroes,” Third Text 12.43 (1998): 33–42; 40. 41 Maria Larsson and Johan Willander, “Autobiographical Odor Memory,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1170 (2009): 318–23; 318. 42 “María Magdalena Campos-Pons. Imole Blue II,” Lucas Artists Program, Montalvo Arts Center, accessed February 10, 2022, https://blog.montalvoarts.org/imoleblue-ii.html 43 Brendan Sainsbury, “Matanzas: The Rebirth of Cuba’s Abandoned Cultural Hub,” BBC, January 24, 2022, https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220123-matanzas-therebirth-of-cubas-abandoned-cultural-hub 44 Michael D. Harris, The Art of María Magdalena Campos-Pons (Charlotte: Harvey Gantt Center, 2011), 1; 11. 45 Sally Berger, “Threads of Memory. Invisible Lines,” in Diaspora, Memory, Place, eds. Salah M. Hassan and Cheryl Finley (Munich, Berlin, Milan, and New York: Prestel, 2008), 21. 46 “María Magdalena Campos-Pons. Imole Blue II.” 47 Brandon Hanson, María Magdalena Campos-Pons’ Peace Garden, Imole Blue II (Field of Memories), filmed July 15, 2018 at Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga, CA, video, 5:45, https://youtu.be/A1PzB9dMzCk

190  Notes for Section III 48 Cuban Art News, “Spotlight on Matanzas: María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Ríos Intermitentes,” The Archive, May 1, 2019 https://cubanartnewsarchive.org/ 2019/05/01/spotlight-on-matanzas-maria-magdalena-campos-pons-and-riosintermitentes/ 49 María Magdalena Campos-Pons, unpublished conversation with Silvia Bottinelli, Boston, May 11, 2022. 50 Maribel Acosta Damas, “Ríos Intermitentes y Magdalena Campos,” Cuba En ­Resumen, May 18, 2022, https://cubaenresumen.org/2022/05/18/rios-intermitentesy-magdalena-campos/ 51 In January 2022, my research in Matanzas, Cuba, was made possible by the Tufts University Tisch College Faculty Fellows Program, to which I am deeply grateful. 52 Campos-Pons, Conversation with Bottinelli, January 2, 2021. 53 Ijeoma Ndukwe, “Earth Brick Barn House is Yinka Shonibare’s Hub of Creativity in Nigeria,” Wallpaper, March 30, 2022, https://www.wallpaper.com/architecture/ ecology-green-farm-moeaa-yinka-shonibare-foundation-nigeria 54 “Location,” Guest Artists Project, accessed June 15, 2022, https://www.guestartists space.com/About-Us/Location 55 Ndukwe, “Earth Brick Barn.” 56 Adaora Oramah, “How an Art Icon Wants to Revitalize Nigeria’s Creative Ecosystem with a Residency for Artists,” Quartz Africa, July 24, 2020, https://qz.com/ africa/1884606/yinka-shonibare-is-revitalizing-nigerian-art-with-lagos-residency/; See also Nicola Humphries, “In the Studio. Yinka Shonibare,” podcast, BBC Sound, November 30, 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct1tdz 57 “Yinka Shonibare in conversation with Delinda Collier,” SAIC’s Visiting Artist Program, February 23, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5IqCvuSuJY 58 Barnes-Dabban, Harry, Kris Van Koppen, and Arthur Mol, “Environmental ­Reform of West and Central Africa Ports: The Influence of Colonial Legacies,” Maritime Policy and Management 44.5 (2017): 565–83. 59 Much has been written about Yinka Shonibare’s art. See, among others: Rachel Kent, Robert Carleton Hobbs, and Anthony Downey, Yinka Shonibare, MBE (Munich: Prestel, 2008); and Thorsten Sadowsky, Antwaun Sargent, Marijana Schneider, and Paul Gilroy, Yinka Shonibare CBE: End of Empire (München: Hirmer, 2021). 60 “Yinka Shonibare,” SAIC’s Visiting Artist Program. 61 On hunger strikes as an activist form of spectacle, see Muzna Rahman, Hunger and Postcolonial Writing (Milton Park Abingdon Oxon: Routledge, 2022), 22. 62 Gabrielle Corona, “Food, Punishment, and the Angola Three’s Struggle for Freedom, 1971–2019,” Southern Cultures 27.3 (2021): 77–97; 89. 63 “About,” Solitary Gardens, accessed June 30, 2022, https://solitarygardens.org/ about 64 Jaron Browne, “Rooted in Slavery: Prison Labor Exploitation,” Race, Poverty & the Environment 17.1 (2010): 78–80; 79. See also: Adelle Blackett and Alice Duquesnoy, “Slavery Is Not a Metaphor: US Prison Labor and Racial Subordination through the Lens of the ILO’s Abolition of Forced Labor Convention,” UCLA Law Review 67.6 (2021): 1504–35. 65 Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow (La Vergne: New Press, 2020), 252–3. 66 Susan Davis Price, Growing Home: Stories of Ethnic Gardening (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 122–7; 123. 67 Dwight Eisnach and Herbert Covey, “Slave Gardens in the Antebellum South: The Resolve of a Tormented People,” The Southern Quarterly 57.1 (2019): 11–23; 11. 68 Seitu Ken Jones “Public Art That Inspires: Public Art That Informs,” Critical Issues in Public Art: Content, Context, and Controversy, eds. Harriet F. Senie and Sally Webster (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), 280–82. 69 Nicole J. Caruth, “Food Hazards,” Public Art Review 23.2 (2012): 28–32; 32.

Notes for Section III  191 70 Alvaro Castilla-Beltran, Henry Hooghiemstra, Menno L.P. Hoogland, Timme H. Donders, Jaime R. Pagan-Jimenez, Crystal N.H. McMichael, Steven Marinus Francisco Rolefes, et al., “Ecological Responses to Land Use Change in the Face of  European Colonization of Hayti Island,” Quaternary Science Reviews 241 (2020): 1–9. 71 Anthony Shostak, ed. Green Horizons (Manchester, ME: Penmior Printers, 2007), 65–66; 123–33, http://cms-content.bates.edu/prebuilt/greenhorizons.pdf 72 See, among others, Robert D. Bullard, Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1993). More on this topic is discussed by Seitu Jones in the conversation published in this book. 73 Nicole Cartuth, “A Seat at the Table,” Primer, Walker Art Center, October 7, 2014, https://walkerart.org/magazine/table-theaster-gates-seitu-jones 74 Tong King Lee, “Hong Kong Literature: Colonialism, Cosmopolitanism, Consumption,” Journal of Modern Literature 44.2 (2021): 62–75; 63. 75 Mark Hampton, Hong Kong and British Culture, 1945–97 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), 102. 76 Mimi Brown, “HK Farm Farming Wildness at Hong Kong,” Openhouse 17 (2015), https://openhouse-magazine.com/hk-farm/ 77 Elaine W. Ho, ed., HK FARMers’ Almanac (Hong Kong: Spring, 2015), open access press release: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/rfrkq6i4xkm6cth/AADmdjwcYMIuj CZHYibL32t8a?dl=0; Limited printed edition of 100. “Presented in a functioning wooden planter box, the contents are a wide-ranging reflection both on experimental farming and also on the wider, complementary interests of its community. Each planter box includes 10 zines and 5 farming objects that are meant to be used/activated. Additionally, the box also comes with ahand-crafted USB stick that contains photo documentation, videos, sound files, and a digital copy of the entire volume. The Almanac is a toolkit of urban farming know-how, and also a portable kit for users to engage in small-scale cultivation.” 78 Ho, “Introduction,” in HK FARMer’s Almanac, 8. 79 Ibidem. 80 This conversation between Lauren Berkowitz and Silvia Bottinelli, in collaboration with Elka Sorensen, took place over email between August and October 2020. 81 This conversation between María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Silvia Bottinelli took place over zoom on January 2, 2021. It was then transcribed by Lilli Johnson, edited by Bottinelli, and reviewed by Campos-Pons. Many additional conversations between Campos-Pons and Bottinelli happened before and after this interview, and shape the contents of Chapter 3. 82 Derek Conrad and Soraya Murray, “Conversation with María Magdalena Campos Pons,” in Diaspora /Memory /Place. David Hammons/María Magdalena CamposPons/Pamela Z, eds. Cheryl Finley and Nuzhat Hassan (München: Prestel, 2008), 247. 83 David C. Hart, Memory and the Installation Art of María Magdalena Campos -Pons (PhD Diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005), 4. 84 Manuel Martinez Casanova, “Religiosidad Afrocubana Y Cultura Terapeutica,” Islas 44.133 (2002): 140–49; 144. 85 María Magdalena Campos-Pons, quoted in Lisa Freiman, “Everything Is Separated by Water,” in María Magdalena Campos-Pons. Everything Is Separated by Water, ed. Freiman (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2007), 27; 12–62. 86 On Bright Ugochukwu Eke and Ifeoma Anyaeji and their reappropriation of plastic waste as a response to petroleum extraction and pollution in Nigeria, see: Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor, “Poor Theory and the Art of Plastic Pollution in Nigeria: Relational Aesthetics, Human Ecology, and ‘Good Housekeeping’,” Social Dynamics 44.2 (2018): 198–220.

192  Notes for Section III 87 Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1958). 88 See: Reinaldo Funes Monzote and Alex Martin, From Rainforest to Cane Field in Cuba: An Environmental History since 1492 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 217–62. 89 María Magdalena Campos Pons refers to the artistic intervention by German artist Joseph Beuys, titled 7000 Oaks. City Forestation Instead of City Administration. This seminal project was created on occasion of documenta 7 in Kassel in 1982. See: Fernando Groener and Rose-María Kandler, 7000 Eichen, Joseph Beuys (Köln: W. König, 1987). See also Chapter 1. 90 T.J. Demos, Decolonizing Nature. Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology (Berlin: Sternberg, 2016), 112–5. 91 This last paragraph is an addendum emailed by Campos-Pons to Bottinelli on June 29, 2022. 92 This conversation between jackie sumell and Silvia Bottinelli took place over zoom on June 24, 2021. It was then transcribed by Lilli Johnson, edited by Bottinelli, and reviewed by sumell. 93 For a description of Solitary Gardens see “About the Project,” Solitary Gardens, accessed July 15, 2021, https://solitarygardens.org/about 94 For an account of living conditions in the Angola prison, see The Farm. Angola Prison USA directed by Liz Garbus and Wilbert Rideau (Seventh Art Releasing Exclusive, 1998), 1 hr 31 min. https://tufts.kanopy.com/product/farm-angola-prison-usa 95 The transition from slavery to prison systems in southern states is described by historian and curator Paul Gardullo in “Angola Prison: Collecting and Interpreting the Afterlives of Slavery in a National Museum,” Forum Journal (Washington, D.C.) 31.3 (2017): 21–9. On page 22–23, Gardullo argues: “Following Emancipation, most Southern states sought new ways to revive systems of enslavement to control the labor of African Americans. One method was the convict-lease system, wherein African Americans arrested for petty crimes such as vagrancy or public disorder were leased by the state to private employers. Convict labor quickly became a substitute for slave labor, and once African Americans were brought into the system, it was nearly impossible for them to get out. Convict labor built railroads, graded roads, constructed factories, made turpentine, grew and harvested cotton and other crops, felled timber, and performed many other tasks in conditions that historian Douglas Blackmon has called ‘slavery by another name.’ […] The largest and longest-lasting of these plantation prisons, several of which are still operating today, were Mississippi’s Parchman Farm; Cummins State Farm in Arkansas; Jester Prison Farm and Central State (‘Sugar Land’) Prison in Texas; and the Louisiana State Penitentiary, otherwise known as Angola.” 96 See for example: “Our Crops,” Prison Enterprises, accessed July 13, 2021, http:// www.prisonenterprises.org/agriculture/; and Stian Rice, “Farmers Turn to Prisons to Fill Labor Needs,” The Conversation, June 7, 2019, https://www.hcn.org/articles/ agriculture-farmers-turn-to-prisons-labor-to-fill-labor-needs 97 Donna Haraway, “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin,” Environmental Humanities 6 (2015): 159–65. 98 Similar reflections on language and plants are conveyed by Natalie Doonan in the interview published in this book. 99 Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert King; Norris Henderson, and Mwalimu Johnson. 100 “Prisoner’s Apothecary,” Solitary Gardens, accessed July 15, 2021, https:// solitarygardens.org/apothecary. See also Anna Deen, “Growing Hope,” Grist, ­December 23, 2020, https://grist.org/fix/gardens-solitary-confinement/ 101 “Home,” Samara School of Community Herbalism, accessed July 15, 2021, https:// samaraherbschool.com/

Notes for Section III  193 102 On the subsequent phases of the project after this interview, which took place in 2021, see: “Let’s Grow,” Growing Abolition, accessed March 20, 2023 https:// www.growingabolition.com/apothecary 103 “About Us,” Free Dem Foundations, accessed July 15, 2021, https://freedem foundations.org/about/ 104 Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass. Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions 2013). 105 Jessica Roux, Floriography: An Illustrated Guide to the Victorian Language of Flowers (Kansas City: Andrews McMill: 2020). 106 Diana Wells, 100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names (New York: Algonquin Books, 1997). 107 jackie sumell, An Abolitionist Field Guide (New York: MoMA PS1, 2022). This artist book, created with the support of The Creative Capital Foundation, Art for Justice Foundation, and S.O.U.R.C.E., accompanies the exhibition Freedom to Grow: Lower East Side Girls Club & jackie sumell on view at MoMA PS1 in Queens, NY, from November 17, 2022 to Febraury 27, 2023. 108 This conversation among Seitu Jones, Silvia Bottinelli, and Elka Sorensen, in collaboration with Muriel Horvath, took place over zoom on July 17, 2020. It was then transcribed by Sorensen, edited by Bottinelli, and reviewed by Jones. 109 Mark Hersey, My Work Is That of Conservation: An Environmental Biography of George Washington Carver (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011). 110 Husain Lateef and David Androff, “‘Children Can’t Learn on an Empty Stomach:’ The Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast Program,” Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 44.4 (2017): 3. 111 See for example Robert Bullard and Beverly Hendrix Wright, “Environmentalism and the Politics of Equity: Emergent Trends in the Black Community,” Mid-American Review of Sociology 12.2 (1987): 21–37; Robert D. Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990); and Robert D. Bullard, Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1993). Prof. Bullard’s studies on the topic of environmental racism are ongoing. 112 See Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York and London: Liveright Publishing, 2017). 113 Dwight Eisnach and Herbert C. Covey, “Slave Gardens in the Antebellum South: The Resolve of a Tormented People,” The Southern Quarterly 57.1 (2019): 11–23. 114 On collards, black-eye peas, soul cuisine, Elijah Muhammad, and Dick Gregory, see Rebecca Jensen Wallace, “How to Eat to Live: Black Nationalism and the Post-1964 Culinary Turn,” Study the South (2014), https://southernstudies.olemiss. edu/study-the-south/how-to-eat-to-live/ 115 Elijah Muhammad and Fard Muhammad, How to Eat to Live (Atlanta, GA: Messenger Elijah Muhammad Propagation Society, 1967). 116 Dick Gregory, Dick Gregory’s Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin’ with Mother Nature! (New York: Perennial Library, 1974). 117 G.E. Patterson, “George Floyd and a Community of Care,” Places Journal (January 2021), https://doi.org/10.22269/210119 118 Nicole Caruth, “In the Shadows of Our Ancestors,” Sightlines, November 4, 2019, https://walkerart.org/magazine/shadows-crossroads-seitu-jones-ta-coumba-aikensoyini-guyton

Section IV

4

Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming Health, Nutrition, and Sense of Place

Awareness and Social Equity through Food-based Pedagogy: A Theoretical Framework Exchanging information, reconnecting with traditional and indigenous knowledge, unlearning biased paradigms, and relearning through situated and relational experiences: these principles and processes are shared by several of the artists discussed in previous chapters. Pedagogical concerns and educational goals are incorporated into practices as different as Bonnie Ora Sherk’s performative community farming, Joseph Beuys’s social sculptures, Global Tools workshops and manuals, Artist as Family’s School of Applied Neopeasantry at Tree Elbow University, and Jolene Rickard’s family’s responsibility toward the care of corn for Indigenous Nations (Chapter 1). They can also be observed in Natalie Doonan’s multisensorial works, Maria Thereza Alves’s collaborative projects, and Nida Sinnokrot’s educational curricula at Sakiya (Chapter 2). Finally, they are foundational to jackie sumell’s Solitary Gardens and Abolitionist’s Apothecary, as well as Seitu Jones’s collaborative urban farming endeavor at Frogtown, which offers, among other opportunities, vegan cooking classes to inspire creative processing of raw foods and support the nutrition and self-empowerment of Frogtown’s racially diverse community (Chapter 3).1 It is through the spread of mindful and equitable approaches to farming that food systems can be transformed on a larger scale. Indeed, disseminating knowledge is one of the core aspects of art as a form of agriculture, as further demonstrated by the examples discussed in this chapter. The next pages will examine the artist collective Haha’s project Flood, a hydroponic farm created in Chicago to curb the effects of the AIDS crisis in the 1990s; Malaysian artist Tattfoo Tan’s holistic approach to learning and teaching about nutrition, agriculture, spirituality, and overall survival skills; New York-based artist Mary Mattingly’s community engagement that resulted in the creation of a public food forest in The Bronx; collective Fallen Fruit’s urban foraging tours that disseminate information about the notion of public food; multiracial artist Lisa Kyung Gross commitment to civic fruit via engaged learning and community stewardship in Boston; social practice artist Juan William Chávez involvement of children in the reimagining of housing histories to propose models of DOI: 10.4324/9780367200800-9

198  Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming cooperation through beekeeping; artist Eli Brown’s investment in educating about queer ecological paradigms in agriculture; and finally the experimental and participatory programs of the Southern Italian project Scuola di Agricolture, which brings together young artists, activists, and farmers, including those who have lived in the Puglia region for generations and those who recently immigrated from non-European countries. All these case studies are based on non-hierarchical and dynamic transmission of knowledge. They enable connections between humans and other-than-human beings in order to revise oppressive histories, and they propose new paradigms by taking responsibility and caring for a particular place or community. Art practice is based on sustained relationships with materials, people, and places. It relies on the ability to tune in with the body’s movements and sensations. It emerges from the ability to listen, be receptive, and respond actively to one’s own feelings and thoughts in relation to societies, cultures, and environments. The skills and mindsets developed through art making often lead artists to experiment with forms of critical, participatory, embodied, and place-based pedagogy in the realm of farming experiences. I maintain that the knowledge-building processes adopted by artists engaged with agriculture validate principles that have been developed in parallel by critical food education theories. For example, cultural anthropologist and chef Amy Trubek and sociologist Maria Carabello argue that physical awareness and embodied knowledge of food depend on an experiential understanding of the steps through which a given food was gathered and prepared.2 This is a consideration that governs practices like Tattfoo Tan and Fallen Fruit’s, as discussed later in this chapter. In addition, political and economic anthropologist Emma-Jayne Abbots advocates for relational pedagogies based on mediations between human and non-human agents, where bodies and matter intertwine with places and ecosystems in rhizomatic and dynamic processes.3 This form of learning is at the core of the work of Mary Mattingly and Eli Brown, among others, and should be seen as indebted with Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies that position interconnectedness and place-based knowledge as a fundamental aesthetic, political, spiritual, and decolonial practice.4 Indeed, by elaborating on contributions by Lakota legal scholar Vine Deloria Jr. and Lakota historian Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, among others, Tuscarora artist and scholar Jolene Rickard also argues that place-based action is linked to practices of sovereignty and Indigenous self-determination.5 The empowering of marginalized groups through collaborative learning that helps reach food sovereignty is a goal of socially engaged practices like those of Haha, Lisa Kyung Gross, Juan William Chávez, and Scuola di Agriculture. Similarly, food studies scholar Carole Counihan observed that, in the context of food activism: Food education was multifaceted. It was never just about food, but was always connected to other issues including the environment, nutrition, economics, and agriculture. Pedagogies and learning pathways were

Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming  199 multiple and diverse, both intellectual and corporeal […]. I define critical food education as a process of raising consciousness about the world of food, what Freire (2007) called concientización.6 Counihan’s mention of the Brazilian thinker and educator Paulo Freire—author of the highly influential Pedagogy of the Oppressed, released in Portuguese in 1968—situates food activism as rooted in education. Freire advocated for “problem-posing practices” based on physical and relational awareness (concientización, as in Counihan’s quote). His methodology emphasized that learning is about becoming; it is a constant process, which is dynamic and happens in dialogue with others.7 Pedagogy of the Oppressed summarized Freire’s reflections, sparked by his experience of teaching underprivileged adults how to read and write in 1960s Brazil, where his approach was considered politically threatening to the point that Freire was incarcerated right after the 1964 military coup. His work rethinks education as an urgent tool for liberation with personal and social purposes. It was Freire’s experience of hunger as a child in Recife in the early 1930s that made him aware of the interrelation of good nutrition, healthy bodies, and the ability to thrive as active political subjects.8 Thus, his methodologies stress the role of body–mind connections to achieve concientización. Similar observations were developed by African American thinkers, artists, and activists in the United States around the same years. Black sociology and historian Chancellor Williams noted: There is nothing mystical about the reasons why one group of people can easily become physically and mentally strong while another becomes physically weak and less mentally alert. An abundance of nutritious food and pure drinking water may spell the difference between advance and decay.9 According to Williams, good nutrition is a matter not only of personal health but also of political and social empowerment. In fact, nutrition science developed in response to the two world wars, when US scientists were prompted to study ways to aid soldiers on the front and support civilians at home.10 Being intentional about diet and making choices based on scientific information helped populations remain strong, survive, and even thrive. Today, diets lacking nutritious and fresh foods like fruits and vegetables are understood as the underlying cause of conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and kidney failure, among others. Tellingly, these diseases are more frequent among minority and low-income groups that do not have equitable access to healthy food distribution systems, sometimes because they live in so-called food deserts. This term indicates areas, either urban or rural, in which residents cannot conveniently reach supermarkets or other grocery stores for overlapping reasons, like inefficient transportation or limited presence of stores.

