In/Visibilities

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Agri/cultural environments entangle humans and ‘other’ life-forms. Over millennia agricultural seed has come into being as a collaborative process involving humans and a plethora of organisms, from mammals to microbes, all linked in a shifting and evolving ecological constellation.

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Over history, relationships with land, landscapes, and ecologies have under-gone immense change. Industrial agriculture with its colonial roots and dualist approach has deeply affected people and ecological environments, as well as the relationships between.

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Zooming in on insects this piece tells a story of agricultural change, visibilities, invisibilities, dwindling diversity, and ghosts. It suggests the potential in imagining a future of food based on multiple pathways, multispecies relationships, and multiple ways of knowing.

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In/visibilities brings together a hand-drawn stop-frame animation by Maya Marshak and soundscapes recorded and mixed by Cara Stacey. The sounds were recorded in the maize fields of Make Ngwenya and Hlengiwe Zungu in Northern KwaZulu Natal, who with other farmers are working towards restor- ing traditional seed varieties. The insects in the piece are specific to this area. Many are drawn from from neglected agricultural entomology collections encountered during Maya's Phd research.

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The sounds and the images speak to the loss of diversity brought about by industrial farming as well as the loss of knowledge associated with these un- ravelling agricultural ecologies.

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This work grew out of Maya's PhD project which forms part of a wider research project called the Agri/cultures Project, a four-year research project funded by the Norwegian Research Council’s FRIPRO programme. The project is focused on developing novel concepts, methods and empirical knowledge for understanding and assessing the complex relational networks embodied in and performed by agricultural biotechnologies.  The development of this work was also supported by the Seed and Knowledge Initiative a project aimed at supporting smallscale farmers in retaining traditional seed and knowledge systems in Southern Africa and working towards food sovereignty. 

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In/Visibilities was screened as part of the Institute for Creative Arts Live Arts Festival in Cape Town in 2018