[ISEA2015] Paper: Patricia Badani – Radical Reordering: bit-size chunks in the AL GRANO project

Abstract (Long paper)

Keywords: Maize, biodiversity, contamination, Mesomaerica, histories, languages, chunking, composition, decomposition, recodification.

The paper unpacks my working methodology in the creation of large, multi-year projects based on the segmentation and grouping of ideas, materials, and objects into chunks. As case study I use my current project Al GRANO: Framing Worlds, a composite gallery installation with individually installable pieces that can be connected in various combinations. Exhibited together, the chunks compose a large project that addresses conflicting historical, cultural, technological, and political positions related to maize, a contested grain considered both food and cultural symbol in Mexico, and source of macro profits for multinational agribusiness. I discuss the process of recodification embedded in the artwork itself and the influence of a Latin American literary ‘tour de force’ in my practice of dismantling languages and codes. I furthermore examine how the structure of material, changed through bioengineering, can be used to stress that the hybridization between natural and biotechnological genes is a source of division that spawns – in countries such as Mexico – the need to establish geopolitical immunological structures for the protection of ecological and cultural infection from external forces. I conclude by articulating that an interdisciplinary approach in the use of art and technology tools and systems can serve to critically inspect temporally and spatially continuous permeation of infamous incidents throughout social and political worlds.

  • Pat Badani, Editor in Chief, New Media Caucus, USA. Pat (MFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago) is an arts practitioner, critical thinker, educator, editor, and curator. Born in Argentina, she has lived and worked out of Mexico, France, Canada, and the USA. Badani is currently on the Board of Directors of ISEA International, and lead Guest Editor of “Artelogie, Vol #11”, EHESS (L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales), Paris, France. From 2010 to 2016 she was Editor-in-Chief of Media-N Journal and executive board officer of The New Media Caucus. She held full-time academic positions in the USA at Columbia College Chicago and at Illinois State University. Badani’s praxis is concept and context driven and involves artistic production, research and writing around such topics as inhabitation, transculturality, human migration, and sustainable living. Her work engages experimental new media in net-artworks, responsive screen-based installations involving motion capture and interaction design, as well as Augmented Reality experiences in public space using Android and iOS mobile devices.
    Badani exhibits her projects broadly in North and South America, Europe, and Asia, and participates in international symposia with her works and papers. She has received more than 20 awards and commissions including a 2016 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship at MacDowell Residency, and a DCASE Award for her project “Comestible” dealing with the relationship between food, science, technology, agriculture, and climate change; a 2012 “Robert Heinecken Trust Fund” for her ongoing media art-science project “AL GRANO” dealing with GM corn debates between the USA and Mexico; and a one-year media arts research grant in 2001 (Canada Council for the Arts) for her transnational interactive migration project “Where are you from?_Stories”.

Full text (PDF) p. 402-409