200  Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming Many artists acknowledge that good nutrition contributes to individual and public health and can help bridge class, gender, and racial inequity gaps. For this reason, their work incorporates education on nutrition and food access, merging the tools of social practice with embodied pedagogies that are facilitated by foraging and urban agriculture. Hydroponic Systems and Community Care in Response to the AIDS Crisis: Haha Flood (1993–95) was created by the art collective Haha (Richard House, Wendy Jacob, Laurie Palmer, John Ploof) in Rogers Park, a neighborhood of Chicago. As recalled by the artists in the conversation published in this volume, Flood consisted of a pop-up hydroponic farm set up in a storefront. It was made possible by collaboration with about 35 volunteers—including students from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as local residents and beyond— that helped grow, distribute, and prepare crops. The intended participants were people affected by the AIDS crisis, which was decimating the Rogers Park’s community. Flood transformed the store layout: the central area was occupied by rows of troughs and hosted a hydroponic system, where PVC tubes carried a flow of water and nutrients. Toward the back of the environment, bookshelves showcased materials about HIV prevention and care, and chairs welcomed visitors to spend time onsite to learn from one another. On a literal and symbolic level, interconnectedness was a major theme of the initiative. Flood was first installed as part of the landmark exhibition Culture in Action in 1993. Curated by educator and writer Mary Jane Jacob, the show encapsulated historical changes in public art discourses in the United States. Instead of promoting the creation of monuments located in public space or the rearrangement of urban designs—these were the mainstream formats of public art supported by public administrations from the 1960s to the 1980s11—Culture in Action embraced New Genre Public Art, that is art in the public interest, art that involves multiple publics in the process of creatively reimagining places, identities, and relationships.12 Culture in Action supported Haha’s Flood, organized guided visits with museumgoers, and facilitated occasional meetings with artists involved in the overall exhibition. Beyond these terms, Flood’s involvement with the art world was limited, and Haha’s work mostly hinged on collaborations and interactions with Rogers Park residents. Located in the northern side of Chicago, this neighborhood recorded the highest numbers of individuals living with HIV in the city in the 1990s.13 Richard House, Wendy Jacob, Laurie Palmer, and John Ploof all lived in Rogers Park and witnessed the destructive force of AIDS directly, with friends and neighbors falling ill and passing away from the disease. Flood was Haha’s reaction to the traumatic lived experience of the epidemic, triggered by the urgency to come together and care for each other. Because medical research on HIV was politically controversial, progress was slow; yet people could not wait.14 Thus, Flood cultivated and offered greens and herbs

Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming  201 that helped sustain the body and boost the immune system, in an effort for resistance and even survival. In the midst of an emergency, urban agriculture became a necessity. Haha and their collaborators grew kale, collards, and mustard greens—which are rich in antioxidants and vitamins D and C; they used a hydroponic system to limit exposure to possible bacteria from the soil; and they distributed the crops to the homes of AIDS patients. Food insecurity and malnutrition were and continue to be a high risk for those affected by AIDS,15 thus providing patients with access to healthy diets was a tangible relief. Not only did Haha grow food and medicine but they also facilitated knowledge-sharing through various strategies, from more formal invited talks to hands-on learning about hydroponic farming.16 Their project employed approaches that align with the critical food pedagogical theories mentioned above. As observed by Mary Jane Jacob: The spirit and practice of this art project extended beyond, to the youth and surrounding community through education programs on safe sex and hydroponics, and to the Flood members themselves, who shared and aired, in weekly discussions, their experiences in a field which they had (at least temporarily) adopted, and reflected upon social aid systems.17 Flood offered spaces for becoming and ways of growing together by sharing acts of care. As stated by Haha member John Ploof: “For a lot of us Flood was more than a kind of magnanimous gesture of providing something for someone else. It became a way of figuring out something for ourselves and then figuring out something collectively.”18 Based on the memories of the artists, as conveyed in the conversation included in this book, caring for the garden itself required physical engagement, which was therapeutic in and of itself thanks to the sensorial mindfulness and relational contact with human and non-human beings. Cycles of Learning: Sensorial and Spiritual Resilience in Tattfoo Tan’s Experience Recent ethnographic studies on eating behaviors and health show that sensorial pedagogies are crucial to foster nutritionally rich diets.19 This is a lesson that Malaysian artist Tattfoo Tan, based in Staten Island, New York, has activated and refined through his practice for more than 20 years. In his three major overarching projects, Nature Matching System (2006–07), S.O.S. Sustainable. Organic. Stewardship (2009), and New Earth (2013), the artist elaborated on the crucial relevance of creative education and self-discovery. His process is based on a cycle of learning, practicing, and teaching new skills, and each of his projects results in a curriculum and teaching manual that inspires others to entertain a personal journey. Tan is committed to educating about nutrition and healthy lifestyles through a number of parallel strategies, from workshops in elementary schools to museum talks, from classes for homeschoolers to foraging neighborhood walks, from skill-building manuals to

202  Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming social media posts. As Tan clarifies in the conversation available in this volume, his philosophy is grounded in the understanding that human bodies are made of the same elements that compose other organisms on Earth: food and herbal medicine have the power of showing such link in physical and sensorial ways. In one of his latest series, Heal Humankind in Order to Heal the Land (2019), the artist uses the visual and material language of instruction manuals and children’s activity books to prompt behavioral changes, which begin with an awareness of the body and the self, and progress to a spiritual state of immanent communion with a whole.20 In an earlier series, Nature Matching System, Tan helps visualize healthy eating behavior by inviting school children to play games with their food. In collaboration with the students, Tan created color charts inspired by the fruits and vegetables that the kids enjoyed and designed placemats, murals, and a whole syllabus based on the charts. The placemats showed bright grids of colorful rectangles that recalled abstract art geometries and stimulated participants to structure their meals around playful interactions: kids were encouraged to match the colors on the placemat with the colors of the foods on their plate. Because nutrients in plants impact their pigmentation,21 by eating fruits and vegetables of different colors kids could intake a range of nutrients that supported their overall health. Working in collaboration with Syracuse University students, Tan created a Nature Matching System curriculum that was adopted by teacher Marion Wilson at the Seymour Dual Language Academy in Syracuse in 2014. Children attending this school mostly lived in food deserts, and 43% received food stamps. The artist acknowledged that nutritious diets not only are a matter of choice but also depend on socioeconomic possibilities. Thus, Tan partnered with local businesses to help the children’s families access healthy raw ingredients.22 The artist’s next project, S.O.S. Sustainable. Organic. Stewardship, began to consider ways of enabling food sovereignty through the development of survival skills, including those necessary to grow and forage foods. His concern was embodied by a series of connected installations, performances, events, and workshops that shared the core purpose of educating citizens about food, health, and climate change on local and global levels. S.O.S began with an observation about the specific situation of Staten Island, where Tan lives. He writes: Staten Island has experienced the highest population growth of any borough since 2000 with a growth rate of 8.8 percent. A recent influx of Hispanic, West African, Eastern European, Caribbean and Middle Eastern immigrants to these neighborhoods has both complicated and diversified the food landscape. For instance, while ethnic food stores proliferate, access to quality and affordable produce remains a concern.23 As highlighted by political geographer Hilda Kurtz in 2008, that is around the same time as Tan’s conceptualization of S.O.S., food deserts and racial segregation go hand in hand, and lack of access to diverse raw ingredients is often the reality of minority communities.24 Tan’s response was to learn and teach

Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming  203 about how to gather food without depending on businesses, governmental aid, and non-profits. He followed classes and took certificates in composting, pruning, and permaculture, and learned about community organizing strategies to involve his neighbors in his journey.25 Included in S.O.S.’s comprehensive project, works like Mobile Garden and Mobile Classroom well exemplify the ethos of critical food pedagogies. Mobile Garden, which was initiated in 2009, used discarded objects like shopping carts, strollers, and suitcases—all on wheels— and repurposed them as edible gardening planters. In this way, the artist could bring homegrown produce to fairs and events. In the meantime, Tan exposed the public to edible gardening while traveling to his destinations. The work constructed easily legible critiques through visual juxtapositions. Instead of packaged products, his shopping cart contained organic and living plants, replacing industrial foods with natural raw ingredients. By placing potted plants on strollers, he humorously prompted an association between care for the Earth and care for little humans. By carrying plants inside suitcases, he indicated that natural foods are essential, that they are what is needed to survive on a journey. Thus, his visual language, multisensorial involvement, and participatory methodology based on relational and eye-opening encounters helped pose critical questions about broken food systems. In Mobile Classroom, which began in 2010, the same concept was applied to the construction of a mobile farm—with space for plants and chickens—on a bicycle that Tan brought to schools and community spaces to teach children’s workshops. The inclusion of the bike helped promote alternative transportation systems, in addition to food production. A subsequent step of S.O.S. involved the creation of a community edible garden in the artist studio’s yard, where he invited the public to gather, meditate, and eat together.26 With the subsequent New Earth series (2013–ongoing), Tan reflected on possibilities for survival by incorporating food processing and preservation. His visual language references sci-fi aesthetics to document exercises in future resilience through a series of practices, from freeze-drying fruits and vegetables to meditation. As in Freire’s pedagogy, Tan’s practice is about transformational processes that evolve over time. It is based on the consistent development of new skills and spiritual awareness, which become means of adaptation: they channel a profound understanding of the self and an expression of collective spiritual consciousness. Tan’s practice is far-reaching and includes tactics that parallel those of other artists discussed in this book and beyond. For example, Tan’s efforts to provide food access to underserved communities share goals with projects by María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Yinka Shonibare. Also, as part of S.O.S., Tan created seed bombs for guerrilla gardening interventions, which recall Seitu Jones’s Seed Bomb sculptures. Still for S.O.S., Tan devised Black Gold, where he preserved dark and nutrient-rich compost inside a glass jar, with a pun to the art of postwar Italian artist Piero Manzoni.27 The quality of soil is fundamental in agriculture, and contaminated soil can become a hazard to the health

204  Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming of human and non-human animals. As I discuss more in depth elsewhere, this challenge is taken on by Chinese American artist Mel Chin in his project Fundred, which involves educational efforts to help inner-city children avoid lead poisoning; and by the collective Futurefarmers’s Soil Kitchen, which promoted urban agriculture in a Philadelphia brownfield by offering free soil testing in exchange for soup.28 Tan’s practice at the intersection of art and agriculture can be seen in relation with a rich network of ideas and actions that feed each other and provide ground for constant variations and growth. Floating Ecosystems: Mary Mattingly The concern with soil health—seen in the work of Tattfoo Tan, Mel Chin, and Futurefarmers—is shared with artist-farmers across geographies and generations. Among them, New York-based artist Mary Mattingly created a library of soils for the project Soil Narratives in 2019.29 The artist asked participants to bring soil samples and share stories told from the soil’s perspective, zooming in on its swarming world of bacteria and organisms. Her approach helps humans develop empathy and rethink their species’ centrality. Overall, Mattingly’s practice addresses food inequality and strives for food sovereignty by circumventing existing laws and testing tactics for ecological adaptation. The artist experiments with community-based programs that involve agriculture, architecture, and food forests, and her interest in nomadic farms echoes Tattfoo Tan’s actions with mobile gardens. Water, in its relevance for food production and as a source of life itself, is at the core of Mattingly’s practice, as it was for Haha’s Flood. Raised in a rural Connecticut town that suffered from water contamination, Mattingly is particularly sensitive to the issue of clean water sources. In her floating installation Waterpod (2006–09), she constructed a self-sufficient shelter on a barge that once sailed from Governors Island to Harlem and Brooklyn. Functioning as an artist residency program, the barge provided rain collectors, food gardens, a chicken pen, a compost toilet, and living units under a geodesic dome that could be repurposed as a public event venue.30 The purpose was to demonstrate that it was possible to live off the grid and independently from a supply chain.31 This work’s concept was further developed in Swale, a complex initiative that began in June 2016 and continues to leave a mark thanks to the stewardship of Bronx residents and the support of the New York Public Parks, which were inspired by Swale to open a Foodway at Concrete Plant Park in the Bronx in 2017.32 The project was prompted by Mattingly’s research toward the creation of edible gardens in Manhattan. The artist discovered that foraging or growing food in New York City parks is illegal, as existing laws are meant to prevent overharvesting in an effort to conserve flora and fauna in the urban environment. Such laws were dictated by ideas of conservation that see humans as separate from “natural” ecosystems. In addition, they predict that park users might destroy ecosystems by hoarding

Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming  205 more than they could consume, if given the opportunity to gather food in public land. Mattingly’s determination to demonstrate the possibility of a shared commons—in which people, plants, and animals collaborate—pushed her to approach the challenge creatively. Her response was to design a floating food forest on a 130-by-40-foot steel barge, utilizing maritime common law to circumvent regulations that applied to parks on land: no law prevents from growing food on water. Swale was docked at Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park and then at Concrete Plant Park in the South Bronx, in neighborhoods with limited access to fresh foods.33 The biodiverse edible landscapes cultivated on the barge became self-evident of the necessary interconnectedness of ecosystems, including humans. Art critic Michael McCanne visited Swale in its first incarnation in the summer of 2016, and described it as such: The plants sit in mounds of black soil encircled by large round bladders made of tan rubber, the material that the army uses to hold water in the field. Planters made from the same material and framed with wood sit against the gunwales, overflowing with green tomatoes, strawberries, and fronds of thyme. In the front of the barge, a low coop behind brand-new chicken wire houses a few hens. In the aft, a row of square plastic drums, each about four feet high, holds Swale’s water supply and filtration system. One drum is open at the top to catch the rain, while another is filled with sand and gravel to filter toxins out of collected river water.34

Figure 4.1 Mary Mattingly, Swale, 2017. Concrete Plant Park, Bronx, New York. ­Courtesy of the artist.

206  Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming When Swale is docked, it is open to the public and visitors can pick food for free, entering a multisensorial exchange with the food forest and processing information on where food comes from in very direct ways. In an email conversation with me, Mattingly highlighted: It is intentional that the projects intersect with embodied learning. What comes to mind first is the process of a person entering and walking through the edible meadow on a barge that is slowly moving back and forth from water currents. When people are not yet accustomed to the movement, the entire experience feels unusual and resonates differently. After a few minutes of accepting the movement, people forget about it. At that moment, they can experience a perspective shift that is haptic and sensorial. This shift affects everyone in a different way, in a way that’s not prescribed but that ultimately can affect and strengthen a commons, whether as an idea or a place that supports a community (in the largest sense of the word). Focus on that perspective shift is certainly one of the reasons agroforestry on a barge is important, other than the importance of focusing these ecosystems into unison: the human ones with the watery ones, with the plants, microbes, soils, pollinators, and plant pests as an ecosystem, that by virtue of its scale is possible for humans to comprehend more easily. It’s at once contained by a barge and by the water so that one can see how the life onboard changes depending on which plants are harvested, or how much rain falls.35 Mattingly shared that one of the goals of the project was to tangibly demonstrate how a food system works: “It is difficult to see an entire ecosystem, like the one we live in every day, but these contained spaces on the water can be microcosms that make it easier to understand.”36 Mattingly’s art practice makes imagining new possibilities tangible. On the project’s website, Swale is described as co-educational,37 and the participatory component that shapes the work is informed by the public’s experiential contact with edible gardens and crops. This practice can be seen as aligned with critical food pedagogies, which revolve around the development of relational and phenomenological awareness of the connection between environments, non-human agents, and human bodies through food. As Mattingly stated: “I believe projects like this can be proposals for alternative ways of coping, and also interrogate these cycles of inputs and outputs, predatory economics, and the violence inherent in consumption, as we look for other ways to co-exist.”38 Thanks to her vision, Swale turned from an artist project to a whole movement that promotes public food in NYC, advocating for food security for underprivileged neighborhoods, and for holistic understandings of human/non-human interactions. Mattingly’s work disseminates ways of learning experientially that have helped communities and local administrations to think outside of existing laws and habitual cultural frameworks, to see humans as interwoven with multispecies ecosystems in symbiotic relations.

Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming  207 Civic Fruit and Public Art: Participation for Fallen Fruit and Lisa Kyung Gross Mattingly’s efforts are not isolated. For example, the art collective Fallen Fruit (founded in 2004 by David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young, and run by David Burns and Austin Young since 2013) has been committed to promoting access to public food through the organization of foraging tours in Los Angeles and other cities since the mid-2000s.39 These activities teach residents from different neighborhoods how to recognize edible and safely consumable foods that grow in urban environments. In cities, adaptation requires legal knowledge—which fruits can be picked by not violating laws?—in addition to public health and ecological knowledge. Similarly to Mattingly, Fallen Fruit recognized that legality can paradoxically be, sometimes, an obstacle to fostering a more just and inclusive society. Instead of going against regulations or trying to change them through formal processes, the artists invent ways of navigating the rules and still meeting their de facto goals through action. In the meanwhile, they pose questions that might encourage the public to rethink the principles behind the laws themselves. In the case of Fallen Fruit, the collective puts to the test the separation of private and public with the objective of re-envisioning the commons. In L.A.—a city where people commute almost exclusively by car—40 Fallen Fruit’s walking tours brought people closer. The relational and participatory component of their work enhances the learning process and underlines the power of reciprocity and generosity. As the artists say: “Strangers became friends, homeowners invited us into their yards, and everyone told us stories about fruit, memories, their families, and their neighborhoods.”41 For Fallen Fruit, foraging provides opportunities to educate, form networks of people, and create community by dining and drinking together. Foraged foods are cooked and preserved to become jams, pickles, and even vodkas that retain the flavors of specific places. Thus, Fallen Fruit’s practice helps viewers understand, on a phenomenological level, not only where their food comes from, but also how eaters are physically tied to places where their food grew. This is an extension of the idea of terroir: the nutrients in the soil, the rainwater, and the sunrays that a plant absorbs from a specific site become part of the plant, and upon consumption the plant becomes part of a body. Thus, human bodies literally contain elements of the places where their food grew. Through Fallen Fruit’s projects, the concept of public food is understood experientially, because participants come together through the sharing of knowledge, and become one with plants through eating processes. This form of embodied pedagogy helps trigger critical questions about existing paradigms on property, privacy, and legality. The success of Fallen Fruit’s work is grounded in collaboration, which Fallen Fruit acknowledges to be challenging at times, because it necessitates constant negotiation. Yet, collaboration is also at the core of their creative actions. As they share in an interview with artist, writer, and practitioner Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein:

208  Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming We believe that collaboration is an essential part of culture. In this way, we find that it is essential in contemporary art. Even visiting a museum is a collaboration. Walking in a neighborhood is a collaboration. Sharing an understanding is a collaboration. We, as a people, continually collaborate in passive and intentional ways every day. We all can’t help it. It’s automatic and an integrated part of everyday life. This is how we as artists explore the depths and capacities for questioning and expand how authorship is created / co-created.42 Collaboration and participatory practices help Fallen Fruit engage with ideas of public food that allow the healthy blurring of dimensions often perceived as  binary in US societies, like the private and public spheres, or humans and nature. Beyond foraging tours and neighborhood tastings, Fallen Fruit collaborated on urban gardening projects across the United States, from Portland to Omaha; together, these sites enable the proliferation of self-regenerating systems of care. Through fruit tree planting projects, the collective involves a diverse group of volunteers (in terms of age, race, gender, and class) that find hope and meaning in the acquisition of urban agriculture skills. Via foraging and planting, the artists enact forms of site-based resistance that provide alternatives to packaged foods, restaurants, and grocery stores. This approach rethinks the idea, implied in the definition of food deserts, that the only acceptable way to gather healthy foods is at grocery stores and supermarkets. In fact, foods that are distributed in such venues usually participate in global trades and industrial agriculture mechanisms that ultimately contribute to social disparities and ecological imbalances. Fallen Fruit’s concept extends from specific physical places to internet sites and social media. By sharing neighborhood-foraging maps online, Fallen Fruit offers the tools to safely pick public fruit independently. In addition to encouraging foraging, the artists invite participants to plant fruit trees and add them to the collective’s interactive maps in order to encourage others to pick fruits for free, thus creating a non-contiguous space resulting in an Endless Orchard, as they call it.43 The graphic arts language of Fallen Fruit’s website and museum installations evokes the idea of the “endless orchard,” as well, and is characterized by collage-like crops of vegetables and fruits that are combined to form a continuum of space. The images recall art historical precedents, from botanical illustrations to Giovanni da Udine’s frescos in the Loggia of Cupid and Psyche of the Roman Villa Farnesina, where festoons are punctuated with representations of fruits and nuts from “The Old and New World.”44 As detailed as scientific illustrations, Giovanni da Udine’s representations decontextualize the fruits and nuts from their environments of origin. Almost like a painted collage, they remove elements of a whole to recombine them into a new composite space, extracting and appropriating to convey the patron’s power. The intended effect was to trigger a sense of wonder in the elite European visitors of

Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming  209

Figure 4.2 Fallen Fruit, Public Fruit Map, 2004. Silverlake, Los Angeles, California, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artists. This is the first public fruit map created by the artist collective. Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration originally conceived in 2004 by David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young. Since 2013, David and Austin have continued the collaborative work.

the Villa. In fact, Agostino Chigi, a Sienese banker and the wealthy patron of Villa Farnesina, which was designed and built from 1505 to 1511, commissioned the paintings to some of the most prestigious artists of the Italian Renaissance in an effort to demonstrate his family’s status and power. On a visual level, Fallen Fruit’s composition points to Giovanni da Udine and other early modern artists’ iconographies and aesthetics; however, Fallen Fruit subverts the power dynamics embedded in the images. The sites—virtual and physical—in which Fallen Fruit’s works are located are more accessible than Agostino Chigi’s villa, originally intended as exclusive private property. Accordingly, the fruits and vegetables that appear on Fallen Fruit’s designs are  not appropriated as emblems of private control and wealth, but rather

210  Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming visualize the richness of biodiversity in order to foster an appreciation for the public foods available in non-rural places. In similar ways, fruit iconography becomes twisted and overturned in Boston Tree Party (2011–13), an agriculture-based project by multiracial artist Lisa Kyung Gross, who discusses her practice more in detail in a conversation published in this book. For Boston Tree Party, the artist collaborated with experts in a variety of fields, from agronomists and botanists to communication specialists and educators. The team created and distributed kits, each including tools, seeds, and guidelines for planting two apple trees in community spaces, like schools or neighborhood associations. Participants took on responsibility for taking care of the trees and made the fruits free for anyone to pick. So, the apples became public; they were civic fruits in literal and metaphorical ways, because they signified the benefits of civic engagement and shared goods. Boston Tree Party involved the designing of a flag, a seal, and other promotional materials that were inspired by historical imagery, such as city insignia and the Gadsden flag, a symbol of the American Revolution created in 1775. The title of the project is a pun on the “Boston Tea Party,” with a nod to both the event that led to the American Revolution and the late 2000s revival of the term by conservative politicians. Gross explains in an interview with climate justice writer Lily Mihalik: When I started to research the history of Boston, I discovered that the first apple orchard planted in the United States was actually planted on Beacon Hill by the European settler William Blackstone. Beacon Hill is this icon of Boston history and power, so just to think of that as an apple orchard was really beautiful. Also, the oldest named variety of apples to grow in the United States is the Roxbury Russet, which was developed in Boston in the 1630s. So you have this idea of Boston as the City of Apples. […] The Boston Tea Party has become so widely relevant with the rise of the contemporary Tea Party and I was fascinated to learn that, in a way, [that event] was a performance. The dumping of the tea had a financial impact, but … it was also a dramatic, symbolic performance. So the Boston Tree Party is a kind of reference to both a celebratory party and the performance of it all.45 For Gross, Boston Tree Party points to American revolutionary history, with its continued legacy and double-edged political revivals, and reinscribes it within contemporary meanings through multiple artistic tactics. The reference to Roxbury Russet apples prompts a connection to the dissolved municipality of Roxbury, now a neighborhood of Boston. Roxbury is home to a minority-majority community, and Boston Tree Party celebrated Roxbury’s important place in US society to cultivate appreciation for its diversity. The kits included seeds of two different apple cultivars, as apples need to cross-pollinate in order to grow and thrive. The artist states:

Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming  211 We too are interdependent and need to work across divisions to effectively address the pressing social and environmental issues we face. We too must cross-pollinate and seek out and value diversity, not just because we need to, but because that’s how you get the sweetest and juiciest fruit.46 Gross’s work shifts narratives to help see difference as a form of wealth and a means for common survival, rather than as a source of conflict. At the center of Boston Tree Party is an educational mission, as clarified in the handbook received by community partners that purchased the kits and planted the apple trees: As an urban agriculture project, the Boston Tree Party creates vital gathering places and opportunities for learning, exchange, and participation. […] As a conceptual art project, the Boston Tree Party catalyzes a deep and playful engagement with the issues of food access; health; environmental stewardship; biodiversity; public space; and civic engagement.47 Indeed, Boston Tree Party embraced hands-on learning to promote a sense of purpose and belonging, and motivated communities to reclaim a right to healthy and nutritious foods. Gross’s work put principles of critical food pedagogy into practice thanks to inductive and creative approaches to knowledge dissemination. Similarly to Fallen Fruit’s Endless Orchard, Boston Tree Party also aimed to create a decentralized urban orchard, where the whole is more than the sum of its parts48—a philosophy that can be applied to the geography of agriculture-based art projects across the world, as I argued in this book’s Introduction. Being with Bees: Juan William Chávez’s Creative Pedagogy Against Racist Histories Working with young publics in order to promote awareness of food justice, human and other-than-human connections, the weight of history, and a sense of place is crucial for St. Louis, Missouri -based artist and activist Juan William Chávez. Chávez incorporates educational activities with youth in his urban agriculture projects, which include workshops on nutrition and much more. Chávez describes his practice in the interview published in this book. For him, education is about providing opportunities for dialogue and embodied collaboration across species. His project Bee Sanctuary began in response to Pruitt Igoe, a huge modernist residential complex that was built in the early 1950s and first occupied in 1954, to be demolished in 1972.49 Pruitt Igoe was designed as a supposed solution to housing for mostly Black Americans whose families had moved to St. Louis from the South, attracted by factory job opportunities in the context of the Great Migration. Once in Missouri, they continued to experience racism, for example in the form of reduced wages,

212  Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming marginalization, and poor housing conditions. While Pruitt Igoe was presented as a project that would improve the latter, it simultaneously enhanced marginalization. The buildings were state of the art and modern when first built, although the city did not set aside sufficient funding for maintenance, and living conditions quickly declined to the point that, in 1972, the housing project was demolished. The resulting empty space was soon reclaimed by plants and non-human animals: Pruitt Igoe became a spontaneous urban forest with lots of pollinator activity. This site triggered Juan William Chávez’s initiative to reimagine the place through his participatory art project: the Bee Sanctuary. Initially, this involved stacks of beehives that resembled the form of the former residential buildings, evoking their memory by creating a parallel between the former residents’ way of interacting with place and the bee’s community, connotated by activity, teamwork, and sweetness. Now, participants in Chávez’s Bee Sanctuary are racially diverse, including African American children who learn about the difficult histories of the Pruitt Igoe modernist housing projects and their painful trajectory, while also participating in the reinvention of the site’s story, changing how the story ends.50 Thus, storytelling is enhanced as a critical pedagogy tool, in ways that parallel the approaches of Mary Mattingly and Fallen Fruit. Education is a big component of the Bee Sanctuary: Chávez aims to provide continuity of didactic experience by working with some youth over time, via after school or summer programs where participants learn beekeeping and create drawings, paintings, and structures inspired by the hive.51 His own long-term and slow process-based art is inspired by bees. Observing beehive activity, Chávez realized that many of the tasks that survival depends upon are carried on cyclically, and yet change is incorporated into every iteration. Bee Sanctuary is a place-based work that remains similar while renovating itself regularly with community input and observation of the non-human participants involved: pollinators. Thus, modeling collaboration with non-human agents is a form of education, once again one that is informed by phenomenology, experience, and relationality, activating the principles of critical food pedagogies. Queer Ecologies and Cross-Species Interaction: Eli Brown Human and non-human relationships also inform the philosophy and practice of artist Eli Brown, who complicates the posthumanist framework through the lens of Queer Ecologies.52 Their research is guided by an interest in fungi, animals, and plants that do not fall under rigid gender binaries. His observations and studies focus on beings that rely on complex reproductive systems. For example, Another Mother: A Database of All Trans Organisms on Earth is a website and artwork-in-progress meant to gather data by connecting physical places with online spaces. Brown invites the viewers to identify and share information on plant, animal, and fungi species that demonstrate reproductive diversity beyond heterosexual binaries. An interactive map represents the

Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming  213 knowledge acquired via cooperative research conducted in specific physical sites.53 This dynamic process of knowledge-gathering challenges crystallized assumptions and promotes a reconsideration of scientific concepts that project cultural constructions of gender and sexuality on living organisms. In Another Mother, research, learning, and teaching happen simultaneously and collectively. The goal is to detangle harmful biases that compromise the health of ecosystems, societies, and individuals. He writes: Most of us are taught that heterosexuality is the optimal survival strategy for all beings, that it is nature’s way. This is a myth that excludes the multitudes of plants, animals, and fungi who operate in non-heterosexual, reproductively complex, multi-sex ways every moment all over the world. What are the structural mechanisms keeping this myth alive? Who are the scientific gatekeepers and what is at stake? We are not taught that there are ‘trans’ species. If we were, what might happen to our collective consciousness?54 Brown’s research questions emerged from their experience in the world of sustainable and organic farming. It was through direct engagement with gardening that they were exposed to the heteronormative and colonialist assumptions made by botanical classifications. Analogous assumptions inform the social constructs embedded in the culture of outdoor lifestyles and wilderness exploration, as argued by scholars such as environmental historian William Cronon and Queer Ecologies theorists Catriona Sandilands and Bruce Erickson.55 Brown has dedicated many initiatives to help his public, and especially LGBTQ+ individuals, feel comfortable and natural about their identity and sexuality. They have done so by combining images and text in order to convey information on multigender plants, including edible ones like avocados and fennel. For example, their zine Transplants: Sowing the Seed of Gender in the Garden includes a whole curriculum, which incorporates illustrations, guidelines, questions, resources, stories, and active learning exercises that help users elaborate on contents and apply them to their own experience, prompting direct observation. The zine can function as an outdoor guide, meant to be used by educators to promote awareness about gender and sexuality diversity.56 The first public for the zine was the University of California Santa Cruz Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, where Brown attended an apprenticeship program that triggered his broader critical questions on environmental science, evolutionary biology, and speciesism.57 The piece is distributed independently via Brown’s Etsy store, reaching zine libraries and outdoors programs whose work impacts participants of different ages. Transplants is more than an object, as it becomes a prompt for hands-on learning achieved through the reconsideration of agricultural systems, in ways that share aspects of critical food pedagogy approaches, especially in their re-elaboration of Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Brown writes:

214  Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming Gender oppression is linked to other systems of oppression that affect all of us, that work together to dictate things like where we can live, what kinds of jobs we can have, and how we get to express ourselves—in essence, who we can be.58 In Freire’s philosophy, a central pillar is to affirm the humanity of the oppressed; thus, distinguishing humans from non-humans becomes part of a toolkit for liberation. While Brown honors Freire’s foundational principle that embodied and dialogic education can foster deep awareness to fight against societal and racial violence, their reference to Queer Ecologies and Posthumanism complicates Freire’s pedagogy. In Brown’s practice, liberation is based on the understanding of connections—not distinctions—among humans, plants, fungi, and non-human animals. This immersive and interconnected approach to pedagogy is indebted with Indigenous ontologies, which honor the wisdom of ancient beings, like plants, that have thrived on Earth for much longer than humans, as noted among others by artist and educator Kevin Slivka.59 However, differently from many Indigenous practices, Brown’s work is not committed to a particular land. Their projects, including Transplants, often exist in multiple copies and are distributed across sites—physical, virtual, or imagined. This model is iterated in works that employ multiple or sharable platforms for the dissemination of knowledge and the enabling of actions that push beyond existing categorizations, classifications, and separations. For example, his piece Future Species Survival Kit (2018), included in their 2019 exhibition Museum of Queer Ecologies, constructs the prototype of a kit for postapocalyptic survival in a futuristic world in which humans and mushrooms reproduce.60 Kits are usually produced as multiples, existing in various iterations and containing similar objects; through their prototype, Brown alludes again to the relevance of disseminating tools and ideas across space and time. Their work is entangled with that of other artists who engage with pedagogy, ecologies, and food systems. For instance, the creation of curricula and kits echoes strategies adopted by Lisa Kyung Gross and Tattfoo Tan, as well; and the incorporation of mycelium places Brown in dialogue with other artists who are fascinated by the mostly unknown (by humans) complexity of fungi, as discussed in the next paragraph. Making with Fungi: Urbonas Studio and Mycelium In her book titled The Mushroom at the End of the World, first published in 2015, anthropologist Anna Tsing argues that fungi’s sophisticated ability to convey energy, communicate, multiply, and expand makes them able to survive in the most challenging environments, even in what can be apocalyptic conditions for humans.61 Shortly before the release of Tsing’s volume, Lithuanian artists, researchers, and MIT-affiliated educators Nomeda and Gediminas

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Figure 4.3 Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, Psychotropic House: Zooetics Pavilion of Ballardian Technologies, 2015, detail. XII Baltic Triennial, CAC Vilnius. Photo: Giedrius Ilgunas. Courtesy of the artists.

Urbonas (Urbonas Studio) began a long-term project titled Zooetics (2014–2018), incorporating mycelium and fungi. On a discursive level, Urbonas Studio saw mycelium’s ability to “cannibalize other cultures or materials, create hybrids, make new nets and constellations” as “parasiting and colonizing”;62 on the other hand, they observed the material’s potential to be morphed into objects for human use. In fact, in the past decade or so, mycelium has been used for ecological design applications, such as the production of textiles, 3D printed furniture, and shoes.63 Pointing to these utilitarian possibilities, Urbonas Studio devised a participatory exhibition titled Psychotropic House: Zooetics Pavillion of Ballardian Technologies as part of the overall Zooetics infrastructure. On view in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 2015, as well as in Kraków, Poland, and São Paulo, Brazil, in 2016, Psychotropic House involved collaborations with scientists and mycelium producers to create objects of wonder, including utensils and containers; and the artists invited visitors to bring in their own plastic objects to be exchanged with mycelium ones. The ephemeral items were crafted on a small scale, thus functioning as an alternative to modernist design approaches that prioritized durability, massive production, and unlimited access.64 Through the focus on composting, instability, and decay, the artists encouraged the viewers to imagine ever-growing symbiotic relations with non-human beings. While fungi are beneficial to humans—as food, medicine, and now in the form of mycelium-based objects— humans can help mushroom growth through agriculture, and ultimately fungi feed off decomposing bodies for their own survival. This symbiosis is a condition for life and regeneration, both literally and metaphorically.

216  Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming Thanks to a collaboration with Edison de Souza, the former chief researcher at São Paulo Institute of Biology in São Paolo, Urbonas Studio experimented with the production of mycelium that recycled agricultural waste from coffee, sugarcane, corn, brachiaria, and sisal plantations.65 Not only did this process reduce waste from the cultivation of cash crops, literally generating new items from discarded matter; it also facilitated the symbolic digestion of the heavy history of plantations in the Americas, which was discussed in Chapter 3, to cast light on material agency and interspecies relations. For Urbonas Studio, fungi indexed ways of interfacing more-than-human infrastructures and knowledge, a topic that they further investigated by organizing the Zooetics symposium at MIT in 2018. The event posed questions that challenged existing perceptions of a separation and hierarchy between humans and other-than-humans, to reinvent mutually beneficial systems. Pedagogy and knowledge transmission were central concerns, and the artists asked: “How do [symbiotic interactions] reconfigure both multispecies relations and existing practices of knowledge production and pedagogy? How can the work of Zooetics help us to explore and define new habits of thought that allow us to think sympoietically?”66 In their subsequent works, Urbonas Studio tested multiple responses to these general questions by “making with” sci-fi-inspired narratives and scenarios in which humans and other-than-humans interact to inform adaptive responses to changing conditions. Their Mushroom Power Plant, exhibited at the Folkestone Triennial in the United Kingdom in 2017 and at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 2019–20, “encapsulates Urbonas Studio’s ongoing research in the field of energy humanities. It unfolds through a semi-fictional narrative about an alternative power plant and probes the hypothesis of energy produced by a symbiotic relationship between mushrooms and bacteria.”67 The piece involved the design of a prototype based on a research collaboration between two groups of scientists based in Lithuania and the United Kingdom.68 While working on this artist-initiated project, the scientists studied the potential for alternative energy sources, while also revisiting what it meant to do research creatively, considering intersecting ideas in science, philosophy, storytelling, and traditional knowledge. Overall, for Urbonas Studio, thinking and making with fungi and mycelium constructed opportunities for a deep reprogramming of current systems to imagine a multitude of symbiotic futures. Ever-Changing Traditions: Unlearning and Experimenting for the Scuola delle Agriculture The arts have a seminal role in the creative reimagination of the relationships with lands and ecological systems, and can help rethink tools for shifting the paradigms of food gathering. The artists included in this volume agree that the idea of agriculture as a form of extraction and destruction with short-term consumption benefits should be reconsidered. Their work is engaged with the reimagining of

Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming  217 agriculture to encompass inclusive human and non-human relationships that feed and nourish all. Embodied pedagogies become not only a way of transmitting previously acquired information, but also of learning together, providing spaces for trial-and-error processes that involve input from diverse communities. Far from limiting their inquiry to utopian theories, artist-farmers enact the principles that they construct and constantly adapt their concepts and frameworks based on lessons learned on the ground. A telling example is the project Casa delle Agriculture (Home of Agricultures), a cooperative association that involves young activists, artists, and farmers in Castiglione d’Otranto, Puglia, Italy. Artist Luigi Coppola—an active member of Casa delle Agriculture since 2013—advocates for practices that consider regenerative agriculture and permaculture solutions to overwhelming farming and economic challenges at a time of climate change.69 In order to fully reinvent agricultural systems, Coppola and Casa delle Agriculture understand the need to remain on a particular land for long periods of time. Dwelling generates investment in a place’s past, present, and future, and prompts resistance toward environmental pollution that causes health issues across species. Committing to a specific land means recuperating local and traditional know-hows, which, in the case of Puglia, are being lost due to generational turnover and migration of local residents who look for professional opportunities elsewhere. That said, for Casa delle Agriculture, Southern Italian traditions have to be looked at critically and imaginatively, to weed out oppressive forms of labor exploitation that have impacted women for centuries and, more recently in this particular context, people of color.70 Scuola di Agriculture (School of Agricultures), an initiative of Casa delle Agricolture, takes on this work by using relational, multicultural, place-based and experiential pedagogies and injecting abandoned lands with new vitality. The project’s presentation describes it as such: Scuola di Agriculture (School of Agricultures) is a pedagogical platform that combines agro-ecological learning with artistic strategies of theater philosophy, and builds upon the participatory and commoning dynamics of the community of farmers and activists who formed the cooperative Casa delle Agriculture (House of Agricultures). In a region brutally affected by industrialized agriculture, the Scuola connects to the cooperative’s work of recovering and revitalizing abandoned land, generating solidarity-based economies, and strengthening community. In collaboration with migrant and asylum-seeker associations, local elementary and secondary schools, agricultural institutes, and associations for the elderly, the Scuola is an experiment in social solidarity.71 The involvement of participants that arrive to Puglia from African countries, among other places, contributes to the re-envisioning of agriculture through the exchange of knowledge in relation to place. By involving African workers in the reconceptualization of local economies and agricultural systems, Scuola delle Agriculture reacts to the process of exploitation of Black

218  Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming

Figure 4.4 Luigi Coppola and Free Home University, Scuola di Agricolture, 2018. Castiglione d’Otranto, Puglia, Italy. Courtesy Luigi Coppola.

bodies that Senegalese-Italian artist Binta Diaw critiques through her work, as discussed in Chapter 3. Scuola di Agriculture’s participatory and inclusive framework does not consider rural traditions as static and univocal, but rather as dynamic and pluralistic, a concept that is signaled by the project’s name itself, which uses the plural “agricolture” instead of the singular “agricoltura.” Coppola deconstructs the idea of fixed traditions that is embedded in governmental and European programs aimed at boosting agriculture through the protection of crops and products “a denominazione di origine controllata” (DOC). These certifications involve the patenting of foods that are typical of a certain region, in order to maintain their exclusivity and thus their trade and market value. For Coppola, this is an extremely problematic mechanism, because it impedes forms of dynamic agricultural adaptation and rather incentivizes the reproduction of standard crops and recipes in order to sell consistent products and tastes.72 As alternatives, Casa delle Agriculture and Scuola di Agriculture experiment with the application of a range of agricultural approaches, including those that emerged from farmer-scientist collaborations in the context of the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA).73 Based on agronomist Coit Suneson’s research from the 1940s to 1960s, and developed by researchers and farmers in Syria and Tunisia in the 1990s, ICARDA experiments with the agroecological practice of “evolutionary populations.” This consists of planting diverse varieties of seeds of the same crop, such as wheat or barley, on the same plot, in order to observe how plants grow by interacting with one another in response to the particular climate and soil conditions of a given environment. This method can be a promising way of regenerating lands and avoiding fertilizer or herbicide use.

Embodied Pedagogies and Knowledge Exchange through Art Farming  219 However, its economic success depends on alternative food systems and markets, because the harvest will never foster consistent outcomes and won’t lend itself to the packaging of predictable food products.74 Unlearning industrial agriculture shortcuts to shape new approaches that combine different traditions requires the efforts of many. This process helps reconsider not only the discipline of agriculture but also that of art. Instead of being about individual expression, for Coppola art becomes a strategy to collectively reshape societies and their relationship to food systems. More broadly, as seen throughout this chapter, artists involved with agriculture propose creative approaches to achieve the overall health of different groups of people through experiential and adaptive pedagogies, which motivate participants to actively pursue the cultivation of more equitable futures for diverse populations—human and not. Not only do artists unpack and counter sometimes aggressive histories and cultures of land use (as seen in Chapters 2 and 3); they also experiment with models of agriculture that consider non-human agencies (Chapter 1) and adopt collaborative, horizontal, and embodied forms of knowledge exchange to help affect present and future paradigm shifts (Chapter 4).

Conversation with Haha (Richard House, Wendy Jacob, Laurie Palmer, John Ploof)75

Silvia Bottinelli (SB): From 1992 to 1995, you conceptualized and ran an art project titled Flood: it was an indoor hydroponic garden located in a storefront in Chicago. Flood was first created in the context of the milestone public art exhibition Culture in Action, curated by Mary Jane Jacob in 1993.76 What does the title Flood refer to? Would you briefly describe the project and contextualize it within Culture in Action? Laurie Palmer (LP): I can start by trying to remember how we came up with the name Flood. I think that the idea was partly connected to the hydroponic system: the way that the plants were interconnected in the display of troughs meant that the water was constantly flooding over their roots. So, there was a constant movement of water, there was that technical and material relation. Then, there was the idea of Flood as movement, as in being part of a movement of self-care during the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Finally, Haha—the initial group of four artists—almost dissolved into the flood of a much larger project that ended up involving, at its largest, about 35 people. S.B.: The English term “flood” was translated into “diluvio” in Spanish. To me, in both languages, it evokes associations with the biblical Great Flood. Like contemporary Noahs, through your project you tried to rescue people who were innocent from the flood that the AIDS crisis was. Does this reading resonate with you? L.P.: I don’t think we were trying to rescue anyone! But I think your association underlines the fact that a word like “flood” can carry multiple meanings, both positive and also dramatic and apocalyptic. We did hope that people would bring their own associations to the terms and the project. We started out wanting to make a garden but then realized that one of the difficulties of having HIV was that you wanted to wash your vegetables so that they didn’t have dirt on them. This translated into investigating hydroponics as a soil-free cultivation

Conversation with Haha  221

S.B.:

L.P.:

method. Hydroponics was also a metaphor for the interconnectivity of plants and therefore the interconnectivity of the people involved in caring for each other. We believed that growing vegetables and herbs together would be therapeutic, with or without soil involved. We later moved part of the plants to a bed on the sidewalk and gardened with kids and others there, but the metaphor began with the idea of a hydroponic system that would be interconnected, collective, and caring. We set it up in a storefront with big windows on street level so that passersby could look in and wonder: “What is going on in there?” We were not a store, as one would expect to find in a storefront; certainly, we weren’t selling anything. We grew different kinds of healing herbs, like echinacea, and leafy vegetables including collards, kale, and mustard greens, which were good antioxidants. We delivered the greens through volunteering with social service organizations with programs like “Meals on Wheels.”77 Also, the harvest was available to whoever came to the garden; and we had dinners every week. The fundamental thing that the garden required was daily maintenance, thus the involvement of a lot of volunteers. Somebody had to be scheduled to come every day to take care of the plants and welcome visitors, as the space also functioned as an education center. Your approach aligned with the concept of Culture in Action, the overall project that Flood was a part of. The initiative started validating the idea of New Genre Public Art—intended as art in the public interest, art that relied on community involvement.78 How did you relate your work to the many others that were participating in this broader context? We were really interested in the idea of the audience as participants. Haha, our artist collective had already experimented with trying to blur the divide between the artists and the public in previous projects, and it made sense to continue this modality with Flood. But we didn’t have strong connections with the other projects of Culture in Action, because some of the artists weren’t actually living in Chicago, so we didn’t see them a lot. Yes, there were certain moments in which Culture in Action brought us together: it was exciting and interesting to meet and share notes, but other than that each artist or collective was focused on their own tasks. The relation with Culture in Action was about sponsorship: they gave us an initial budget, which we used mostly for rent and materials. We also had to commit to host busloads of people who would come to the garden once a week for a couple of months; that was a way to be inserted in those art world structures that legitimized initiatives like Flood and made them visible. I certainly supported what Mary Jane was doing, and at the same time it was wonderful to have so much autonomy. We could do what we wanted with the project, and in fact we kept it alive even after Culture in Action was over.

