“On AL GRANO’s “Crop-Cropping” project and agro-cultural erasures” presented by Badani
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Eco-Activism
Presentation Title:
- On AL GRANO’s “Crop-Cropping” project and agro-cultural erasures
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
In an evaluation of the idealized vision of scientific and technological progress, the multi-year AL GRANO project questions the rush by agribusiness to produce genetically modified corn to supply the needs of an expanding industry of processed foods without consideration of the potential chain of unbalances: maize’s biodiversity and its extinction, impoverished lands, water depletion, the demise of small-scale farmers and agro-ecological methods in Mexico, obesity in the USA yet starvation in developing countries.
The artist has lived in Mexico and in the U.S.A. Corn Belt, and through this experience she has come to see the defense of maize as a fundamental reaction to capitalist interests that instigate the protection of Mexican cultural integrity, specifically by indigenous populations who defend native seeds, their lands and their livelihoods.
Nested within the AL GRANO enterprise, the “Crop-Cropping” work transforms into art the current political, social and economic murkiness related to maize seed debates by drawing from Spanish American literature, and using an iconographic language that conjoins new media codes and ancient Maya codes. The title of the piece plays with the words –crop and cropping– used in agriculture as well as in digital art practices.
