Becoming with Wheat and Other More-Than-Human Others

Becoming with Wheat (and Other More-Than-Human Others) 2018–2022 responds to the idea of a more-than-human commons where a collective of human and more-than-human others are all in relation, interdependent and entangled. The pages combine duotone photographic images and overlaying texts that survey intersecting aspects of the project with contextual and theoretical ideas such as Karen Barad’s agential realism, the world’s ongoing performances, Alison Knowles’ Fluxus performances, as well as Donna Haraway’s companion species, which are central to the project. The pages employ the motif of the lozenge, an ancient symbol of fertility that recurs throughout the project. In our broken industrial agricultural system human exceptionalism severs us from the food on our plates and the human and non-human actors and landscapes that transform plants into food. As a result, we need an urgent shift in our perception of our plant companions as more than merely a resource to be controlled and consumed. Becoming with Wheat and Other More-Than-Human offers practices and scores to re-evaluate our relationship with a ubiquitous staple food through ritual, performance, community, folkloric and mythic practices as part of the cultivation process to reshape and nurture a deeper and more holistic engagement with plants, landscape, and food production.