222  Conversation with Haha S.B.: How did Flood continue after Culture in Action was over? John Ploof (J.P.): The project meant different things for different people across time, so it’s difficult to define a timeline. At the beginning, the participants and Haha ran classes for students at three different schools, and the students then went out and volunteered at eight support organizations. Then, we would come back and gather at the garden and people would share their experiences, both with the relationship with AIDS and HIV in their everyday lives, and regarding what was occurring at those organizations where they were volunteering. Some of that happened during Culture in Action. However, even after, a number of people continued the relationship with the group and with the organizations where they volunteered. We don’t have an accounting for that, but I’m aware that it was meaningful to a lot of people. We also continued working with organizations, like Open Hand Chicago, that distributed the food harvested at the storefront.79 Open Hand Chicago was an amazing program that brought meals home to people with AIDS. They became our fiscal agent after Culture in Action and were able to apply for grant funding to keep going for a while. Open Hand was interested in opening an additional center by partnering with a local community-based organization, the Howard Area Community Center.80 Flood galvanized a conversation between those groups and that resulted, actually, into another iteration of the garden. Eventually those groups created an alternative high school, a food pantry, and various other neighborhood services. By that time, Flood had dissipated. Also, the storefront inspired others interested in developing their own kind of Flood project in their own communities; another version of Flood took place at the student center in Dekalb, Illinois; and then another in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, through a really wonderful community-based organization. S.B.: These extensions in time and space allow you to overcome one of the main concerns of artistic social practice, that is the fact that the limited time frame of art projects can be at odds with the long-term needs of communities. It is remarkable that Flood’s mission and spirit continued even when you stepped aside. J.P.: Thank you. As Laurie said, Haha generated the project, but then we dissolved into the larger group. Flood’s legacy was carried forward by many individuals. It is difficult to document the project or talk about it historically, because of its various ramifications. S.B.: Let’s focus on the first iteration of Flood for Culture in Action. The published photographic documentation shows that the storefront responded to contemporaneous art world aesthetics: for example, you placed a rectangular garden bed at the center of the space, like a modernist sculpture elevated on a pedestal. Nonetheless, there was an Arte Povera-like tension between the organic (wood) and industrial materials (plastic) of the bed. And the plants and soil—truly

Conversation with Haha  223 vibrant matter—participated actively through their own growing and changing: you shared authorship with them. Can you comment on Flood’s aesthetics from your perspectives as artists? Wendy Jacob (W.J.): I like how you describe our shared authorship with the plants. It’s true! The space changed with the crop rotations and was at its most spectacular just before a harvest. Haha, as an author, resisted the idea of having “an aesthetic,” or a cultivated style. This was especially true with Flood where so many of our decisions were based on practical considerations as well as shared with the larger group. I do remember discussing what color to paint the floor, and what font to use for the signage on the front door, but most of our choices were dictated by the needs of the garden and the people engaged with the project. As much as Haha resisted the idea of having an aesthetic, however, because we had gone to art school and absorbed the lessons of art history, it was inevitable that our work would reflect other histories and aesthetics. So, your associations with Arte Povera or the modernist pedestal are not entirely misplaced. At its core, however, the garden was a public act of care, and our choices, as artists, were made in support of that. S.B.: Flood was located in a storefront on Greenleaf st. (a serendipitous street name!) in Rogers Park. Close by, there were a small art center and a branch of the Chicago Public Library, but the space was distant from prestigious art galleries and museums, thus less likely to regularly attract the art world public. Despite the physical distance, the art world was present and visible through the funding and resources that made the project’s very existence possible. Did this affect Flood’s dynamics and outcomes, in your opinion? W.J.: The answer is both yes, and no. As you say, the fact of Culture in Action’s support made Flood’s very existence possible. It also helped frame the project as art. But Flood’s connection to the art world wasn’t necessarily visible to everyone who engaged with it. The garden was in Rogers Park, a neighborhood on the far north side of Chicago, almost an hour by “El” from the gallery district and art museums. At the time, the four of us were living in Rogers Park, so it made sense to situate the garden there. The fact of its location so far from the Loop was also central to Culture in Action’s vision of artists making work within communities. The art world’s presence in the project was most visible during the summer of 1993 when the eight projects of Culture in Action were on display. Every week at noon, a chartered bus would pull up at the garden with an art world audience and catered bag lunches. Members of Flood would greet the visitors and talk about the project. For our neighbors on the block, this weekly ritual of display was a form of entertainment. When the bus left, we would resume our various maintenance activities and the kids next door would polish off the cookies from the leftover bag lunches.

224  Conversation with Haha For the many other people whose lives intersected with the garden, however, such as those who received deliveries of greens, the art world part of who we were was much less visible, or even irrelevant. As John said, Flood was many things to many people, and art wasn’t necessarily one of them. S.B.: During the summer, you planted beds along the sidewalk, but for the most part you opted for an interior space usually associated with commercial use rather than farming. Can you elaborate on this? W.J.: Having a hydroponic garden indoors enabled us to grow greens yearround. But it was also a strategy for engaging with people on the street. A garden in a storefront was a curiosity, a lure, that brought people in to find out more. It was a spectacle to look in the window, especially during the long, grey Chicago winters, and see a field of greens. S.B.: What brought you to identify food and agriculture as optimal tactical media to address the discursive sites of community, generosity, and health? Richard House (R.H.): The installation looked like it was a part of a hospital. The focus on the plants and the fact that you could use them was really essential. We looked at the project very pragmatically: Rogers Park recorded the highest rise in HIV infections at the time, and this was our neighborhood. We all lived there. It was a real privilege to be able to make a project for Culture in Action, but mostly it was important to address something that really mattered and something that also involved us. It had to be discursive, as the issue we were facing was something we couldn’t quite get our heads around. I mean, how do you respond to a crisis like that? A lot of decisions had multiple reasons. One reason for selecting certain foods and growing methods was that they were clean. Another was that, even if there were food kitchens distributing food for people with HIV, they were packaged meals and they just didn’t seem to do, they were almost like TV dinners, they didn’t seem as nutritious as you would expect, or you would want. We wanted to offer something different that could still be distributed through existing networks. S.B.: One of Flood’s intentions was to educate the public. Why did education feel urgent and necessary? W.J.: It’s important to understand the context of Flood. In 1993, a diagnosis of HIV was a death sentence. This was before the development of antiretroviral therapies which now help people with HIV/AIDS live longer, healthier lives. Everything about the pandemic felt urgent, and anything that anyone could do felt necessary. S.B.: Was nutrition a criterion for your crop selection? Did you consider the historical and cultural values associated with the edible varieties that you grew?

Conversation with Haha  225 W.J.:

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We grew leafy greens which are rich in vitamin D and bolster the immune system, so kale, collard greens, and chard. We experimented with spinach, but it never took. I don’t remember focusing on the historical or cultural values associated with what we grew, but we were aware that some of the individuals who received produce from the garden were especially enthusiastic about getting the greens because they were part of their food culture. I want to add that the growth aspect of growing fresh vegetables is so metaphorically and aesthetically strong that that was a huge part of Flood, though easy assumptions about which foods specific social or cultural groups value should be avoided. Recently, I found out about an amazing Japanese ecologist, Kinji Imanishi.81 He argued that living things recognize their own food because food is an extension of their own body, and this means living things recognize themselves. I just love that sort of connection of body and food; as humans, we all need to eat. This was materialized in the weekly meals that Flood did for a lot of the time that we were working there. Sharing meals was a way of finding commonness. That’s a complicated term, but I think of food as a way of potentially bridging differences and bringing people together. So, there’s lots of ways in which I think we consciously wanted food to be that link. Working with a garden and food predated our idea of working with AIDS. We had been wanting for a while to do a project locally and felt that a garden could be a way to do something within our community in a more public way. Rogers Park was a very diverse community within our own near proximity. There were people from numerous countries. We were interested in engaging the difference in the project’s food choices or the way that the garden was structured. For me, it came around from early on, looking at things like the choices of seeds and where the seeds came from. We found an organization called Seed Savers Exchange,82 a non-profit in the business of banking and distributing organic seeds that come from the open pollinated varieties that come from people’s gardens. I really liked the fact that our seeds came from Seed Savers Exchange, and also from Seeds of Change.83 They’re both politically active groups that involve banking and distribution of seeds, aligned with what you’re saying about the relevance of the cultural histories of food. Those seeds bring with them people’s immigration stories; as they move they bring the seeds with them. A strange twist in this narrative is that the garden’s landlord was in the agriculture business and sold seeds that had been treated with a bright colored coating, like the sugar shell on an M&M, that contained herbicides or pesticides. We went in the opposite direction with our seed selections.

226  Conversation with Haha R.H.:

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When you prepare food, when you eat, when you garden, when you have these activities in which you’re occupied and you’re actually doing something, a space feels more intimate and private even when a setting is public. This really helped us bridge the gap between us—the organizers—and them—the participants—that were often people who were HIV-positive. There were people who had no clue what was happening and wanted to get information. Flood was a way to invite more people in. We also organized Sunday dinners, just to have those conversations happening. Did you propose a theme for the conversations? Did you start off with the topic for the dinner or was it just a spontaneous exchange? Conversation was spontaneous, but we often set aside time to schedule work for the week ahead, and there were organized and sometimes quite formal presentations by doctors and researchers speaking to people who maybe just got the diagnosis. Our approach was quite varied. Are there metaphorical parallelisms between the hydroponic system used for Flood and the physiological and social systems embodied by the viewers? I think using metaphor is really dangerous and difficult and sticky, and it never really properly works. That said, one kind of metaphor emerged early in Flood’s process and still sustains itself very well. At that time, public discussion about HIV infection was counterproductive. The media conveyed that people who were infected were either stupid or had done something wrong. There was a moral judgment made on the body that hosts HIV.84 Throughout the project, we were concerned with the infected body, with sustaining that body. And the thing about hydroponics, why it works so perfectly, is that if the water isn’t running through, if the nutrients aren’t running through, it fails. You can actually see that a plant is not thriving. This was a really good way to open up conversations on very different levels about care, nutrition, and HIV. We didn’t necessarily have to talk about safe sex. We didn’t have to go into all the sort of detail that might be age-restricted or culturally difficult to cross over. It was just emphatic: here it is; if a body isn’t maintained, it doesn’t thrive. Then the whole project reflected on what sustenance is. Is it food? Is it access to information? Is it discursive? I think that we kept that rolling along throughout. To add to that: the hydroponic beds were interconnected, one pump circulated water and nutrients to multiple rows of greens. If a pump failed, or a hose broke, the entire system would fail. There was also a sense of interconnectedness with the volunteers who tended the plants. The garden depended on the group to make sure that pump and system of hoses were functioning, or the water hadn’t run out. During a time in the AIDS crisis when people felt so helpless, maintaining the garden was doing something, and that in itself felt worthwhile.

Conversation with Haha  227 S.B.:

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In 2020, we are experiencing multiple public health crises (from the opioid crisis to racial inequity and the coronavirus pandemic), as people did in the 1980s and 1990s when the AIDS epidemic started. Would repeating a project like Flood make sense in the current ­climate, considering present health systems and sociopolitical challenges? There’s a necessity for public art, for people to engage with what’s going on right now, particularly because the quality of discussion is so deliberately degraded and people’s voices are being taken away from them. So, I could see a project like Flood happening today, but one would have to rethink it from scratch, because we’re in such an unusual situation. For me, the erosion of public debate—the replacement of really substantive conversations with name-calling —needs to be addressed. We’re in a very vulnerable position right now and I don’t think the iteration of Flood would be enough, but maybe another form of garden would. To follow up on that, I think food and gardening are just as important today, if not more, because of aspects like mutual aid, getting together, collectively finding common ground, making meals. But I’m not sure if the metaphor would make any sense now, I don’t know that Flood as an art piece would matter as much. I’m taken by Fred Moten’s analysis of the need for the artist as a category to disappear, as well as the scholar as a category, as well as the university as a category, because these categories have an individualist dimension built into them from the start.85 Flood was about the dissolving of individuality, or at least a coming together of individuals into a collectivity. I would say that now it’s the collectivity, the finding commonness that is really key, more than art as a category.

Figure 4.5 Haha, Flood, 1992–5. Hydroponic Garden. Rogers Park, Chicago. Courtesy John Ploof.

Conversation with Tattfoo Tan86

Silvia Bottinelli: How has food become so central to your work? Tattfoo Tan: I was a painter before I encountered social practice. Painting has been my passion and hobby since I was a kid. But then, I found myself a little stuck because the path of being a painter is very narrow, you cannot break through. You have to go through the gallery system. You cannot suddenly show your painting in the street, it’s very confined. So, when I decided to change my whole practice in order to break that mold, I asked myself: What is the main thing that usually connects people together? It is food. My painting used to be about my culture and history being an Asian, but that is not relatable to

Figure 4.6 Tattfoo Tan, SOS Mobile Classroom, 2010. Cargo bicycle: 93″ × 20″ × 40″. The French Institute Alliance Française’s Crossing the Line Festival. Photo Tattfoo Tan.

Conversation with Tattfoo Tan  229

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most people. I don’t know how many Asians are in the world; they are only maybe a quarter of the world population. But if I talk about food, 100% of the population can connect, right? So that’s where food came into my mind. And then it led me to look at food from multiple angles: food as game, food as nutrition, food heritage, food as a health. Now even food as spiritual sustenance. So, different ways of looking at food as survival. Can you describe a few of your projects that exemplify your engagement with agriculture? Nature Matching System (NMS) was my first project. It is meant to encourage the public to eat a healthy meal by eating colorful food; to consume a diet of minimally cooked dishes that showcase a rainbow of colors. The colors on the skin of fruits and vegetables have phytonutrients that keep us healthy. The physical manifestations of NMS include a colorful placemat, a mural, a screensaver, and more. So, the concept is there, and it multiplies and uses different platforms, on different mediums, based on the budget and opportunity. For example: there was an Eagle Scout group in Carmel, Indiana, that fundraised and fabricated an entire NMS mural by themselves. From NMS, my practice moved toward S.O.S. Sustainable Organic Stewardship, which is about agriculture, urban farming, and food justice; and then, with New Earth, I became interested in food resiliency and food as something powerful for survival purposes. Those three main projects are my trilogy, my three big projects. They developed during 12 of these 20 years of practice. I also do food-based art about immigrant heritage, about how cultural heritage is conveyed by collecting recipes.87 You are originally from Malaysia. Are you interested in recipes and crops related to your heritage? Well, not specifically. I want to be heard by a general public. I want to collect heritage as in everyone’s heritage. In that way, I myself can experience other people’s food when we cook together or I try to cook it myself. So, I become aware of something that I’m not used to. Urban gardening often develops as a way to remain connected to one’s cultural background. Yeah, I have seen that very prominently, especially when I was in Philadelphia, where there are a lot of refugees from Burma (Myanmar), who experienced trauma. In small lots, they planted the vegetables that they used to have; they come from an agricultural background, from the mountain area. And if you go to Chinatown in New York, not the one in Manhattan, but in Queens, in the outskirts of Brooklyn, people grow food in pockets of dirt, or in planters hanging out from the roof and stuff like that. I was always curious about what people plant. Can you bring examples of cross-cultural dialogue that you have experienced through food?

230  Conversation with Tattfoo Tan T.T.:

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Even the other day I was biking back home from collecting my CSA and a guy stopped his bicycle by the curb and collected things from a tree. I was so curious and biked closer, and figured out that the tree was a mulberry, obviously it was berry season, and mulberry is something that Chinese people like to forage and make into a herbal remedy; ginkgo biloba is the other plant you always see Asian people forage. Is foraging part of your practice? It is part of S.O.S. You need to know how to identify edible plants: in a new area, there’ll be new species that you have to learn. So, your work incorporates urban agriculture and foraging, considering the ways that food and eating are connected to people’s heritage and personal stories. How do you frame agriculture as a form of art practice? My art making process is: I learn things, I practice them, and I teach them to others. I learn in various ways: through classes, by volunteering, or through YouTube channels; then I practice the things I learn in my studio space. So, my studio is kind of important, even though my work is post-studio in some way, because the studio is where I really try out and experience things that I learn in theory. I have a garden space where I experiment with growing food. For example, when I couldn’t identify specific plants, I bought them and planted them. I needed to see them grow through the season, and then they become embedded in my mind because I can see how they look in the winter, in the summer, throughout the year. You have a different relationship with plants if you… domesticate them somehow. Even my raspberry became less tawny, because I’m playing with it. Currently, I’m cultivating solely pawpaw trees, which are native to North America. I also hosted a pawpaw tasting in a local cafe where customers had heard about this plant from their childhood but never tasted it before. The tree looks tropical. The leaf is huge. An interesting thing is that it is not pollinated by bees, but by flies. So, if the bee population collapses, we will still be able to eat pawpaws. The flowers are upside down, bell shaped. I’ve been planting the seeds elsewhere in the neighborhood so that hopefully the trees will grow somewhere else too. In the 1960s and 1970s, and even before, select artists were interested in merging art and life; this interest emerges, for example, in the loose group of artists affiliated with Fluxus. This seems to be a source of inspiration for you. What are your work’s most important art historical precedents? Each project is influenced by different artists. The Nature Matching System is inspired by Sol Lewitt, with his way of establishing systems, categorizing things, and asking others to follow conceptual instructions to build something physical. S.O.S. finds a model in the pioneers of Land art and Eco Art. I would not be able to do what I do

Conversation with Tattfoo Tan  231

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without what they have done; they are a stepping stone that brought me to the next level. And I see other artists that look at my work and transform it into something new. We are all interconnected. You have described your practice as a process that leads to the removal of unnecessary details and objects to get to the core, to the soul. This approach recalls the principles of early twentieth-century abstract art, as conceived, among others, by Piet Mondrian. Do you find an affinity with this artist, despite the obvious formal differences of your bodies of work? I am interested in abstract art, especially in Minimalism. I think of my practice as a way to merge art and life: those two things are not really separate. It is about treating art as a way of communication, instead of a profession. It’s the way you want to be in the world, the way you behave is the way you see the world, right? As an artist you might see it differently than as a lawyer or an accountant. Mondrian might have seen stripping away as necessary. Also in spiritual practices, you have to strip all the way your identification with your body, and your identity too. Even though you know that you function through the body, your true Self is not the body itself. To me, spiritual practices are not different from art practice. According to shamanism, your imagination and your spiritual practice are the same thing, humans depend on imagination. Everything that we have here has been imagined, you manifest what is in your mind. And what is the relationship between spirituality and stewardship toward the natural world? People do understand climate change, but refuse to change themselves, because they are disconnected from the idea that we are all connected. The human world, the plants, the mineral world are really one and not separate. So, we really need each other to survive. We are part of a system. It’s almost like karma: whatever you do comes back to you. Maybe not in this life, but in the next. One might view scientific data but this won’t drive changes in their life, because they are disconnected from nature itself. When I raised chicken here, I was totally aligned with the chicken’s schedule. When they see light, they make noise, and I had to go out to open the coop; then when the sun went down, they went back to the coop and I had to go out and lock them back in. So, I behaved intuitively. That little connection with the life of an animal already changed my perspective about the rhythm of day and night. That is an example of how people need to reconnect with nature. I also call that “rewilding” because we lost our wilderness knowledge, which was applied to foraging, hunting, and so on. But spiritual practice is the next level up. It fosters a deeper understanding that we are part of a single entity: even if we see the world with different eyes, each perspective is a partial vision of the singularity. The human perspective is very impermanent; it is

232  Conversation with Tattfoo Tan

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a fragile thing; what you should associate yourself with is the one being that is everywhere and in everything. That is what I understand from spiritual practice. And that’s real connection with nature. It’s actually a very liberating thing because you are more than who you are; you upgrade your status from a tiny human being to divinity. Meaning that you now understand that everything that happens to you or happens to anyone else is part of the play of the whole, and this automatically generates less violence, more empathy and love. Instantly, whatever happens to you happens to the world. There is no you-the-personality. You implicitly make reference to animism, Shamanism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. It seems like you’re making many different religions or spiritual traditions your own. Can you expand on your approach to spiritual practice? Here is an anecdote that I was told: in a dark room there are three different people, and they are all touching an elephant; one person says: “This animal is like a tree trunk.” The other one says: “No, no, it’s flat, it’s moving, I can feel the air on my face.” And the third person says: “No, it’s like a snake.” They touch different parts of the animal and imagine the whole body based on the parts that they can feel. We all have our micro perspective, and we stand by it. To me, this is a metaphor of religion: no individual religion can be considered completely true, but if you combine parts of them, you get closer to the whole; ultimately, they all try to grasp the same thing. Much of your aesthetics and ethics are about preparing for survival in hostile environments. Has the current pandemic impacted the ways you think about your work? The pandemic showed me that I’m on the right track concerning what I am learning and practicing and talking about and preaching. The New Earth project reflects it. It includes two sections, or volumes. One is about physical survival. One is about spiritual survival, and it’s again on point, because in this pandemic there is nowhere to run; you have to face this situation. The only possible way is to face it spiritually. You have to look at your mortality, in the ultimate sense of who you truly are, and have to be able to let go. In order to do that, you basically have to get rid of fear; that’s the main reason I went into spiritual practice, because fear drives the idea of survival. Since I’ve been practicing an isolated lifestyle at home for the past three years, I have been under the tutelage of a guru, and it worked; it kept me sane even when I was panicking. The shutdown doesn’t really affect my lifestyle. That said, I tried to help others through my Instagram feeds and started doing dialogues and interviews, reaching out to people to talk about New Earth, because I see it as a stepping stone for people to understand their own mind and thought, and overcome fear.

