> matias viegener & david burns >
* CORN STUDY *
Our study addresses the problem of future human food production and the ongoing
consequences of the breeding, manipulation and mistreatment of plants and animal
species. As we on earth run out of space, shorter and more productive
strains of plants must be produced; in outer space there is even less space
than earth. Global corporations like Monsanto have invested billions of
dollars in genetic manipulation, opening a Pandora's box of potential consequences.
Our natural resources are being plundered at an accelerated rate, with diminishing
genetic diversity driving new extinctions and permanently altering our ecosystem.
Corn, soybeans and wheat have been the most genetically modified plants in human cultivation. The earliest form of modification was the slow selection of productive varieties, which gave rise to superior strains over millennia. Hybridization accelerated this process by giving breeders the power to actively rather than passively create productive hybrids. GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) technology is the latest development in a wave of genetic modification and offers a quantum leap in the variety of characteristics as well as highly accelerated speed. Our suspicion of this last development is especially focussed on the corporate control and profit motivation that drives it. The traditional kinds of genetic modification, seed selection and hybridization, are akin to the 'open source' software revolution, which recognizes a common interest and collective ownership of the material in question. Not only does Monsanto threaten to rapidly diminish the genetic variety of crops grown worldwide and privatize ownership of plant's genome, but their newest strains of chemically resistant crops link farmers to total dependence on Monsanto's Round-Up, a toxic weed killer.
Corn
holds a mythic place as a sacred new-world grain, source of sugar, fiber, ethanol,
animal fodder, popcorn, alcohol, plastic polymers, synthesized building materials
and now, through genetic manipulation, custom pharmaceuticals. Ancient cultures
used corn for fuel, shelter, fabric, symbolic figurines, and food that would
survive long winters. The corn plant is by legend the essential gift of
the Native Americans to the European colonizers, who would never have survived
the bitter New England winters without it. Thus, corn has a central place
at the Thanksgiving table. Everyone is fond of corn.
Our project is a response to the escalating manipulation of the corn plant,
and the desire to develop a new relationship with the species. While great
effort has been put into the human understanding of plants, their culture and
genetic structure, very little has been expended to educate the corn and teaching
it about the humans that control its fate. Our study creates a school
for corn with an experimental curriculum to educate the corn in human psychology
and sociology, the economics of commerce, important languages, current events
and the history of colonialism. When we considered teaching the corn the
history of its own species, we recognized this as folly, since the corn already
knows itself -- as well as possessing an innate knowledge of botany, ecology,
chemistry, and physics; in the future our curriculum may also address astrophysics
for the eventuality of our species' exodus from the planet we seem intent upon
ruining; corn in some future form will no doubt accompany us to the stars.
The best time for the schooling of corn is in the seed stage, and we encourage others to send us their seeds for education, from which they will safely be returned. Through the use of audio and autosuggestion we intend to deploy Aldous Huxley's theories of hypnopedia: the most powerful educational device being unconscious suggestion to the embryo to maximize its developmental potential. The school is set up on ten tabletops with different learning stations, with the corn seeds learning through audio speakers as well as by the use of electric fans behind a row of books, which carry knowledge through the air like pollen. In our program of accelerated learning, the individual kernel is not expected to learn everything -- the species as a whole will absorb the knowledge collectively. The curriculum includes an emphasis on recreation through music as well as techniques of self-help and autosuggestion to enjoin the corn to reach its maximum potential, with an emphasis on ethics and moral thought. Through a variety of knowledge bases we hope to heighten the corn's wisdom, especially since despite their enormous acquisition of knowledge, humans have acquired so little wisdom.
The Corn Study attempts to realign the view of corn as the victim of human manipulation to that of corn as an agent. While it may take many generations before the outcome of our experiment can be demonstrated, we are hoping for positive mutations and raised consciousness in the corn, to be passed along to other species. At this stage of global development, humans can no longer be entrusted with full stewardship of the environment. Perhaps if other species can intervene, they will do a better job.
n.b., While our study was founded on corn, upon consideration of the issues the school was meant to address, we felt that all grains, vegetables and fruits needed to be included in its future expansion. But even this would not create a truly diverse educational environment, so all seeds are welcome. An open admissions policy stresses the notion that 'the weed' is a human construct for an unwanted plant, most often one taken from its original environment into an alien one. There will be no grades at the corn school, nor will we charge any tuition.
> images >
1.
1960's Chinese poster of the Children of the Corn
2. Synthetic corn cob
3. giant Iowa corn
4. corn tower
> links >
journal
of aesthetics and protest
machine
gallery
biotechnology information
collective
gm watch,
the corn palace
corn pictures
roadside
america
corn
art
more
corn art
the
corn palace
corn mazes
the crop
circular
the
crop circle connector
> screening >
Children of the Corn (1984) A young couple run over a boy but discover he had already been murdered. They go to the nearest town (Gatlin) to seek help but the town seems deserted. They are soon trapped in Gatlin with little chance of getting out alive. All the adults are dead and the children participate in a cult that worships a malevolent force in the corn fields. Based on a Stephen King novella.
> bios >
david burns graduated from CalArts School of Fine Arts in Photo and is currently an MFA candidate in Fine Arts at UC Irvine (2004). David's current art practice is primarily event-based performance work that is documented, re-edited and re-presented in an installation setting. He has been teaching digital technology and new media artmaking at CalArts for ten years. His creative skills has been instrumental in the success of various artists projects including work shown by Bruce Yonemoto, Kaucyila Brooke, Pat Ward Williams, and Rachel Lachowitz. David's recent work has been shown at OTIS College of Art and Track 16 gallery at Bergamot Station.
matias viegener is a writer who teaches in Critical Studies and in the MFA Writing Program at CalArts. His critical work is in comparative literature, gender theory and cultural studies. His criticism appears in the collections Queer Looks: Lesbian & Gay Experimental Media (Routledge), and Camp Grounds: Gay & Lesbian Style (U Mass). He has fiction in the anthologies Men on Men 3, Sundays at Seven, Dear World, Abject and Discontents, edited by Dennis Cooper. He is the editor and co-translator of Georges Batailles' The Trial of Gilles de Rais. He has published in Bomb, Artforum, Art Issues, Artweek, Afterimage, Cargo, Critical Quarterly,High Performance, Framework, Oversight, American Book Review, Fiction International, Paragraph, Semiotext(e) and X-tra.