SEED CABINET
maple card catalog, video, custon electronics, glass slides, seeds
collaboration with Working Food, local non-for-profit that sponsors the Southern Heritage Seed Collective
(2017-present)
Card catalogs, glass slides, and specimens are obsolete yet familiar cultural objects which, when activated by and hybridized with performance, video and electronics bring together multiple ways of knowing, disrupting and playing with the audience’s expectations of library, archive, and machine. The drawers of a repurposed “old school” maple card catalog are filled with seed specimens of regional heirloom fruits and vegetables and images printed on glass slides. Opening the drawers triggers the playing of videos and audio narratives of our community’s lived experience of these foods: their cultivation, preparation, and history onto a video monitor embedded into the top of the card catalog. Seed Cabinet includes facts but seeks to “resemble” the discourse of science” as a way to both share information about and problematize seeds, inviting the audience to dig deeper reflecting upon their role in global and local food systems.