Conversation with Tattfoo Tan  233 S.B.:

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You learn, practice, and then you communicate your knowledge to others. Education is crucial for you. What is your pedagogical strategy when you meet with a group in person or, right now, over social media or virtual meetings? For each of the projects that I did, Nature Matching System (2007), S.O.S. Sustainable. Organic. Stewardship (2009), and New Earth (2013), a syllabus and a book are produced. The book can be purchased or downloaded for free on my website. That is my main tool to disseminate knowledge. When a museum invites me, I like to do a talk and also a ceremony. The ceremony includes a game or a little mandala on the floor; it depends on the amount of time available. And, obviously, I’ll be around if participants want to talk more about what I shared with them. It’s hard to communicate big conceptual ideas to young students, because to truly dive into spiritual practice, one must have experienced life. So, with school-aged children, I usually just show how to make things. A homeschool class used to come to my studio before the pandemic. It was a group of kids, —seven to nine years old, who learned Greek from a neighbor, and Sanskrit from me. They could see what I do in my space. So, just by looking at what I’m doing, hopefully they can feel what my practice is about. I recently gave a talk at the Intrepid Museum88 and worked with young adults and teenagers, discussing ecology and art, and I did my best to convey a spiritual message through a PowerPoint presentation over Zoom. I used the film Inception to show that time is non-linear; to exemplify how we only see part of a bigger picture, I proposed an analogy with Avatar; to speak about the fact that the body is not one’s ultimate identity. I talked about Forrest Gump: the protagonist doesn’t really strive, but he witnesses and lets life happen. I tried to use contemporary, relatable examples. You often aspire to educate about nutrition and healthy eating habits. In public school settings in the United States, some children rely on the school system to get nutritious foods on a daily basis. How do you address issues of inequality in your work, also considering that climate change and environmental crises disproportionately affect minorities? Through my practice, I offer guidelines to become self-sufficient. I think that the problem with obesity and not having access to good food is beyond the problem of food deserts. It is also due to the fact that a lot of people are afraid of cooking; parents are afraid to let the kids cook and play with fire; afraid they will cut themselves and won’t be able to use a knife. So, in a lot of the projects that I do with children, in school or outside of school, students have to use real fire and real knives. Children never cut themselves if you teach them how to use a knife properly. They become so proud that they could handle a knife, and it remains a lifelong skill. Also, there needs to

234  Conversation with Tattfoo Tan

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be discernment of quality of life. I’m not talking about spending lots of money. It is about choosing to eat things that you prepare, even if it takes time and intention. KFC is going to be a quick option and tastes fine, but if I roast the chicken myself with honey glaze and some rosemary, it will be healthier and taste five times better. In some way, somehow, you have to choose. It’s a personal choice, but I really try to help people make that choice. This applies to food, and also clothing, you can and need to have a higher standard. In line with this do it yourself ethics, you dehydrate food that would otherwise be considered waste by food industries. How did the idea develop? NEMRE—New Earth Meal Ready to Eat—is the project that came about when I learned that industrial farming rejects food that is not regular in shape, in part because it is more difficult to sort it by machine, in part because it looks less appealing on the supermarket shelf. But other than that, it’s perfectly fine, it’s not harmful. So that knowledge triggered the project, and I chose dehydration compared to other types of preservation because, thinking about survival, one can easily carry dehydrated food in case of an emergency. Of course, being Asian, I’ve been eating dried food since I was a kid; for example, I use dried veggies to make soup. They actually enhance the flavor, making it more intense. You strive to reuse materials for sustainability purposes: can you describe some of the challenges you may have encountered? Have you had to make compromises to reach your goals, for example using plastic to preserve dehydrated foods? I do not label materials as good or bad; it is how I use them that is good or bad. If plastic is being used mindfully, I see that as a good thing: I like all my nylon backpacks, because I’m always out in the rain, I need a waterproof bag. Using high-quality things that don’t break and can be resold is another way to save and limit waste. In the photographic documentation of your dehydrated foods, preserved in transparent plastic bags, I see a reference to sci-fi aesthetics. Is this your intention? Yeah, New Earth is very sci-fi. The title teases the idea of trying to find a new Earth somewhere out there, on another planet. That is wrong for me. You have to figure out how to maintain this Earth before you go find the next one. You need to take care of your body and take care of the environment because they are connected. We are talking about all these different topics, like teaching, survival, food sustainability, gardening, recycling and reusing, spirituality… what do you feel the most connected to?

Conversation with Tattfoo Tan  235 T.T.:

What I have been doing is basically search of myself. I don’t know who I am. Not being specialized in any medium, I play with all sorts of different things. But overall, when I look back on my life and my career, I can see a few highlight points and that led me here. Some might say that switching from sustainability to spirituality is unusual, because most artists who engage with sustainability become interested in science. But I can see bits and pieces of past projects that are related to spirituality; it almost seems that I was guided to do what I am doing now; maybe someone is looking out for me, you know, whether that is God or the Guardian Spirit. So that is my highlight, you know. It is also nice to not know what’s next…

Conversation with Lisa Kyung Gross89

Silvia Bottinelli: What are examples of your work that engage with food, agriculture, and gardening? Lisa Kyung Gross: I started to develop an interest in the intersection of food, agriculture, and gardening when I was doing my MFA at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. The first project on this topic was titled The Urban Homesteaders League, which resulted in The Urban Homesteaders League Market Stand.90 The Urban Homesteaders League started off in 2008–09 as a performance: it was presented as if it were a community group, but it was just me initially. At

Figure 4.7 Lisa Kyung Gross, Seal of The Boston Tree Party, 2011. Courtesy of the artist.

Conversation with Lisa Kyung Gross  237 the time, I was interested in fake organizations, performative organizations. But it actually turned into a real community organization revolving around the idea of urban homesteading, which was just starting to return into popular consciousness. There was excitement about learning to make and grow things, instead of just being a consumer and purchasing everything. As an artist, I was concerned with the loss of knowledge, skills, and expertise from earlier generations around growing and preserving food, sewing, and mending clothes, making the things that you need. I started to organize different workshops and experiences in Cambridge and Somerville around raised beds, planting, permaculture, canning, pickling, growing mushrooms, mending… I organized activities through meetup.com, which was relatively new at that time. The group grew quickly, and I met people around Cambridge, Boston, and Somerville, who shared my interest. I organized tours of different homes of people who are thinking deeply about how to make their daily life more sustainable and meaningful through making and growing. All these initiatives culminated in a project in the summer of 2011 at the Union Square farmers market in Somerville, called the The Urban Homesteaders League Market Stand. We had a swap table where people could exchange things they had made or grown, and we had a little mobile reading library; each week, I collaborated with different designers on creating a brochure that captured the material in that week’s skill-share workshops. It kept me busy for the whole summer, but after a few months I realized that these activities were self-referential, as I was basically making things for myself. I also felt that the whole discourse on urban homesteading was just not very diverse; it mostly served White middle- and upper middle-class people, as did the environmental movement in general at the time. That is why my following project, which was actually my MFA thesis titled Boston Tree Party (2011), strived to break out of that kind of silo. I wanted to create a participatory piece that brought people together across differences and across boundaries. There is nothing more universal than growing, eating, and connecting through food. I was also thinking about the long and diverse history of urban agriculture in Boston, with Asian Americans and African Americans in inner-city communities involved with community gardens.91 I also found out that the first apple orchard ever planted in the United States was actually planted on Beacon Hill in Boston by William Blackstone, who is the first European settler in Boston,92 and that the oldest variety of American apple that was named and distributed was the Roxbury Russet, which was developed in Roxbury, Boston, in the 1640s. Particularly in areas of Roxbury and Dorchester, there were orchards and farms, and some of that history is still left in certain place names. There are various streets and neighborhoods that have

238  Conversation with Lisa Kyung Gross fruit tree orchard–related names. I was fascinated by this layer of Bostonian history, and was especially drawn to the fact that Beacon Hill, which is the symbol of Boston establishment, wealth, and political power, was once an apple orchard. I researched apple histories and discovered that apple trees need to be planted in heterogeneous pairs in order to cross-pollinate and bear fruit. With all of this in mind, the name Boston Tree Party popped into my head, with a reference to the Boston Tea Party, of course.93 I reflected on the performative act of political activism by which protestors threw tea into the Boston harbor—a potent political gesture against colonial dependence from Britain. At the same time, while I was developing my project, the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement was building momentum in the United States and was using imagery and symbols from the colonial era, like the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag.94 They claimed connections with the historical Tea Party through their name and visuals. My project The Boston Tree Party responded to all those inputs, from the contemporaneous political context to my own previous art. The project revolved around planting pairs of old varieties of heirloom apple trees with a connection to Boston in publicly used spaces across the city. By doing this in partnership with a diverse range of communities and organizations and institutions, a decentralized public urban orchard was created. It had an everyday practical purpose, providing places of gathering and community education; it also became a symbolic political act—the act of planting apple trees and caring for them became a living sculpture across the city. I designed a tree-planting kit that each community received, in exchange for a small financial donation between $50 and $250, which corresponded to the cost of two trees and gardening materials. I also connected with two apple-growing experts, John Bunker and Michael Phillips, who became the official arborists in the project and offered advice on the horticultural side of the initiative. They helped me design the kit, which included compost, ramial wood chip mulch, tree guards, mycorrhizal root dip, the two apple tree whips, and lots of pageantry material. I worked with a wonderful graphic designer, and she and I together designed a flag that took the “Don’t Tread On Me” symbol and made it into two apple trees, lined by the writing: “Boston Tree Party, Go Plant a Tree.” We made it like a seal. I even created a motto in Latin for “civic fruit.” Fruit trees had to be planted at publicly used spaces, so they were a reference to both actual fruit that was shared in a public community and also the civic fruits that can be created through cross-pollination. It encapsulated the central metaphor of the project. With the help of collaborators, we created educational materials, a handbook, and more materials to be activated during tree-planting party activities. Each community who got the trees

Conversation with Lisa Kyung Gross  239 would organize some sort of tree-planting party that fit their community, whether that was something very elaborate or very simple, and we launched the whole project with a big celebration and tree-planting on the Rose Kennedy Greenway for the Boston Tree Party inauguration.95 We had various “delegations,” which is what I call the different participating communities, and representatives gave speeches. A marching band played music. There was a parade, and the Central Asian Barbecue food truck made dishes with apples that originated in Central Asia. We had many stands with activities. Then, we did a ceremonial planting of the first pair of trees. Then, we dropped off all these kits all around the city, and, as I mentioned, everybody organized their own tree-planting parties. Participants included a range of groups, from an elementary school in Cambridge to communities in Dorchester and Roxbury, and then city churches, synagogues, universities, galleries, more elementary schools, and libraries. S.B.: How would you evaluate the social and environmental outcomes of The Boston Tree Party? L.K.G.: There were many different components, a lot of people involved, but since the beginning it wasn’t a fruit tree–planting non-profit; some of the participants wanted me to turn it into that. I just felt from the beginning that it was about planting seeds; giving the power and the control to the communities, giving them a lot of fertilizer, compost, resources, access to expertise to pull on, but ultimately, it was up to them to do what they wanted. I was not going to be there helping to maintain the trees for the next 10 years or running pruning classes for the next 20 years. What that means is that I don’t know how many trees are still alive, who’s really kept with it, who’s let it go. In the beginning, we were lucky to get a lot of press attention. When I was at SMFA, I curated the graduate colloquium, which was about reimagining home as a site for personal and societal transformation. One of the speakers was Fritz Haeg [who is also included in this book], and I talked to him about The Boston Tree Party; he said something that really stuck with me, that is that he saw the press coverage as part of the art project. Because my projects are about changing people’s thinking, the media is an important aspect of them, as it does the work of sharing and disseminating the ideas behind the pieces. The Boston Tree Party raised awareness around seed diversity, the value of heirloom varieties and maintaining diversity in the seed collections of the world. In terms of evaluating The Boston Tree Party, I feel like from a non-profit, environmental, and agricultural perspective, it’s probably a failure, because I don’t know what happened to those trees; but from the perspective of an art project that’s about creating a powerful experience that changes the way people think, I feel like it was a successful project, as it had an impact on the behaviors of the many people who were touched by it.

240  Conversation with Lisa Kyung Gross The Boston Tree Party lasted for about three years. What happened next? L.K.G.: I moved back to New York City and was inspired by its incredible diversity. There are more languages spoken in Queens than anywhere else in the world right now. And yet, there are few opportunities for meaningful interaction between immigrants and non-immigrants, or even between immigrants from different groups. Those experiences are often service-based, for example interactions with the person at the dry cleaner or the waiter at the restaurant. Noticing these aspects made me go back to an idea I had in my early 20s and resulted in the project League of Kitchens (2014–ongoing). S.B.: How is your family story and personal experience connected to the conceptualization of League of Kitchens? L.K.G.: When I was in my early 20s, I was living alone for the first time, ­starting to cook for the first time. I wanted to cook dishes from my childhood. My mom is Korean and my dad is American of Hungarian-Jewish descent. So, cross-pollination there! My Korean grandmother lived with my family when I was growing up, and made all this amazing Korean food, but whenever I wanted to cook with her, she would always say: “Oh, don’t worry about cooking, you should go study.” She didn’t value her own cooking skills because her culture didn’t value them. Cooking skills, for women, were expected and taken for granted, and she wanted me to have the professional educational opportunities that she didn’t have. I very much appreciate and understand her concern, but what that meant is that I never learned to cook from her. In my early 20s, my grandmother passed away, and I tried to teach myself how to cook Korean food from cookbooks and from the internet. But nothing tastes as good as when she made it. I tried to be my own grandma again, trying to learn those lost skills even if transmission of knowledge was disrupted. I wished that there was another Korean grandmother that I could cook with, learning her family recipes. Then, when I moved back to New York, as I said, that idea came back to me. I thought: “What if I found amazing home cooks from all around the world, living in New York City, who could welcome participants into their homes and teach them their family recipes?” This is exactly what League of Kitchens has become, a structure that enables immigrant home chefs in NYC to teach their cooking skills to small classes at their own homes. An experience that is just as much about creating meaningful opportunities for cross-cultural learning, connection, and exchange, as it is about cooking and eating. It is about a reversal of the conventional power dynamic where it’s usually the immigrant who is disoriented, who is learning. In League of Kitchens, the immigrant is the expert, the host, the one who is in control of the situation, and the students S.B.:

Conversation with Lisa Kyung Gross  241 arrive at a stranger’s home, even if maybe they are neighbors. Over the course of a class, which involves about six participants, a transformative experience happens, where people connect and feel very close to the instructor and the other students. By extension, a part of the world that previously felt abstract and distant now feels personal and real. S.B.: All of your projects involve an educational component. How do you approach pedagogy in your practice? L.K.G.: One very important connection between The Boston Tree Party and The League Kitchens is that I do not impart lessons, I remove myself from the educational experience. I only help set it up and frame it. In The League of Kitchens, I hired our instructors selectively, looking for people who are not only exceptional home cooks but also culinary and cultural lineage holders in their communities. During classes, there are just them and the students, so pedagogical approaches are up to them. With The Boston Tree Party, it was similarly important for me that I left space for the participants to decide; I designed the kits and included ideas for celebration, for learning, for activating the apple trees, but then it was ultimately up to a community to do what made sense for them.96 S.B.: Your framework creates a diversity of content and approaches, allowing a transmission of skills that is not forced into any ­ preconceived idea which you might have had about participant ­ interactions. L.K.G.: Exactly. Well, there are some structures that I design, from the kits to the time frames for classes, but ultimately each class is the creation of the instructor and each class feels different because they make it their own. S.B.: Is nutrition a focus of your participatory art projects? L.K.G.: With The Boston Tree Party that was definitely an important part of the project; the apple is a symbol of health. The project generated greater access to fresh food in diverse communities, both for eating, but also as an experience, to change the way people think about food or health.97 With The League of Kitchens, we have learned that traditional cuisines are often healthy in terms of methods (for example, fermentation) and ingredients (like spices, fresh vegetables, and fruits). One of the main reasons for the decline of health in the Unites States is that people cook less and rather depend on fast food or convenience food. If you teach people how to cook again or give them the skills to feel comfortable cooking traditional foods, that inherently supports health. Elka Sorensen: Another question comes to mind, thinking about culinary traditions. How do your works unearth past histories—political, environmental, social, and colonial?

242  Conversation with Lisa Kyung Gross L.K.G.: Well, The Boston Tree Party was very intentionally about reclaiming symbols and language from the Tea Party, which had made them so hateful and divisive. I wanted to affirm that we could be a very diverse group of people, communities, and organizations, using that language, imagery, and history; that the Tea Party, often supported by White men, doesn’t own them, that there are beautiful things in that history and language and imagery. There are obviously also very problematic and disturbing things. But it feels subversive and important to recycle those symbols and narratives into a more progressive direction. And with The League of Kitchens, there is something subversive and important about making women from a wide variety of backgrounds recognized for their domestic everyday knowledge and expertise—and also paid accordingly—and this is why the project is set up like a business instead of a non-profit. I didn’t want to be dependent on the infrastructure of arts institutions and museums; and I did not want the instructors to be volunteers. Offering them proper compensation was another way of recognizing their value and knowledge, especially because, as women, they had often been excluded from decision-making and political elites.

Conversation with Juan William Chávez98

Silvia Bottinelli: In what ways do you include agriculture and beekeeping in your practice? Juan William Chávez: I currently use agriculture and beekeeping as a way to address social justice and environmental issues. With a focus on food rights and pollinator decline, my team’s philosophy is that a better environment for bees is a healthy environment for humans, which means we practice chemical-free growing methods. Working within an ecosystem without chemicals or unnatural interventions allows me to take a deep ecology approach and consider my greater impact when working on public sculptures and projects. S.B.: Who are your collaborators? J.W.C.: My main collaborator in the studio and at the Northside Workshop (NSW), a non-profit art space, is my partner Kiersten Torrez. She is a master gardener and the director of programming and sustainability at NSW. She advises and oversees everything related to plants and garden design, as well as researching environmentally friendly materials and processes for all of our projects and programs. Together we work with our neighbors and arts organizations. S.B.: Do you see agriculture as a form of art, or does it facilitate art making in other ways? J.W.C.: Beekeeping and urban agriculture are part of my studio practice, serving also as an extension of my studio space. I often think of this Bruce Nauman quote: “What is it that an artist does when he is left alone in his studio? My conclusion was that if I was an artist and I was in the studio, then everything I was doing in the studio should be art … From that point on, art became more of an activity and less of a product.”99 I enjoy working in the studio space of a Bee Sanctuary because of both the seasonal cycle and the life cycle of the hive and plants. I find inspiration in observing the life cycle of the hive and plants: seedlings sprouting, flowering plants, pollination, honey production, harvesting vegetables and fruits, plants dying off and reseeding themselves. A beehive goes into hibernation for the winter and begins working again in the spring once temperatures warm. The

244  Conversation with Juan William Chávez hives and garden are always present, surviving whichever season it may be. While the Bee Sanctuary and garden footprint stay the same, it will appear differently each year as it is constantly evolving, shedding its skin, and metamorphosing. The garden as a studio space complements our process. We grow some plants in a traditional agricultural fashion, but there are definitely some aspects of our “probee” philosophy that a traditional beekeeper or farmer would not practice. We consider the benefit to bees in all our actions. Working in this manner can often be perceived as counterproductive or taking longer. By embracing a natural urban ecosystem, we don’t put constraints on how we lay out plants or where they may come up each year. It’s a Zen-like approach to gardening. This environment provides a meditative experience that fuels my studio practice and inquiries that inspire my art and the programs that I develop in and outside of Saint Louis, programs like the Young Honey Crew, the Honey Trailer, or Food Rights Bike. Once projects are realized, I go back to the Bee Sanctuary and continue my studio practice, which will lead to the next set of inquiries for developing projects and collaborations.100 S.B.: What kind of work did you create before engaging with farming as practice? J.W.C.: Before incorporating farming into my practice, I had an interest in vacant buildings. I’m from Saint Louis, Missouri, where there are a lot of historic brick buildings, many of which are vacant, boarded up, and in need of repair. My work revolved around seeing the potential in vacant spaces, reimagining them, rehabbing them, using them for cultural programming. My first project was a storefront that was transformed into an artist-run space called Boots Contemporary Art Space (2005–09). We had a lot of different programing (exhibitions, the publication Boot Print, and an artist residency program). The space had a good run, and we worked with a lot of amazing artists and curators, like Theaster Gates and Dan Cameron. I enjoyed it, but toward the end I began developing more interest in the backyard gatherings that took place during all the openings. I loved all the conversation and dialogue that was happening. A lot of ideas and collaborations started in that backyard. I began viewing the outside space as a tool to help foster projects and collaborations. That is when my practice stepped outside of the white box of the gallery and into the natural environment. I became less interested in vacant buildings, and I started to concentrate on vacant lots. In some ways, it is like the artist looking at a blank piece of paper or canvas. Without building a structure, the vacant lot has few options in terms of activities. The most obvious one is creating an urban garden. I wanted to see if I could take a deeper approach and expand the definition of what an urban garden could be. That led me to the Pruitt-Igoe urban forest,

Conversation with Juan William Chávez  245 which was the site of the former housing project Pruitt-Igoe. PruittIgoe was made up of 33 buildings and is considered one of the worst examples of public housing.101 It was built in the 1950s, located north of downtown Saint Louis. It was plagued with issues and eventually closed in the 1970s. All the buildings were imploded, leaving a massive 33-acre vacant footprint. After years of neglect, it slowly transformed into an impressive urban forest, camouflaging the history of one of the worst failures of public housing in America. In the Spring of 2010, I entered this forest expecting the remains of a community. I was surprised to see the beginning of another. This site had now become a dense forest, a prairie filled with wildflowers, and a home to a variety of wildlife and insects. What was once an unnatural environment for one had become a natural habitat for another. I documented the site through photographs and shot a film of the landscape. I started to view the Pruitt-Igoe urban forest as a sanctuary. That is when I began to contemplate what community could benefit from this sanctuary. For me, that community was bees. Bees need a sanctuary because they are dying off due to a range of issues from the use of pesticides in backyard gardening and industrial farming, to the loss of native plant habitat food sources, or illnesses caused by parasites. It made additional sense to me because bees and Saint Louisans were in a similar situation. In 2010, Saint Louis’s population had fallen to its lowest in a century. Perhaps a partnership between bees and humans could help address some of these issues. That is when the Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary started.

Figure 4.8 Juan William Chávez, Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary, 2012. A site-specific installation of beehives referencing the Pruitt-Igoe high-rise designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki. 20″ × 50″, 6′ × 1′ × 3′. Courtesy of the artist.

