This book argues that the performance-based work in the featured case studies contributes to the construction of food democracy where the public takes back decision-making in shaping the food system. It explores how contemporary artists translate scientific research about local and global agricultural issues into life stories that inform and engage their audiences and, in so doing, transform passive food consumers into proactive food citizens. The pairing of performing and farmscapes (complex webs of farmlands and storylines) enables artists to use embodied practices to encourage audiences to imagine a just and sustainable agri-food system and to collaborate on making it a reality. The book arranges the case studies on a trajectory that moves from projects that foreground knowledge acquisition to ones that emphasize social engagement by creating conversations and coalitions between farming and nonfarming communities to a final one that pairs protest art and political activism to achieve legally-binding changes in the agricultural landscape.
Author(s): Susan C. Haedicke
Series: Performing Landscapes
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 326
City: Cham
Series Editors’ Preface
Acknowledgements
Praise for Performing Farmscapes
Contents
About the Author
List of Figures
1 Introduction: Farmscapes and Subjectivities
A Duet of Farmscapes and Performance
Food Democracy/Food Citizenship
Home-Grown: Local Farmscapes
Working Farmscapes
Nature, Culture and the ‘Call to Care’: Naturalcultural Farmscapes
My Farmscapes? Beginnings of an Answer
The Structure of Performing Farmscapes
Works Cited
2 Performing Storied Farmscapes
Theatricalised Farmscapes: Theatre Passe Muraille’s The Farm Show and James Rebanks and Chris Monks’, The Shepherd’s Life
Dialogues Within Farming Communities: Mary Swander’s Farmscape and Map of My Kingdom
Storied Walks Around the Farm: Performative Walks with Ffion Jones’ The Only Places We Ever Knew, Charlotte Hollins on Fordhall Organic Farm and Sylvia Grace Borda’s Farm Tableaux Finland
A Performance-as-Research Project on Gendered Farmscapes: Who’s Driving the Tractor? Conversations with Women in UK Agriculture
Works Cited
3 Conversations with Farmscapes: Traces and Echoes
Farmscape Conversations
Ffion Jones’ Ode to Perdurance/Awdl Amser
Friches Théâtre Urbain’s Hope is a Wooded Time
Louise Ann Wilson’s The Gathering/Yr Helfa
Mike Pearson’s Carrlands
Works Cited
4 Cultivating Dialogues Beyond the Farm
Interventions into Farmscapes of Global Food Chains in Agnes Denes’ Wheatfield—A Confrontation, Nessie Reid’s The Milking Parlour and Shelley Sacks’ Exchange Values
Cultivating Food Citizenship around Wheat: Anne-Marie Culhane and Ruth Levene’s A Field of Wheat: Arts and Agricultural Project
Works Cited
5 Exposing Hidden Migrant Farmscapes
From Field to Fork: Setting the Context
The Legacy of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath
Jacques Rancière and the Aesthetics-Politics of Collage
Harvest of Shame: ‘This is an American Story—A 1960s Grapes of Wrath’
Into the Fields: The United Farm Workers Union and El Teatro Campesino
Onto the Theatrical Stage: Octavio Solis’ Alicia’s Miracle and Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints
Works Cited
6 Transforming Migrant Farmscapes: Performative Protest Art of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers
‘I Too Am Human!’
Transforming Migrant Farmscapes: CIW’s Campaigns
Migrant Farmscapes and Popular Education
Protest Art Takes on Migrant Farmscapes
Hunger and Harvest: CIW’s Public Fasts
Performing the Migrant Farmscape Online
Works Cited
7 Conclusion: Sowing Seeds and Cultivating Conversations for Future Harvests
Works Cited
Bibliography
Index
