For Your Cow or Your Car" is an exploration of the corn culture of Nebraska. Made during my residency at the Art Farm in Marquette, Nebraska, this piece reflects my complete immersion in Monsanto ethanol corn, which surrounded the farm. Food production is something completely disconnected from my life in Washington, DC. Although I buy local produce at hip, trendy food co-ops, and shop at the farmers market I do not know how to sow seeds, save seeds for the next season, prepare a plot of land or find wild plants to eat. I know virtually nothing about how food is produced. I am told that organic food is good, GMOs are bad, and so forth but I am not sure what these words really mean to the people that grow my food. In Nebraska, I was struck by how this food production process is so integrated into daily life. You cannot walk or drive anywhere without seeing corn. However, this corn is not meant for human consumption; it is used to make ethanol to power your car or used as feed for cows to make your burgers. Of course, it is all GMO corn as well — a new product meant for fast and easy growth and harvest; a true science experiment. The GMO lifestyle is evident in the culture in which a beer is named after the infamous crop dusters who spray the fields with Roundup, and where the noise of their planes mix with the noise of crickets. Here, you are surrounded by oceans upon oceans of corn. Succulent Nebraska. However, if you take the time to walk into the corn fields you will be struck by the stark silence. Here is the only place where you are safe from mosquitoes, the only place in which the locusts do not sing, the only place in which goldenrod pollen doesn't fill the air in late August. Ruled by Roundup, the fields lay untouched by man and insect alike.
My installation consists of four 8 ft by 2 ft corn husk weavings and 141 seed saving coil pots. Installed in an abandoned farm on the Art Farm campus, the setting represents the vast abandonment of farming practices and lifestyle. Each pot contains one corn seed from the surrounding Monsanto corn. Traditional Native American seed saving pots are made out of coils and then filled with seeds and stored in preparation for the next growing season. Variations of this tradition were practiced until about ten years ago when GMOs came on the market and the seed companies prohibited saving their patented product from one season to the other: seeds. This no doubt changed the way we grow, eat, and consume and thus changed our culture. "For Your Cow or Your Car" explores this shift.
The idea behind this is to examine the processes of agriculture and thus lifestyle by mixing this new type of corn and growing process with old techniques such as weaving and seed saving.
My installation consists of four 8 ft by 2 ft corn husk weavings and 141 seed saving coil pots. Installed in an abandoned farm on the Art Farm campus, the setting represents the vast abandonment of farming practices and lifestyle. Each pot contains one corn seed from the surrounding Monsanto corn. Traditional Native American seed saving pots are made out of coils and then filled with seeds and stored in preparation for the next growing season. Variations of this tradition were practiced until about ten years ago when GMOs came on the market and the seed companies prohibited saving their patented product from one season to the other: seeds. This no doubt changed the way we grow, eat, and consume and thus changed our culture. "For Your Cow or Your Car" explores this shift.
The idea behind this is to examine the processes of agriculture and thus lifestyle by mixing this new type of corn and growing process with old techniques such as weaving and seed saving.