246  Conversation with Juan William Chávez I created a site-specific sculpture by stacking defunct beehives to resemble one of the Pruitt-Igoe buildings designed by the modern architect Minoru Yamasaki. There were pheromone residues in the hive boxes which attracted feral bees. I was surrounded by the time I had finished creating the sculpture. Not wearing any protective clothing, I moved slowly. My nervousness subsided as the bees became less curious about my activity and more focused on the sculpture itself. I saw bees working as a group, building, and transforming pollen and nectar to make honey. The alchemy of the studio within an ecosystem fueled my direction to pursue beekeeping and to build and develop bee-related programming. S.B.: Juan, your interest in vacant architectures makes me think of the work of Gordon Matta Clark. Any connection for you there? J.W.C.: Yes, Gordon Matta Clark’s interdisciplinary approach to his work is a major influence to my practice. His building interventions, Reality Properties: Fake Estates (1973) exploring micro plots of land, his artist-run restaurant Food, and roasting a pig under the Brooklyn Bridge have impacted my projects.102 When I think about agriculture, land, and the environment, I always go back to Mel Chin’s Revival Field and Agnes Denes’s Wheatfield.103 These works transformed me as an artist and helped me see potential where I hadn’t before. Eventually, I was able to remove any limitation of what is defined as art and established a broader idea of what an art practice could be. S.B.: Your work is site-responsive and participatory. What is the value of these approaches for you? J.W.C.: As a socially engaged artist, I tend to ask myself questions like, “You came up with an idea, now what? Let’s see how we can evolve and activate that idea, take the idea off the page, and put it in a real-world situation.” For an idea to take form, you need others to contribute and participate, that is why I enjoy collaborations. Ideas grow when people come together as a group. People bring surprising perspectives and expertise to each project, making the work stronger. My work with beekeeping helps strengthen this concept. To get things done and ideas realized, you have to work as a group. You have to work as a hive. Being site-responsive is how I begin learning about a place. I observe and listen to the site and people that have a relationship with the location. As an artist, I help develop the conversation; participation is how the ideas evolve. I’m the first one to say that any individual has limitations, but the group has strength. As the individual, you have to let go so the ideas can live and be shared, or added to by the group, community, or society. The first collaboration that came from the Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary took place in the neighborhood of Old North Saint Louis. After a year of listening to our neighbors, there were four recurring topics that people wanted to incorporate into the neighborhood: arts programming, jobs and mentorship, access to fresh

Conversation with Juan William Chávez  247 affordable food, and senior programming. As a small non-profit, we knew we could offer arts programs. Anything beyond art would be very challenging to provide on our own, so we began looking for partnerships. During the following six years, we methodically formed partnerships with organizations and our neighbors. Our first program, the Young Honey Crew, was a series of workshops for youth offering experience in beekeeping, gardening, cooking, and the arts. The second program came to be through a partnership with STL Youth Jobs, a program providing paid summer jobs. In the summer months, we now work with a small crew of young adults that are paid as teaching assistants. The third program was incubating a senior women support group called the Wise Women led by our neighbor, Paulette. This partnership eventually evolved into a collaboration called the Queen Bees. Every collaboration is tailor-made and occurs very organically. The Indianapolis Bee Sanctuary is a collaboration with Tube Factory Artspace. This commission is my first bee sanctuary outside of Saint Louis. It’s a five-year public sculpture promoting environmental stewardship and our “pro-bee” philosophy. The Indianapolis Bee Sanctuary is a pollinator-friendly hexagon sculpture consisting of a multicolor hexagon patterned concrete floor that houses two beehives. Surrounding the hives is a hexagon-shaped cedar eco-wall filled with organic soil and abundant native plants for bees throughout the seasons. The Bee Sanctuary invites the public to wear beekeeping suits to observe and interact with the hives through a multilayered community outreach program that embraces the urban ecosystem, arts education, and job training. The Indianapolis Bee Sanctuary embraced the concept of working as a hive through additional partnerships with local organizations Bee Public, Solful Gardens, and Teen Works on the construction of the sanctuary. Teen Works is a six-week summer employment and college readiness program for high school seniors. Besides helping with the actual construction process, these young people experienced several educational workshops that focus on ecology, plant biology, landscape design, beekeeping, and entrepreneurship. S.B.: Education seems to be a key component of your practice. How do you define education? Who are the publics that you seek to educate, and why? J.W.C.: For me education takes the form of dialogue and exploring possibility. It is also a shared collective experience. As an artist, my practice creates space for dialogue and transformation that occurs through art and educational experiences. I sometimes lead the group, but there are other people within my collaborations that also take the leadership role. I don’t view myself as the authority of art, beekeeping, or gardening. I am still very much a student. That is why I am drawn to collective learning. When in the garden with young people, I might present questions or activities, but we are all learning

248  Conversation with Juan William Chávez together. The public interactions I have stem from invitations from communities or organizations. Some hear about my work and have similar views or goals which initiates a conversation. The Charlotte Young Honey Crew was an invitation from the McColl Center for Art and Innovation, which invited me to work with a local art center, Behailu Academy, to develop a project to address housing and food insecurity. I collaborated with their teaching chef, Trevor Hoskins, to develop a seven-week curriculum for a group of high school students. We explored food from seed-to-table and met folks that were involved in beekeeping, food justice, community gardening, and cooking in Charlotte. S.B.: What can people that do not collaborate with you directly learn from exposure to your art? What does beekeeping as art practice teach the broader public? J.W.C.: An aspect of beekeeping that is particularly profound is the deep connection between humans and bees, since bees pollinate the majority of the food we eat. Early in the project, I explored this relationship when I traveled to Bicorp, Spain, to document an 8,000-year-old cave drawing and the first record of humans and bees interacting. The drawing is a figure in a tree collecting honey from a beehive. The figure has bees flying around it. Surrounding this drawing are images of the hunt. The cave drawing is a creative expression that illustrates the important sacred activities for survival, and beekeeping was part of their survival plan. Today there is an amnesia about food. We order food, we unpackage food, but most of us don’t have a relationship with how food is actually grown. As a conduit for communicating with plants and the ecosystem, bees help heighten our awareness of how we treat our environments, grow our plants, and consume our food. If bees are dying because of our lack of environmental stewardship using chemicals and pesticides, you quickly realize that something is majorly wrong. Gardening and beekeeping are relatable because everyone eats, so better informing our communities about healthier ways to respond to the challenges in our ecosystems is an idea that people can rally around. Art allows a certain kind of expression and curiosity that sparks this relationship with bees, plants, and the ecosystem. Beekeeping is a process that is very similar to the art experience. You are reconnecting to an ancient collaboration of natural surviving and living. It makes me think of Joseph Beuys’s works with bees.104 He viewed bees as a symbol of society due to the nature of how they live and work together. For the broader public, the collectivity of the hive can show us a powerful and natural way to live and work together.

Conversation with Eli Brown105

Silvia Bottinelli (S.B.): Do you see agriculture as a form of art, or does it facilitate art making in other ways? Eli Brown (E.B.): At a macro level, both the art world and the agricultural world are about appetite and consumption. In the United States, agriculture is often about constructing and maintaining a straight line on a flat plane. In the form of agriculture that I have practiced most and am most familiar with, farmers use machines and hand tools to create grids from which yield crops with varying degrees of success. Each year the process is repeated with slight changes based on many shifting variables. I’m not sure if I see this method of agriculture as a form of art. Maybe in a high production sense, where the farm manager, like a big-name artist, has a vision and design and hires workers to enact it. But the freedom for ingenuity is missing, even at a small scale, due to the farmer’s reliance on meeting the demands of their market audience. Farming is fraught with this tension between growing and supporting certain plant communities and infiltrating existing plant communities to grow a specific set of crops. It requires killing some beings who’ve been deemed undesirable in order to support the beings who are deemed beneficial, all to make sure the optimal quality and quantity of product is achieved. Ultimately, to be a successful farmer, you need to be making decisions that benefit the human beings you serve, and that often comes at the price of many non-human creatures. Other types of growing, like agroecology, permaculture, or community gardening, which don’t rely on output, allow for the freedom to design ecological systems that benefit the inherent interspecies connections already working in nature. S.B.: What are examples of your art practice that enable or imagine interspecies connections? How does this kind of practice connect to the process and concept of artmaking? E.B.: In Interspecies Intimacy Survival Kit, part of a larger body of work, Museum of Queer Ecologies, I imagined a techno-sexual future where

250  Conversation with Eli Brown

S.B.: E.B.:

humans were learning to procreate with fungi, the more advanced reproductive organism. A typewriter case is retrofitted as a survival kit containing various supplies for an interspecies intimacy project: one Schizophyllum commune specimen (a species of fungi which expresses at least 28,000 sexes), lab equipment, a petri dish, an emergency candle for sterilization and mood-setting, and a collaged-over romance novel. There is a comic that accompanies these sculptures called Future FXXX. Through it, we are transported to a near-future time where an ungendered person is living in isolation—maybe the last human? We are guided through the steps they take to prepare for interspecies intimacy. We see them carefully whittle a wooden phallus, inoculate it with spores from a syringe. We see them masturbate with the phallus, dig a hole with their hands, and plant it in the hole so that the spores might interact with human fluid and have a cool, dark place to grow a fantastical human-fungi being. The concept of planting here infers a near-posthuman reproductive realm where the next species will require more-than-human to human contact in order to be conceived. I had been comparing statistics of declining birth rates in the human population, reading Paul B. Preciado, and growing mycelium from a kit under my bed.106 So, it was only natural that this installation would be the result. I loved the idea of creating a living dildo. It felt like I was making myself a gag gift, concocting a remedy for the dysphoric yearning of my life, and simultaneously superseding what medical science could offer. Education about plant–human parallelisms is incorporated in your project titled Transplants. Can you describe how this project developed? Transplants is an educational zine developed initially for garden and farm-based educators. A resource for facilitating conversations around the history of gender oppression and its link to food and self-sufficiency, Transplants helps educators start conversations among young people around gender expression through a space of talking about plants who possess multiple genders, or “trans” plants. I hesitate to use the term “trans” to refer to plant bodies, as this term is a human-based projection onto non-human entities, and although botanists still use the terms “male” and “female” to describe plant reproductive parts, nobody knows how or if plants perceive gender or sexuality. I learned about the queerness and transness present in botany in 2013 while I was a student at the UC Santa Cruz Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS) apprenticeship program. CASFS is a farmer-in-training program where participants live and work while studying food systems and food justice frameworks. During a botanical workshop, one of our instructors shared about “perfect” flowers; these are flowers with both pollen producing (male)

Conversation with Eli Brown  251

Figure 4.9 Eli Brown, Transplants, 2014. Inkjet-printed zine, 5.5″ × 8.5″. Courtesy of the artist.

S.B.: E.B.:

and pollen receiving parts (female). He went on to list some of the plants we were currently growing who possessed “perfect” flowers. These flowers have evolved to utilize sexual multiplicity within a single individual to save pollinators the effort of moving from plant to plant, a strategy which increases the chance of success for their species. Learning of this phenomenon was incredibly validating for me, as a trans farmer. I started thinking about how ancient these organisms are, how they predate humans, how they have learned to adapt and survive over thousands of years, and how their sexual multiplicity is part of this survival strategy. Transplants was the first artwork that came from this life-long inquiry. How do edible plants, specifically, play a role in challenging binary classificatory systems, in botany, society, and art? Have you ever seen a blueberry or a plum with a thin, whitish film covering its skin? That is yeast. And it collects there overnight because most fruit we eat is actually the plant’s ovary. When I learned this, I think I may have been pushed over some edge. It became too difficult not to feel the interconnectivity pulsing between all living

252  Conversation with Eli Brown

S.B.: E.B.:

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things, and scientific ordering systems like taxonomy started to look suspicious. I started getting interested in how these ordering systems began and who was responsible for creating them. The variety of sexual and reproductive behaviors in edible plants at times seems limitless. For example, avocados have evolved to perform particularly complex reproductive behaviors. The avocado trees have flowers that switch sex daily. They have developed two types of flowers, A and B types. “A” types are “female” in the morning and “male” in the afternoon of the following day, while “B” types are “male” in the morning and “female” in the afternoon. When both types are planted near each other, the gender cycling helps them make more fruit. Who are the publics you sought to educate and why? With Transplants, I let transphobic landscaping bosses, and the White, cis-male-dominated world of the sustainable agriculture movement guide my hand. In my 20s, I worked a job in New York City for four years as a gardener, basically a glorified outdoor maid, sweeping celebrities’ dog poop out from underneath dying boxwoods. Those who could afford to hire our gardening services were rarely there to enjoy their gardens. I left the city after quitting my gardening job and started farming full-time. Over the years, I have witnessed and worked on dozens of land projects of various scales and learned important lessons from each space. But I was almost always frustrated by the burgeoning whiteness of the spaces and the complicity with which we served our own under the guise of food justice. I wondered why so few farms seemed to be bringing a critical or racial justice lens to the work. And everything from the language for the irrigation equipment to my co-workers felt pretty heteronormative. By the time I entered the UC Santa Cruz program and began research for Transplants, I was motivated to facilitate a different kind of space for myself and those who might feel othered in these organic farming spaces. Plus, I had an amazing ride or die crew of farmers around me all the time with whom I could learn and collaborate. In my work, in general, I’m centering anyone who has experienced their body as other/not their own, which could potentially mean anybody, though I usually imagine what queer and trans people might think or feel about what I make and how I make it. Also, I have a few very close artist/writer/genius friends whose potential opinions will always be of great importance. What did you advocate for and what educational models did you apply in Transplants? I was interested in outdoor education as an alternative to institutionalized learning, and I’d had what felt like success teaching farming

Conversation with Eli Brown  253

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skills to various youth groups over the years. The Transplants zine is meant to be used by outdoor educators, people who are working in farm and garden spaces, who want to bring critical thinking to those spaces through facilitating conversations about the violence, racism, and gender oppression inherent in our food system. There are illustrations, diagrams, safe-space building activities, and lots of information on plants and their histories. While working on Transplants, I was thinking about pre-Inquisition times, when the control associated with plants was on more of an individual level, and a local healer or witch might call upon a medicinal herb, like black cohosh, for example, to assist someone with an abortion. Silvia Federici, in Caliban and the Witch, talks about this period of time, when plants were feared (with good reason as they possessed magical and sometimes lethal powers).107 It would follow that the people who knew about plants, the women healers, curanderas, witches, etc., who held crucial roles in their communities, should also be feared. And as Christian leaders reached for more religious control, the meanings of the word “witch” began to shift violently. Those who once commanded respect through bending consciousness, self-empowerment, autonomy, and pleasure were now plotting evil heretics. The systematic removal of plant doctors from communities during the Witch Craze is directly linked to the emergence of capitalism and the erasure of food self-sufficiency. This practice helped to create the system we see today, where many people don’t know where their food comes from. Most people certainly don’t know that most edible plants we eat originate from outside of the United States and have been cultivated for hundreds of years by Indigenous communities worldwide. In what other ways do you include agriculture in your art practice? Farming requires a lot of ingenuity. To be a farmer is to be many things at the same time. Gentle, but also firm and extremely physical. From the tips of your fingers to the tips of your toes, you’re completely at work using your entire body. I love working as part of a team: investing in and adapting to the rhythms of other people’s bodies as we make ourselves a machine. There are rhythms that are your own and rhythms that you tap into as part of the group. It’s important to listen to and understand both. As an artist, when I am working collaboratively, there are similar feelings. The most direct way I am currently interfacing with agriculture is through working with a material called mycelium, which is the root network of fungi. This material, which takes the form of a culture, gets inoculated into some kind of substrate, like wood chips, and then I make a mold out of it and sculpt it into various shapes. This is

254  Conversation with Eli Brown

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a living organism that requires specific and (the way I’ve been growing it) often sterile conditions. When I started doing this, there were only a handful of other folks and a few companies in Europe experimenting with using it as an alternative to Styrofoam, but now lots of artists and builders have started using it as a material, and it is exciting to see what folks are doing. But at the same time, I wonder what the consequences of this new technology will be, and how they will be felt in terms of extraction. Conceptually, I continue to be interested in playing with reproductive possibilities. I’ve been especially enjoying thinking about potential sexual encounters between humans and fungi and what the consequent hypothetical conception might look like. I also think about biohacking as something that trans people do when we inject hormones. For example, the synthetic hormones I use as part of hormone therapy are said to be derived from a mixture of horse, yam, and sea creature, all of whom, along with the technologies that harvested them, are now and will continue to be a part of my body. It is almost like we farm ourselves. I am a kind of environmental artist in the sense that I often make objects from or intervene in living organisms and their systems, and I consider community organizing a part of this work. In 2018, I created a project called A Stitch in Time: Trans Family Archives. The project began as a collaboration between myself and two Boston-based non-profits, BAGLY, and Fenway Institute’s “The LGBT Aging Project.” We received a grant to implement a series of free dinners. These dinners offered a powerful space for trans and non-binary people to understand what keeps us generationally separate and collectively strategize ways to increase our contact and communication. We were committed to doing lateral, anti-racist, work. We wanted to create a space which did not exist: for trans and gender non-conforming folks to witness each other in physical space, confront generational biases, and build trust in a non-clinical setting. I see this work as a kind of cross-pollinating—creating critical connections between generations of trans people who can use each other’s strengths and vulnerabilities to adapt, evolve, and grow stronger. What can your creative farming practice teach the broader public? I’m interested in lineages, both human and non-human, and in asking how we, as a species, create support networks and share information for survival. That’s what I’m trying to get at with the community organizing project, Trans Family Archives. I’m also working on a new project called Another Mother, a database site where users can view and search for multi-sex species of plant, animal, and fungi, and upload their findings on a map.108

Notes for Section IV

1 “Harvest of the Soul. A Cooking Class with Lachelle Cunningham,” Frogtown Farm, video uploaded March 4, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2agt PHRq7fk 2 Amy Trubek and Maria Carabello, “Teaching to Cook and Learning to Sense in Food Education,” in Making Taste Public: Ethnographies of Food and the Senses, eds. Carole Counihan and Susanne Højlund (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 139–52. 3 Emma-Jayne Abbots, “Eating Bodies and Bodies of Eating: Theoretical Foundations,” in The Agency of Eating: Mediation, Food and the Body, ed. Emma-Jayne Abbots (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 13–34. 4 Christine Ballengee-Morris and Kryssi Staikidis, Transforming Our Practices: Indigenous Art, Pedagogies, and Philosophies (Alexandria, VA: National Art Education Association, 2017), chapter 8. 5 Jolene Rickard, “Diversifying Sovereignty and the Reception of Indigenous Art,” Art Journal 76.2 (2017): 81–4; 83. 6 Carole Counihan, Italian Food Activism in Urban Sardinia: Place, Taste, and Community (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 101. 7 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 83–4. 8 Ibidem, 30–1. 9 Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization (Chicago, IL: Third World Press, 1974), 54. Quoted in Rebecca Jensen Wallace, “How to Eat to Live: Black Nationalism and the Post-1964 Culinary Turn,” Study the South (2014), https://southernstudies.olemiss.edu/study-the-south/how-to-eat-to-live/ 10 Walter Bruno Gratzer, Terrors of the Table: The Curious History of Nutrition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 1–15. 11 Miwon Kwon, One Place After Another. Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), 59–99. 12 Mary Jane Jacob, Michael Brenson, and Eva M. Olson, Culture in Action: A Public Art Program of Sculpture Chicago Curated by Mary Jane Jacob (Seattle: Bay Press, 1995). 13 “5-Year Chicago Area HIV/AIDS Housing Plan. HIV/AIDS In the Chicago EMA,” AIDS Foundation of Chicago, archival material published in 2001, ­accessed  June 20, 2022, https://www.aidschicago.org/resources/legacy/pdf/HIV_in_ Chicago.pdf 14 Lucas Richert, “Reagan, Regulation, and the FDA: The US Food and Drug Administration’s Response to HIV/AIDS, 1980-90,” Canadian Journal of History 44.3 (2009): 467–88. 15 “Living with HIV,” AIDS Foundation of Chicago, accessed June 20, 2022, https:// www.aidschicago.org/page/about-hiv/living-with-hiv

256  Notes for Section IV 16 Heather Davis, “Growing Collectives: Haha + Flood,” Public 41 (2010): 36–47. 17 Mary Jane Jacob, “Reciprocal Generosity,” in What We Want is Free. Reciprocal Generosity in Recent Art, ed. Ted Purves (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 3–9; 6. 18 Temporary Services, ed. Group Work (New York: Printed Matter, 2006), 26. On collaboration in Haha’s practice, see also Wendy Jacob, Laurie Palmer, and John Ploof, eds. With Love from Haha: Essays and Notes on a Collective Art Practice (Chicago, IL: White Walls Press and University of Chicago Press, 2008). 19 Emilia Sanabria, “Sensorial Pedagogies, Hungry Fat Cells and the Limits of Nutritional Health Education,” in Why Food Matters: Critical Debates in Food Studies, ed. Melissa L. Caldwell (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), 237–54. 20 Louis Bury, “Spiritual Praxis: Tattfoo Tan,” BOMB Magazine, July 18, 2019, https://bombmagazine.org/articles/spiritual-praxis-tattfoo-tan-interviewed/ 21 Chunxian Chen, ed. Pigments in Fruits and Vegetables: Genomics and Dietetics (New York: Springer, 2015). 22 Tattfoo Tan, “Nature Matching System. A Curriculum,” self-published book, accessed June 20, 2022, http://www.tattfoo.com/index.html 23 “S.O.S. Rhizome,” Tattfoo Tan, accessed June 21, 2022, http://www.tattfoo.com/ sos/SOSRhizome.html 24 Hilda E. Kurtz, “Linking Food Deserts and Racial Segregation: Challenges and Limitations,” in Geographies of Race and Food: Fields, Bodies, Markets, eds. Rachel B. Slocum and Arun Saldanha (Farnham: Ashgate Pub. Company, 2013), 247–64. 25 “S.O.S. Stewardship,” Tattfoo Tan, accessed June 21, 2022, http://www.tattfoo.com/ sos/SOSGreenStewardship.html 26 “S.O.S. Action Guide,” Tattfoo Tan, accessed June 21, 2022, http://www.tattfoo. com/sos/SOSactionguide.html 27 For my analysis of Piero Manzoni’s Artist’s Shit, see Silvia Bottinelli, Double-Edged Comforts (Montreal & Kingston, London, Chicago, IL: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2021), 215–21. 28 Silvia Bottinelli, “Organizing Against an Invisible Threat: Lead According to Futurefarmers and Mel Chin,” in Lead in Modern and Contemporary Art, eds. Sharon Hecker and Bottinelli (New York: Bloomsbury, 2021), 219–38. 29 Allison Dell, “Soil Narratives: Toward a Symbiotic Art-Science Activism,” Public Art Dialogue 9.2 (2019): 166–80. 30 Dina Deitsch, ed. Temporary Structures. Performing Architecture in Contemporary Art (Lincoln, MA: DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, 2011), 82. 31 Ellie Anzilotti, “An Urban Food Forest Takes to the Waterways. How a Floating Farm Aims to Make Free, Fresh Produce Available to All,” Bloomberg, April 15, 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-15/swale-a-floating-urbanfood-forest-will-arrive-in-new-york-city-s-waterways-this-summer 32 “The Barge,” Swale, accessed June 22, 2022, https://www.swalenyc.org/new-page 33 “A Forest Floats on the Bronx River, With Free Produce,” NNY 360, July 8, 2017, https://www.nny360.com/news/a-forest-floats-on-the-bronx-river-with-free-produce/ article_94e6014a-ae3f-5cfe-846d-b2c4878ca63e.html 34 Michael McCanne, “Movable Feast. Mary Mattingly’s Floating Garden,” Art News, August 16, 2016, https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/movablefeast-mary-mattinglys-floating-garden-57647/ 35 Mary Mattingly, unpublished email message to the author, June 26, 2022. 36 Ibidem. 37 “Public Food, Water, and Land in NYC,” Swale, accessed June 21, 2022, https:// www.swalenyc.org/ 38 Allison Meier, “Mobile ‘Food Forest’ to Float the NYC Waterways in Spring 2016,” Hyperallergic, September 28, 2015, https://hyperallergic.com/239367/mobile-foodforest-to-float-the-nyc-waterways-in-spring-2016/

Notes for Section IV  257 39 Stephanie Smith, ed. Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL: Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2013), 178. 40 Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein, “Vibrant Edens for Us All: Interview with David Allen Burns and Austin Young / Fallen Fruit,” EcoArtSpace, January 1, 2022, https:// ecoartspace.org/Blog/12228171 41 Ibidem. 42 Carye Hallstein, “Vibrant Edens.” 43 “About,” Endless Orchard, Fallen Fruit, accessed June 22, 2022, https://end lessorchard.com/about/ 44 Jules Janick, “Fruits and Nuts of the Villa Farnesina,” Arnoldia (Jamaica Plain) 70.2 (2012): 20–7. See also the online exhibit “The Loggia of Cupid and Psyche. Raphael and His Workshop in Villa Farnesina,” accessed June 24, 2022, http://vcg. isti.cnr.it/farnesina/loggia/. I am grateful to Emily Gephart for exposing me to this source. 45 Lily Mihalik, “New Agtivist: Lisa Gross Is Covering the City with Trees,” Grist, September 6, 2011, https://grist.org/urban-agriculture/2011-09-06-the-new-agtivistlisa-gross-is-covering-boston-with-trees/. 46 “The Boston Tree Party Handbook,” unpublished document (2013), 2. Lisa Kyung Gross’s archive. 47 Ibidem. 48 Reina Gattuso, “400 Years After Its First Apple Farm, Boston Remains an Urban Orchard,” Atlas Obscura, July 8, 2020, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ apple-orchards-in-boston 49 On the history of Pruitt Igoe, see the documentary film: The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, directed by Chad Freidrichs (Films Media Group: 2011), 1:23. On Pruitt Igoe’s design and its impact on the project’s failure see Mark David Major, “‘Excavating’ PruittIgoe Using Space Syntax,” Arq 25.1 (2021): 55–68. 50 Juan William Chávez, “Beekeepers and the Art of Urban Renewal,” Zócalo, January 30, 2017, https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/01/30/beekeepers-art-urbanrebirth/ideas/nexus/ 51 Alex Teplitzky, “Juan William Chávez Looks to Bees to Bring Communities ­Together,” Creative Capital, July 14, 2016, https://creative-capital.org/2016/07/14/ juan-william-chavez-looks-bees-brings-communities-together/ 52 For a discussion of Queer Ecologies, see Chapter 1. 53 “Home,” Another Mother, accessed October 3, 2022, https://www.anothermother. co/database 54 “The Importance,” Another Mother, accessed October 9, 2022, https://www. anothermother.co/about-1 55 William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness,” in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1996), 7–28; Catriona Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010). For more detailed discussions of these sources, see Introduction and Chapter 1. 56 Eli Brown, Transplants. Sowing the Seed of Gender in the Garden, 2014, self-published artist zine. 57 Eli Brown, unpublished email message to author, June 24, 2022. See also “About,” Eli Brown, accessed June 25, 2022, https://www.theelimachine.net/cv. In the introduction to Transplants, Brown writes: “This resource has been long-brewing, but was urgently pushed into existence in response to the racism and transphobia sustained by and felt within the CASFS sustainable farming apprenticeship program community and administration at UC Santa Cruz. The program has since been held accountable by an amazing group of activist farmers of which I was privileged to be a part.” 58 Brown, Transplants, 1.

258  Notes for Section IV 59 Kevin Slivka, “Places of Transmotion: Indigenous Knowledge, Stories, and the Arts,” Art Education 69.5 (2016): 40–8. 60 Sonia Bhatia, “The Museum of Queer Ecology. Finding Fluidity in the Natural World,” Tufts Observer, October 28, 2019, https://tuftsobserver.org/the-museum-ofqueer-ecology-finding-fluidity-in-the-natural-world/ 61 Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). 62 “Psychotropic House: Zooetics Pavillion of Ballardian Technologies,” US Urbonas Studio, accessed August 3, 2022, https://www.nugu.lt/us/?p=399 63 Maciej Sydor, et al. “Mycelium-Based Composites in Art, Architecture, and Interior Design: A Review,” Polymers 14.1 (2022): 145. 64 Gediminas and Nomeda Urbonas, “On Mycelium,” unpublished email conversation with Silvia Bottinelli, July 22, 2022. 65 Ibidem. 66 “Symposium at MIT,” Zooetics, accessed October 3, 2022, https://www.zooetics.net 67 “Mushroom Power Plant,” US Urbonas Studio, accessed June 25, 2022, http:// www.nugu.lt/us/?p=1087 68 Lars Bang Larsen, “A Conversation with Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas,” in Mud Muses. A Rant about Technology, ed. Lars Bang Larsen (London: Koenig Books and Moderma Museet, 2019), 235. 69 Emanuela Ascari, “Chi Semina Utopia Raccoglie Realtà,” Terra Nuova (June 2022), 72–5. 70 Alessandra Pioselli and Luigi Coppola, “Leggere la Complessità. L’Arte nei Processi di Cambiamento Sociale. Intervista di Alessandra Pioselli a Luigi Coppola,” in Per Fare un Tavolo. Arte e Territorio, eds. Pasquale Campanella and Bianco-­ Valente (Milan: Postmedia Books, 2021). 71 “Casa delle Agricolture, Presentation,” unpublished document, Luigi Coppola Archives. 72 Luigi Coppola, unpublished zoom conversation with author, April 4, 2022. 73 Luigi Coppola, “Semi di un Mondo che Attende di Germinare,” Arts for the Working Class 16 (2021): 36, 37. 74 Ibidem. 75 This conversation between Haha members and Silvia Bottinelli took place over zoom on August 13, 2020. It was later transcribed by Elka Sorensen, edited by Bottinelli, and reviewed by Haha members. 76 Jacob, Brenson, and Olson, Culture in Action. 77 “Our Story,” Meals of Wheels, accessed October 15, 2021, https://www.mowp.org/ our-story 78 Kwon, One Place After Another, 100–37. See also: Suzanne Lacy, Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art (Seattle, WA: Bay Press, 1995). 79 “Open Hand Chicago,” LGBT Hall of Fame, accessed September 24, 2021, http:// chicagolgbthalloffame.org/open-hand-chicago/ 80 “Our Story,” Howard Community Center, accessed September 24, 2021, https:// howardarea.org/about/our-story/ 81 See Kinji Imanishi, A Japanese View of Nature: The World of Living Things, trans. Pamela J. Asquith (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2002). 82 “Home,” Seed Savers Exchange, accessed October 19, 2021, https://www. seedsavers.org/ 83 “Mission,” Seeds of Change, accessed October 19, 2021, https://seedsofchange. com/mission 84 See Steven Epstein, Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). 85 See Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (Wivenhoe, New York, Port Watson: Minor Compositions, 2013), 49, 87, 114.

Notes for Section IV  259 86 This conversation between Tattfoo Tan, Silvia Bottinelli, Elka Sorensen, and Muriel Horvath took place over zoom on July 2, 2020. It was later transcribed by Horvath, edited by Bottinelli, and reviewed by Tan. 87 For an overview of Nature Matching System, Sustainable Organic Stewardship, New Earth, and other projects by Tattfoo Tan, see: “Trilogy,” and “All Projects,” Tattfoo, accessed July 3, 2020, http://www.tattfoo.com/index.html 88 “Youth Summit,” Intrepid Museum, accessed July 3, 2020, https://www.intrepid museum.org/education/Youth-Summits 89 This conversation between Lisa Kyung Gross, Silvia Bottinelli, and Elka Sorensen took place over zoom on July 21, 2020. It was later transcribed by Sorensen, edited by Bottinelli, and reviewed by Gross. 90 In 2008–11, Lisa Kyung Gross founded The Urban Homesteaders League with the goal of providing a platform for skill sharing, which encouraged participants to make their own things and grow their own food. Through crowdfunding, Gross was able to open a stand at the Somerville, Massachusetts, Union Square farmer’s market, where she facilitated skill-sharing workshops for “sustainable urban living and creative domesticating;” and allowed the public to swap items that they had made or grown. A video that introduces the project is available at “The Urban Homesteaders’ League,” Kickstarter, last updated July 6, 2011, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1304704540/the-urban-homesteadersleague-market-stand See also Jennifer Kelley Walker, “The Urban Homesteaders’ League Market Stand,” first screened in October 2011, 6:40, https://vimeo. com/720569971 91 For a background history of urban gardening in Boston and its role in BIPOC and immigrant communities, see Sam Bass Warner Jr, To Dwell is to Garden (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1987). See also Susan Naimark, A Handbook of Community Gardening. Boston Urban Gardeners (Boston, MA: Boston Community Gardeners Inc., 1982), which summarizes a collection of experiences, knowhows, and personal stories of BUG, “a coalition of people involved in urban community gardening in more than a dozen neighborhoods in Boston.” (Naimark, A Handbook, 4). 92 A.A. Hixon, “Beginnings of Apple Growing,” Massachusetts Ploughman and New England Journal of Agriculture (1842-1906) 63.32 (1904): 1. 93 On December 6, 1773, about 100 individuals threw 340 chests of tea into the ocean, preventing the precious cargo from being unloaded in Boston; this action was a response to new taxes on tea imposed by the British parliament. Also, tea trades were a monopoly of the British East India Company, the revenues of which did not benefit people living in North America. Dissidents in Boston understood the British government’s actions as a form of tyranny and rebelled against it. The Boston Tea Party set the stage for the American Revolution. See Benjamin Carp, Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party & the Making of America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 1–6. 94 According to anthropologist William Westmeyer, who studied the structure and motivation behind the Tea Party as a political movement at its incipit in 2009, the TPM was composed of three broad sets of political actors: national-level political organizations; conservative broadcast media; and local groups of activists who demanded “strict adherence to a liberal interpretation of the US Constitution,” including low federal involvement in local government and low taxation. See William Westermeyer, ed. Back to America: Identity, Political Culture, and the Tea Party Movement (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019), 1–18; 2. 95 Boston Tree Party, “The Boston Tree Party Inauguration,” filmed April 10, 2011, 19.07, https://vimeo.com/40296648 96 Maureen Hannan, “Lisa Gross and the Boston Tree Party: Cross-Pollination, ­Urban Greening, and Public Art,” Parks & Recreation 46.11 (2011): 22.

260  Notes for Section IV 97 Lily Mihalik, “New Agtivist: Lisa Gross Is Covering the City with Trees,” Grist, September 6, 2011, https://grist.org/urban-agriculture/2011-09-06-the-newagtivist-lisa-gross-is-covering-boston-with-trees/ 98 This dialogue between Juan William Chávez and Silvia Bottinelli was conducted over a co-edited document after a phone conversation on March 4th, 2019. Chávez and Bottinelli had a previous in-person conversation at the 2019 College Art Association Annual Meeting. 99 “Bruce Nauman,” Art 21, accessed June 29, 2022, http://www.art21.org/artists/ bruce-nauman. 100 Chávez further reflects on collaboration in Juan William Chávez, “They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds,” Artspace San Antonio, accessed June 29, 2022, https:// artpace.org/exhibitions/they-didnt-know-we-were-seeds/ 101 See Roderick A. Ferguson, “Michael Brown, Ferguson, and the Ghosts of PruittIgoe,” Cultural Critique 90 (Spring 2015): 140–2. Also refer to literature cited in previous notes. 102 See, among others: Gloria Moure, Gordon Matta-Clark: Works and Collected Writings (Barcelona: Polı́grafa, 2006); and Bruce Jenkins, Gordon Matta-Clark: Conical Intersect (London: Afterall Books, 2011). 103 On Denes, see Chapter 2. On Mel Chin, see references in this chapter, and, among others: Miranda Isabel Lash, Mel Chin: Rematch (Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2014). 104 For an analysis of Beuys’s practice, see Chapter 1. 105 This conversation between Eli Brown and Silvia Bottinelli took place over a co-­ edited document and was finalized in May 2022. It was premised by many in-­ person meetings and dialogues across the years. 106 Paul B. Preciado, Testo Junkie. Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era (New York: Feminist Press, 2017). See also Paul B. Preciado, Kevin Gerry Dunn, and Jack Halberstam, Countersexual Manifesto (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019); Paul B. Preciado and Frank Wynne, Can the Monster Speak? A Report to an Academy of Psychoanalysts (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021). 107 Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (New York: Autonomedia, 2004). 108 “Home,” Another Mother, accessed March 21, 2023, https://www.anothermother. co/database

Index

Pages followed by “n” refer to notes. Abbots, Emma-Jayne 198, 255n3 Abboud, Jumana Emil 122 abolition 129n76, 149–50, 174–75, 177–78, 188n30, 190n64, 193n102 Aboriginal peoples see Indigenous Abstract art 81, 135, 162–63, 202, 231 Achebe, Chinua 169 Adams, Amber 65, 77n116 Africa 2, 97, 133, 165, 169, 184, 185; Northern Africa 142; West Africa 139, 142, 166 agribusiness 33, 78n119, 83–5, 142 agriculture: biodynamic 21; chinampa 93, 101–2, 128n70; evolutionary populations 58, 213, 218; hydroponic 85, 197, 200–1, 219, 220–224, 226; industrial see technology; modernist 85, 121, 126n22; monoculture 27, 47–8, 92–3, 96, 113–4, 123, 130n95, 134, 156, 187n5; mound farming 34, 35, 66–7, 67, 75n79, 77n117; organic 213, 250, 252; permaculture 9, 31–2, 57, 60–1, 120–1, 182, 203, 217, 237, 249; regenerative 9, 21; tillage 34, 66, 83 agroecology 147, 213, 249, 250 AIDS 29–30, 197, 200–1, 220, 222–25, 227, 255n13, 255n14, 255n15, 259n84 Alexander, Michelle 150, 190n65 Algeria 116 Aloi, Giovanni 17, 18, 71n11 Alves, Maria Thereza 4, 91–3, 97, 99–108, 133, 135, 197 Amer, Ghada 2–3, 11–2 American Revolution 210, 259n93 Americas 32, 34, 64, 67, 107–8, 133, 139, 143, 175, 216; Caribbean 134, 202; Latin America 143; Mesoamerica 93,

101; North America 5, 6, 86, 134–5, 142, 230; South America 113, 133 Amro, Dina 122 Anthropocene 4, 6, 71n4, 72n31, 125n9, 192n97 anthropocentrism 17, 28, 31, 57 Anton, Glenna 97, 128n64 Anyaeji, Ifeoma 169, 191n86 Argentina 29 art gallery 5, 21, 27, 46, 49, 50, 68–9, 75n88, 81, 86, 87, 96, 100, 108, 135, 136, 145, 157, 161, 163, 223, 228, 244 Armajani, Siah 184 Arte Povera 18, 72n14, 81, 125n1, 141, 222, 223 Artist as Family 28–32, 56–63 Asia 97, 142, 228, 230, 234, 239 Australia 27, 29, 31, 58–9, 133, 135–6; Herring Island 135; Melbourne 31, 135, 157–8, 162; Sydney 27, 160; Victoria 29, 58, 74n72; Wombat Forest 58 Austria 87–8 Bahamas 183 Baker, Aryn 141, 189n33 Barkan, Anika 117 Barnes-Dabban, Harry 149, 190n58 barter 3, 61; gift exchange 57–8, 63 Baruchello, Gianfranco 3, 22–6, 3, 73n40, 96 Bedouin populations 120 Bell, Lynne 144, 189n40 Bentivoglio, Mirella 82, 125n6 Bergson, Henri 16 Berkowitz, Lauren 135–6, 145, 157–64, 191n80 Berlo, Janet 133–4, 75n77, 78n119

262 Index Beuys, Joseph 3, 21–2, 161, 170, 192n89 Biennial exhibitions: Berlin 137, 188n12; Ghetto in Port-au-Prince, Haiti 152, 184–5; Havana 169–70; Qalandiya International 117, 130n97; Venice 17, 71n4, 82, 125n6 BiJaRi 136, 187n10 BioArt 85, 91 biodiversity 11n8, 22, 60, 90, 94, 110, 114, 117, 123, 134, 210–11 biopiracy 88–90 biopolitics 88–90 bioterrorism 87 Black Power 181; Black Arts Movement 181; Black Panther Party 150, 181, 184, 193n110; Angola Three 150; Free Breakfast Program 181; see also hunger strike Blackstone, William 210, 237 Bolivia 62 botany 97, 107, 117, 129n81, 157, 159, 180, 208, 213, 250–1; botanical histories 93, 139 Braidotti, Rosi 16, 18, 71n9 Brazil 92, 103–4, 129n76, 147, 169, 199, 215; Acre 105; Amazon see forest; Recife 199; São Paulo 106, 136, 187n10, 215–6 Britain 6, 97, 118, 133, 141, 147, 153–4, 238, 259n93; London 7, 27, 38, 47, 49, 55, 169 Browne, Jerone 150, 194n64 Buchloh, Benjamin 18, 72n16 Bullard, Robert 153, 181, 191n72, 193n118 Bush, George 45 Cameron, Dan 244 Campbell, Hugh 126n22 Campos-Pons, María Magdalena 142–7, 149, 150, 165–72, 191n81, 192n91 Canaan, Tawfic 123, 130n101 Canada 86, 113; Montreal 109–10, 113; St. Lawrence River 109, 113; Quebec 110; Verdun 109, 110, 112 Cantero, Justo 143, 189n35 Capitalism 4, 15, 21, 27, 63, 74n59, 84, 113, 116, 120, 171, 176, 253 Capitalocene 4 Carabello, Maria 198, 255n2 Caruth, Nicole 153, 190n69, 193n118 Carver, George Washington 180, 193n109 Castro, Fidel 170

Chávez, Juan William 3, 20, 197, 198, 211–12, 243–8, 260n98 Chigi, Agostino 209 Chile 134 Chin, Mel 204, 260n103 China 4, 142, 154; Beijing 154, 155; Shanghai 91; see also Hong Kong Chthulucene 4, 72n31, 129n89, 192n97 Civil War 152, 179, 180 climate change see environment; weather Cold War 146 Colombia 169, 126n21 color field painting 95 commons 60–1, 97, 117–18, 121–2, 205–7; ejido 102; mashaa 118–9, 122 communism 21; see also socialism compost 43, 55, 56, 59, 85, 117, 118, 203–4, 215, 238, 239 Cook-Lynn, Elizabeth 198 colonialism 9, 89, 92, 112–13, 135, 137–8, 142, 149, 152, 156, 176; colonization 46, 54, 105, 107, 129n81, 133, 136, 153, 157, 158, 163, 174, 191n70; decolonization 67, 120; diaspora 11, 135, 137, 139, 144, 147, 169, 189n34, 189n45, 191n82; Middle Passage 133, 139, 145, 146, 150, 151, 174; plantation 22, 85, 133–4, 138, 142–7, 149, 151–2, 156, 171, 173, 187n6, 192n95; slavery 9, 48, 104, 107, 129n76, 134, 143, 145, 149, 150–1, 171, 173–8, 179–81, 192n95 Coole, Diana 16, 71n8 commune 23, 27, 45, 51–2, 54 community garden see garden Conrad, Derek 165, 191n82 Coppola, Luigi 217–19 Coronavirus 98, 107, 140, 227; COVID-19 9, 10, 114 corporation 4, 62, 85, 88, 91, 127n32; multinational 4, 85–6; Merck 88; Monsanto 86, 88 Cortés, Hernán 93, 107–8 Counihan, Carole 198–9, 255n6 Covey, Herbert C. 152, 190n67, 193n113 Cox, Stan and Priti 47 Critical Art Ensemble 4, 84–8 crops 4, 11n8, 65, 68, 85, 86, 91, 134, 139, 174, 218, 223, 224; apple 55, 109, 210–11, 237–8, 241; banana 104, 170; barley 218; basil 166; beans 18, 32–5, 65–7, 101, 104, 147; beet 23–4; blackeyed peas 153; blueberry 251;

Index  263 brachiaria 216; broccoli 136; cabbage 136; cassava 148; cashew 148; chard 225; cherry 183; chili 101; cocoa 133; coffee 123, 133, 216; corn 18, 25, 32, 33–6, 64–70, 77n110, 77n113, 77n119, 78n119, 86–7, 91, 113, 144, 166, 197, 216; collard green 153, 184–5, 193n114, 201, 221, 225; cotton 149, 173, 174, 192n95; field peas 184; ginkgo biloba 230; gourd 19, 91; honey berry 183; indigo 174; kale 2, 4, 201, 221, 225; maize 101, 148; mango 171; melon 141–2; millet 137, 139; mulberry 230; mustard greens 201, 221; onion 136; pawpaw 230; peach 65; peanut 142; peppers 148; plantain 114, 148; plum 180, 251; potato 113, 133–4, 136; pumpkin 91, 136; raspberry 230; rice 2–4, 29–31, 83–4, 91, 104, 115, 137, 139, 147; sisal 216; soy 86; squash 18–9, 32, 34, 65–7, 101–2; spinach 44, 136, 225; strawberry 34, 205; sunflower 34; tea 133, 166, 238, 259n93; tobacco 34, 67, 133, 149, 173, 174; tomatoes 101, 113, 140, 205; wheat 11n8, 81, 83–4, 86, 107, 126n12, 136, 218; yam 136, 254; zucchini 45, 55, 146 cross-species 212; interspecies 21, 113, 216, 249–50; multispecies 57, 60, 206, 216 Crutzen, Paul 4 CSA 114, 230 Cuba 11, 142–7, 149, 165–71; Havana 143, 165, 169, 170; La Vega 142, 144; Manguito 145–6; Matanzas 142, 144–7, 165, 169–71 Cyborg 62, 88, 71n7 da Costa, Beatriz 86–7 Dadaism 73n40 Dagher, Saad 117 Dallin, Cyrus 35 da Udine, Giovanni 208–9 Davion, Victoria 90–1, 127n42 De Domizio Durini, Lucrezia 21, 72n28 de La Fuente, Alejandro 143, 189n36 Deleuze, Gilles 16 Deloria, Vine jr. 198 De Maria, Walter 161 Demos, T.J. 83, 125n11, 192n90 Denes, Agnes 3, 7, 81–4, 161, 246 Denmark 85, 117

de Souza, Edison 216 Diaw, Binta 3, 218, 133, 136–42, 145, 149–50, 188n12 documenta 17, 21, 88–9, 101, 102, 171, 192n89 do-it-yourself (DIY) 9, 30, 84–8 Doonan, Natalie 5, 91–2, 109–15, 129n85, 133 Doujak, Ines 88–90 Duchamp, Marcel 25, 73n40 Durini, Giuseppe 21 Eaton, Emily 86, 126n26 Eco Art 7–8, 95, 230 Ecocriticism 8–9, 12n28 Eke, Bright Ugochukwu 169, 191n86 Eisnach, Dwight 152, 190n67, 193n113 Ellingsen, Glenn Eugen 153, 155 Energy 19, 20, 21, 29, 30, 36, 38, 60–3, 70, 82, 163, 167, 214, 216 Engel, Antke 90, 127n39 environment: climate change 9, 36, 88, 94, 98, 110, 116, 142, 147, 202, 217, 231, 233; environmental racism 91, 181, 183; environmental remediation 81, 136 Environmental Art 6, 8, 21, 81, 254 Environmental Humanities 7, 8, 134 Erickson, Bruce 213, 257n55, 74n55, 76n102 Europe 6, 7, 17, 23, 24, 32, 57, 67, 87, 93, 96–7, 107–8, 119, 133–6, 138, 142–3, 157, 159, 198, 202, 208, 210, 218, 237, 254 Fabro, Luciano 141 Fallen Fruit 3, 207–9, 212 Fauna 107, 204 Federici, Silvia 253, 260n107, 77n106, 189n34 feminism 71n7, 75n88, 76n88, 82, 260n106 Feng Shui 37 feral 60, 246 fermentation 57, 60, 61, 241 fertilizer 4, 11n8, 63, 83, 96, 104; chemicals 11n8, 36, 93, 136, 243, 248; manure 59; nitrogen 96, 123; potash 59 Fillmore, Benny 94 Finland 49, 100 First Peoples see Indigenous Fisher, Jean 93, 128n53

264 Index flora 93, 100, 107, 129n81, 135, 136, 204 Floyd, George 52, 185, 193n117 Fluxus 21, 230 Food: apple cider 55; bread 160, 183, 25, 26, 45, 55, 61, 104, 160, 183; egg 90, 104; fish 62, 96, 106, 136, 180; flour 55, 64, 104; fruit 3, 29, 50,55, 60, 96, 105, 158, 170, 171, 181–3, 197, 207–11, 238–9, 251, 252; greens 29, 136, 157, 221, 224–6; herbs 29, 30, 44, 157–60, 175, 221; honey 63, 160, 234, 243, 246, 248; jam 207; mayonnaise 104; meat 59, 60, 63; milk 63; Pad Thai 29; pasta 104; pickles 207; salt 135, 159–61; sugar 104, 133–4, 142–44, 170, 174, 225; vegetable 19–20, 29–30, 60–1, 102, 104, 140, 146–7, 152–3, 157–8, 160, 183, 184, 199, 202–3, 208–9, 220–1, 225, 229, 241, 243; vinegar 55; see also crops; plants; non-human animals food-based art 6, 7, 8, 9, 129, 184 food forest see forest food security 5, 206, 147, 148, 150 food sovereignty 1, 5, 9, 12n14, 15, 32, 66, 68, 81, 85, 137, 139, 147, 155, 180, 198, 202, 204 foraging 1, 9, 67, 118, 120, 197, 200, 201, 204, 207–8, 230–1; gathering 1, 169, 211, 213, 216, 238 forest: Amazon 105, 129n76; food forest 58, 147, 197, 205–6; forestry 61; reforestation 21, 103, 105, 148, 165, 169–71; urban forest 112, 144–5 forestry see forest Foucault, Michel 23, 88, 127n33 Freire, Paulo 199, 203, 213–14, 255n7 Frost, Samantha 16, 71n8 Fukuoka, Masanobu 121, 130n100, 185 Fuller, Buckminster 49, 76n100 fungi 26, 98, 212–16, 250, 253–4; mushroom 32, 116, 214–15, 258n61; mycelium 98, 214–16, 250, 253 Futurefarmers (Amy Franceschini) 204, 127n49 gallery 5, 21, 27, 46, 50, 69, 81, 96, 100, 108, 135, 136, 145, 157, 161, 163, 223, 228, 244; American Indian Community House Gallery 68; Corcoran Gallery 86–7; Hayward Gallery 49; Lake Macquarie Gallery 163; National Gallery of Victoria 158, 173

garden: botanical gardens 34, 67, 78n120, 89; community garden 61, 149, 158, 237, 248, 249, 259n91; edible garden 1, 2, 8, 26, 46, 49, 151, 152, 154, 158, 203, 204, 206; guerrilla gardening 61, 152, 203; Victory gardens 88–90, 160 Garden of Eden 55 Gates, Theaster 244 gathering see foraging gender 3, 5, 7–9, 28, 53–4, 57, 90, 200, 208, 212–14, 250–3 Germany 11, 21, 86–9, 96, 133; Berlin 29, 99–100, 128n67, 137–9, 188n12; Bonn 96; Frankfurt 86–7; Kassel 21, 88, 89, 102, 170 Ghei, Gita 88 Giannachi, Gabriella 127n31, 182 globalization 88, 113–14, 127n32; global 1–4, 8, 9, 23, 28, 47, 48, 52, 54, 62, 67, 84, 85, 88, 123, 133–4, 159, 202, 208 Global Tools 22–3, 147 Great Migration 185, 211 Gorée island 139 Greece: Greek 158, 233; Greek goddess 57; Greek philosophy 57; Presocratics 16; Socrates 16 greenlining 153, 181, 184 Gregory, Dick 184, 193n114, 193n116 Gross, Lisa Kyung 3, 197–8, 207, 210–11, 214, 236–42, 259n89, 259n90 Haeg, Fritz 3, 26–8, 29, 31, 32, 45–55, 76n95, 84, 239 Haha 198, 200–1, 220–7 Haiti 152, 169, 184–5; Port-auPrince 184–5 Hammond, Harmony 68 Haraway, Donna 4, 16, 71n7, 71n9, 72n31, 112, 127n34, 129n89, 130n90, 192n97 Hardt, Michael 88, 127n32 Harrison, Newton and Helen Mayer 81, 94–7 Henderson, Mel 76n94 Hendrix, Jimi 181 Hesiod 57 HK FARM 3, 153–56 Hill, Richard William 92, 128n50 hippie 23, 27, 51, 71n1 Ho, Elaine 155, 191n77 Holmes, Brian 87, 126n24 Holmes, Ekua 34 Holmgren, David 31, 60; see also agriculture; permaculture

Index  265 Honk Kong 153–55 Horton, Jessica 33–4, 75n77, 75n78 Hoskins, Trevor 248 Hungary: Hungarian 81, 240 Hunger 2–5, 11n8, 82, 84, 126n14, 199; hunger strike 150, 190n61 hunting 61, 180, 231 Ibrahim, Abu 118–19 Imanishi, Kinji 225, 258n81 India 4, 47 Indigenous 5, 9, 17–8, 22, 31–6, 64, 66–70, 75n73, 77n113, 78n119, 78n123, 85, 88, 92–5, 97, 103–6, 108, 114, 120, 135–6, 157, 175, 177, 197–8, 214, 253; Aboriginal 32, 136, 157, 159; First Peoples 57, 59; Native 35, 39, 55, 67–8; Aquinnah Wampanoag 18, 34–5; Bad River Ojibwe 34; Cayuga 67; Djaara or Dja Dja Wurrung 29, 31, 32, 59, 62; Eastern Kulin Nation 136, 157; Haudenosaunee 33–4, 65–7, 69, 70, 77n113, 78n119; Iroquois 33; Lakota 198; Mohawk 17, 65; Plains Cree 33; Tuscarora 18, 32–4, 65–6, 69, 198; Seneca 32, 65; Siksika Nation 33; Six Nations of the Grand River 17; Washoe 94; Wurundjeri 135, 157 Ingram, Mrill 96, 128n61 Ireland 133 Israel 116 Italy 9, 11, 18–9, 21–2, 26, 49–51, 93, 133, 137–8, 142, 150, 188n14, 217–18; Abruzzo 21, 50; Bagno a Ripoli (Florence) 49; Garessio 19; Lampedusa 142; Naples 93, 107–8; Milan 25, 138; Pescara 21–2; Puglia 198, 217–18; Rome 23–4, 26, 49–50; Tuscany 49; Venice 17, 49, 82 interspecies see cross-species Ivory Coast 137; Abidjan 137 Jacob, Mary Jane 200–1, 220, 255n12, 256n17 James-Perry, Elizabeth 4, 18, 32–6, 135 Japan 121, 183, 185, 225 Jim Crow era 151 Jones, Caroline 83, 125n10 Jones, Robert 176 Jones, Seitu 3, 149, 151–2, 179–86, 193n108 Jutila, Heli 100

Kimmerer, Robin Wall 193n104, 177 King, Martin Luther 181 King, Robert 150 Ko, Anthony 153, 155 Korea: Korean 240 Kurtz, Hilda 202, 256n24 Lablanca, Nicola 137–8, 188n13, 188n14 labor 4, 9, 15, 16, 22, 27, 53–4, 58, 85, 98, 101, 106, 119, 121, 134, 139, 140–2, 146, 149–51, 162, 174–5, 192n95, 217 Land art 7, 8, 57, 136, 161, 230 Land Institute 147 landscape 1, 6–8, 28, 30–2, 38, 46–7, 81, 94, 103, 112, 118–20, 124, 135–6, 142, 146, 152, 154, 157, 159, 161–3, 167, 169, 174, 180–1, 202, 245, 247; landscaping 97, 252 Laplante, Eduardo 143 Laporte, Dominique 123, 130n102 Larsson, Maria 145, 189n41 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 16 Lertchaiprasert, Kamin 3, 28–9 Leung, Michael 153, 155 Lewitt, Sol 230 lichen 98 Lippard, Lucy 38, 75n80, 76n88 Lithuania 214–16; Vilnius 215 Long, Richard 161 Lula da Silva, Luiz Inácio 104, 129n78 Machatzi, Bernd 100 Makonnen, Betelhem 32, 75n74 Malaysia 197, 201, 229 Mangini, Elizabeth 18, 72n15 Manifest destiny 46, 124 Manzoni, Piero 203, 256n27 Martin, Henry 23–4, 72n35, 73n40 mass incarceration 149–51, 173–8 Matta Clark, Gordon 246 Materiality 25, 26, 34, 59, 60, 66, 82, 125n3, 137, 142, 149, 161, 162, 177 Mattingly, Mary 197, 198, 204–6, 212, 256n35 McCanne, Michael 205, 256n34 McHugh, Susan 17, 71n11 McMaster, Gerald 33, 66, 77n119 meadow 96, 106 Mediterranean 138, 158, 188n17 Mendieta, Ana 161 Mesch, Claudia 21, 72n24, 127n37 Messer, Ellen 134, 187n3

266 Index Mexica 102; Aztecs 102 Mexico 11n8, 92, 93, 97, 101, 102, 108, 113; Lake Chalco 101–2, 107; Lake Xochimilco 102; Mexico City 101, 108; Oaxaca 108, 113; Tlahuac 93; Xico 93, 101, 102, 107–8, 129n83 Michelson, Alan 17 Middle East 57, 202 Minimalism 81, 95, 163, 231 Modernist art 8, 22, 71n1, 163, 222–3; architecture 121, 148, 159, 211–12; design 215 Mol, Arthur 149, 190n58 Mollison, Bill 31, 121; see also agriculture; permaculture Mondrian, Piet 231 monoculture see agriculture Moore, Jason W. 4, 85, 126n20 more-than-human see non-human Morgan, Jerome 176 Morris, Kate 17, 72n12 Moses, Robert 33, 78n119 Moten, Fred 227, 259n85 Mt. Pleasant, Jane 66, 75n79, 77n117 Muhammad, Elijah 184 Murray, Soraya 165, 193n114, 193n115 museum 5, 27, 46, 50, 81, 84, 123, 163, 168, 201, 208, 233; Heide Museum of Modern Art 157–9; Indianapolis Museum of Modern Art 167; Kunst Museum Bonn 96; LACMA 95; Mass MoCA 27, 84; Metropolitan 105–6; MFA Boston 34–6, 81, 95; MoMA NYC 27; Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney 160; Pignatelli Cortes 93, 107; Queen’s Museum of Art 8; SF MoMA 27; Smart Museum 7; Smithsonian Museums 2, 68; Tate Modern 27; Valle de Xico 93, 102, 107; Whitney Museum 27; Victoria and Albert Museum 107 Myanmar (Burma) 229 Mycelium see fungi mythology 26, 117–19, 121–2, 124, 158, 159; see also religion N55 85 Naldoni, Agnese 23; see also Baruchello, Gianfranco Native see Indigenous, native, plant Nauman, Bruce 243 Negri, Antonio 88, 127n32 Netherlands 133, 136

New Materialism 16, 18, 71n8, 75n73 Nigeria 147–9, 165, 169, 191n86; Yoruba 142, 144–5, 148, 166, 169 Noble, Richard 16, 71n4 non-human 16–7, 18, 21, 25, 27, 36, 37, 43, 85, 87, 90, 91, 94, 96, 98, 106, 141, 154, 169, 198, 201, 204, 206, 212, 214, 215, 217, 219, 249–50, 254; morethan-human 216, 250; other-thanhuman 1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 15–8, 20, 25, 27, 34, 36, 60, 62, 198, 211 non-human animals: bird 4, 63, 96, 105; buffalo 29; cattle 96; chicken 17, 20, 40, 59, 116, 148, 203; cow 17, 23, 24, 40; duck 4, 20, 59; fox 96; frog 96; goat 20, 58, 59, 62, 63, 98, 116, 120; horse 35, 254; horseshoe crab 35; insect 63, 96, 98, 121, 125n1, 166, 245; mouse 96; rabbit 20, 61; reptile 121; sheep 17, 20; shrimp 17, 81, 95; slug 100; turkey 116; turtle 34, 67; waterfowl 34; see also pollinator Nomadism 71n9; nomadic 29, 31, 116–18, 177, 204 nutrition 33, 133, 170, 171, 176, 181, 197, 197–200, 201, 211, 224, 226, 229, 233, 241 Obrist, Hans Ulrich 82 Omotayo, Papa 148 Orchard 59, 61, 96, 121, 208, 210–11, 237–8 other-than-human see non-human Ottoman 97, 118–9, 122 Palestine 97, 116–21; Area C 117, 119; Ein Kinya 117, 122; Huleh Lake 97; Ramallah 97, 117–18 Pascali, Pino 125n1, 141 Patel, Raj 4, 11n8, 85, 126n20 patriarchy 57, 70 pedagogy 38, 116, 156, 197–219, 241; see also school Penone, Giuseppe 5, 18–9, 141 permaculture see agriculture Pentecost, Claire 86, 127n49 Pereira, Marie Hélène 139, 188n20 Pesarini, Angelica 140, 188n17, 188n28 Plantationocene 4, 72n31, 192n97 plant: alien 92, 113; edible 2, 30, 230, 251, 252, 253; herb see food; fruit see food; invasive 92–3, 111, 113; medicinal 88, 109, 114, 135, 142, 145,

Index  267 147, 158, 161, 166–9, 176, 253; native 92, 153, 157, 159, 174, 184, 245, 247; non-native 92, 99; vegetables see food; weed 58, 60, 62–3, 92, 99, 109, 111, 114, 174–5, 112; accoub 120; ahuehuete 101; almacigo 144–5, 166–7, 169; aloe vera 158; annona 171; avocado 213, 251, 252; baobab 166; black cohosh 253; blackwood 159; boxwood 252; burdock 109, 113; carpobotis 136; catnip 176; ceiba 144–5, 166, 169; chenopodium botrys 99; chirimoya 171; chocolate lilies 136; cloudberries 109; curry leaves 158; echinacea 220; eucalyptus 157; fennel 213; forget-me-not 146; garlic 158–9, 183; ginger 158; greenhoods 136; guanabana 171; hyacinth 145–6; iroko 145, 169; khubeze 120; lavender 158; love-in-the mist 159; marilope 169; milkweed 92, 109–13; oak 57, 59; okra 174; paperbark tea tree 157; phragmites australis (common reed) 109–13; plantain 114, 148; platano Johnson 170; radish 136; royal palm 145–6, 166; rose 176; samphire 136; sedges 35; thyme 205; Vietnamese mint 158; yam daisies 136; zaatar 120 Plato 57 Poland: Kraków 215 Pollan, Michael 16, 71n6 pollinator 17, 112, 206, 212, 243, 247, 251; bee 211–12, 230, 243–7; beekeeping 9, 61, 154, 198, 121, 211–12, 243–7; flies 166, 230 posthumanism 16, 18, 28, 30, 32, 71n9, 75n74, 212, 214, 250 postmodernity 169 potash see fertilizer Preciado, Paul B. 250, 260n106 Pruitt-Igoe 211–12, 244–6 Public art 7, 8, 136, 163, 200, 207, 220, 227; New Genre Public Art 200, 221 Qawasmi, Sahar 116 Queer 2–5, 54–5, 90; ecologies 28, 54, 198, 212–14, 249, 252 Quick-to-See Smith, Jaune 68 reforestation see forest Relational Aesthetics 29–30 religion: animism 57, 58, 63, 165–7, 169–70, 230; Buddhism 30, 181, 232;

Christianity 16, 253; creation stories 17, 34, 65; God 235; Goddess 57, 62, 158; Hinduism 232; Islam 3, 97, 181, 184; Judaism 119, 135, 136, 159–60, 240; Santería 144, 146, 166, 168–9; Shamanism 231, 232; Shangri-La 82; spirituality 9, 21, 29, 37, 146, 176, 197, 234–5; Taoism 231; see also mythology resurgence 67, 78n123 rewilding 116–7, 120, 174, 231 Rickard, Clinton 64, 77n110 Rickard, Jolene 4, 18, 32–4, 64–70, 135, 198 Robinson Scott, Harriet 184 Russia 84, 100, 119 Sandilands, Catriona 74n55, 76n102, 213, 257n55 school 41, 43, 52, 61, 103, 105, 138, 160,170, 175, 180, 183, 186, 197, 202, 217–19, 222–3, 233, 239, 247–8; after school 20, 38, 39, 212; unschooling 61 seed: ballast 92–3, 100, 107, 133; seed bomb 152–3, 185, 203; seed migration 92–3 Senegal 142, 169 Sessions, Emily 143 Seven Years War 64 Shan, Li 5, 91 Sherk, Bonnie Ora 3, 19–21, 33, 37–44, 75n84 Shiva, Vandana 114, 126n21, 130n95 Shonibare, Temitayo 148 Shonibare, Yinka 3, 147–9, 203 Simpson, Leanne 67, 78n123 Sinnokrot, Nida 3, 94, 97–8, 116–24, 135 Slivka, Kevin 214, 258n59 Smithson, Robert 161 socialism 23 Sonfist, Alan 136, 161 Spain 101, 133, 248; Bicorp 248; Madrid 108 Spinoza, Baruch 16 Steiner, Rudolf 21; see also agriculture; biodynamic Stephens, Rachel 143 Strange, Raimar 30, 74n68 sumell, jackie 3, 149–51, 173–8, 192n92 Suneson, Coit 218; see also agriculture; evolutionary populations Superstudio 51 survivance 67, 78n124

268 Index sustainability 30, 121, 148, 155, 160, 163, 180, 234–5, 243 Sweden: Stockholm 216 Switzerland 67 Switzer, Stacy 46 symbiosis 34, 98, 161, 206, 215–16 Syria 218 Tan, Tattfoo 3, 84, 197–8, 201, 204, 214, 228–35 Technology 20, 21, 30, 40, 41, 44, 62, 81, 84–5, 88, 95–8, 121, 254; biogas generator 120; biotechnology 88, 90, 130n95; GMO 4, 85–7, 90, 126n23, 127n40; Green Revolution 4, 11n8; herbicide 86–7, 118; hoe 22, 139; industrial agriculture 4, 5, 21, 34, 83–5, 92, 96, 208, 219; infrastructure 97–8, 117, 119, 123–4, 146, 154; pesticide 4, 83, 225, 245, 248; premodern 97; Roundup 86–7; Roundup Ready 86–7; social media 163, 202, 208, 233; solar power 62,120; traditional tools 4, 22; see also fertilizer Thailand 28–9, 31, 115 Tiravanija, Rirkrit 3, 28–31, 74n59 Torrez, Kiersten 243 Trade 3, 4, 55, 58, 81, 82, 84, 93, 113, 146, 156, 189n33, 218 Trubek, Amy 198, 255n2 Tsing, Anna 4, 214, 258n61 Tunisia 218 Twitty, Michael W. 139, 188n22 Uekötter, Frank 134 Ukeles, Mierle Laderman 53 Ukraine 84 United Farm Workers 15 United Nations 67 United States 2, 9, 19, 26, 45–6, 103, 105, 113, 136, 146, 147, 149, 153, 166, 171, 173–6, 199, 200, 208, 210, 233, 237–8, 249, 253; California 19, 27, 48, 52, 95, 96, 145, 209, 213; Albion 51; Bay area 43, 55; Islais Creek 20, 39; Lakewood 47; Los Angeles 45–7, 51–2, 95, 207, 209; Sagehen 94–5; San Francisco 19, 27, 40, 43; Santa Cruz 94–5, 213, 250, 252; Connecticut 177, 204; Florida: Miami 168; Illinois 222; Chicago 197, 200, 220–4; Dekalb 222; Rogers Park 200, 219, 223–4; Indiana: Carmel 229; Indianapolis 247; Iowa: Cedar Rapids

222; Kansas 47; Salina 26, 46, 47; Louisiana 149–51, 173–4, 177; New Orleans 174–6; Massachusetts 86, 97; Boston 34–6, 95, 197, 210–11, 236–42, 254; Cambridge 237, 239; North Adams 86, 97; Somerville 237, 259n90; Minnesota 52, 151, 182; Frogtown 153, 181–3, 185, 197; Minneapolis 152, 181, 186; Red Wing 179; Rochester 179; St. Paul 151, 179, 182; Twin Cities 152, 181; Mississippi River 179; Missouri: Kansas City 246; St. Louis 211, 244; Nebraska: Omaha 208; New Jersey 47; New York 27, 29, 38, 45, 68, 69, 81, 100, 107, 160–2,197, 201, 204, 205, 229, 240, 252; Brooklyn 162, 204–5, 229, 246; Chinatown 229; Harlem 204; Manhattan 81–3, 204, 229; Queens 229, 240; Staten Island 201–2; The Bronx 204; North Carolina 64; Charlotte 248; Oregon: Portland 208; Pennsylvania: Philadelphia 204, 229; Tennessee: Nashville 145 Ünlü, Mustafa 86 urban agriculture 3, 9, 27, 41, 153–6, 200–1, 204, 208, 211, 230, 237 Urbonas Studio 214–6 utopia 15–6, 28, 30, 71n1, 71n4, 91, 258n69 van Gogh, Vincent 133 van Koppen, Kris 149, 190n58 Venezuela 147, 169 Vidal, Antonio 170 Vietnam 147, 153, 158 Vizenor, Gerald 67, 78n124 Wallace, Herman 117, 150 Washington, Kirk Jr 184 Waste 59, 60, 81, 82, 104, 160, 162, 191n86, 216, 234 water 11n8, 20, 29, 30, 31, 38, 40, 41, 51, 59, 60, 62, 81, 95, 96–8, 101–2, 110, 114, 116, 122, 126n12, 136, 140, 146, 157, 160, 168, 186, 199, 200, 204–6, 220, 226; dike 102, 110; irrigation 29, 30, 93, 101, 116, 183, 252; lake 93, 97, 101–3, 107, 163; rainwater 207; river 20, 109, 113, 142, 146, 152, 165, 169, 179, 205; water filtration 123; waterfront 109, 110, 112; water rights 68; watershed 4, 20, 39; waterways 162

Index  269 weather 59, 68; rain 17, 24, 31, 58, 95, 102, 104, 105, 183, 204–7, 234; wind 18, 44, 69 Weintraub, Linda 12n29, 96 West Bank 117–8 Wic̣aṡtạ , Maḣpiya 184 Willander, Johan 145, 189n41 Williams, Chancellor 199, 255n9

Williams, Jason 175 Winston, Eliza 184 Woodfox, Albert 150, 192n99 Yohe, Jill 69 Zedong, Mao 23, 73n40 Zordan, Joseph 34, 75n82