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The Monsanto Hearings

Detail of Monsanto Hearings poster

The Compass Collaborators have initiated a series of public hearings into the longstanding practices of the Monsanto Corporation. In each hearing, people are invited to testify, witness and listen; to offer sounds, images, material artifacts and arguments for inclusion. Our focus is on Monsanto’s role in transforming the ecologies, economies, and social relations of this region. The proceedings unfold in several stages, and as the deliberation process builds, it adds to the accumulating body of evidence about the impacts on human and non-human bodies, food, biological processes, weeds, neighborhoods, farmers, alternative forms of knowledge, and finally the environment from which all these entities emerge.Throughout this project, we invoke the form of a hearing but do so critically. Ideally, the trial is a method of producing a comprehensive public understanding of harms and determining responsibility for those harms. However, existing legal frameworks are inadequate for addressing the scope of Monsanto’s activities: the corporation is granted the rights of a legitimate “person,” while human noncitizens and nonhuman agents in our biosphere are not recognized. Our proposition is to consider all living things as potential witnesses and plaintiffs. We submit to public review impacts that are experienced materially and culturally, in the past, the present and extending into our shared future.

Drawing of a giant ear of corn testifying to a crowd

Hearings

Carbondale, IL (2012)

Iowa City, IA (2012)

St. Louis, MO (2013)

Greene County, OH (2014).


Project Archive

http://monsantohearings.net

Video Excerpts

Video below is excerpted from an hourlong documentation video produced in 2012 with footage coming out of the first two hearings.

Opening five minutes
Scott Koepke and Squirrel

Exhibitions/Screenings

 Cedar Rapids, IA – Legion Arts, “Maize y Más,” October 8, 2015-January 3, 2016

Urbana, IL – The Interdependent Film Festival,  – July 31, 2014.

Chicago, IL – School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Sullivan Galleries, 2013

St. Louis, MO – CAMP, 2013

Carbondale, IL – Carbondale Public Library, 2013

Detroit, MI – Museum of Contemporary Art, 2012

Iowa City, IA – Iowa City Public Library, 2012

Kassel, Germany – Documenta 13, 2012

Credit

Compass, “The Monsanto Hearings”, performance events and documentation, 2012-2014

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Around Crab Orchard

Vintage Photograph of Bunkers
Video still, Around Crab Orchard

Crab Orchard calls itself “a unique place to experience nature.” As the only wildlife refuge in the United States whose mission includes industry and agriculture alongside conservation and recreation, Crab Orchard claims a harmonious balance between uses and users that strike many as incompatible. This story of harmony is maintained through the production and enforcement of physical, visual, and political boundaries — boundaries that, once crossed, quickly dissolve. This essayistic documentary maps the filmmaker’s discovery of Crab Orchard’s complex and hybrid nature. When a request by a security guard to put away the camera leads to a surprise visit by the FBI, the filmmaker begins a journey to uncover the refuge’s history and understand its contradictory present. Crab Orchard’s status as a contaminated refuge emerges less as an exception and more an example of the power and perils of “nature” as we understand it today. From its use by historic Native Americans as a source of food, its continued role in an economically vulnerable region, and the use of its polluted lake as a water source, the film explores themes of invisibility, loss, and shared but profoundly unequal risk. Assembled from documents, found footage, and conversations with activists, writers, and local residents, the film meditates on the persistence of history, the creation of knowledge, the limits of representation, and the commonplace of environmental hazard. “Around Crab Orchard” ultimately argues for forms of storytelling, image-making, and activism that cross existing conceptual boundaries to respond to the full complexity of the social and ecological landscape.

Trailer

Twenty-Minute Excerpt

Select Screenings

Emerald Earth Film Festival, Eugene, 2020

UnionDocs, New York, 2014

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 2014

Banff Centre, Alberta, 2014

Appalachian State University, 2014

Ohio University, 2014

Headroom Microcinema/University of Iowa, 2014

Furthermore Gallery, Washington, D.C., 2013

Cabaret Voltaire/ETH Zurich, Zurich, 2013

School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2013

Interrobang Film Festival, 2013

Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles, 2013

Southside Projections, Chicago, 2013

Athens International Film and Video Festival, 2013

University at Buffalo, 2013

35th Big Muddy Film Festival, 2013

Awards

Best Iowa-Produced Film, Interrobang Film Festival

John Michaels Award for social justice filmmaking, Big Muddy Film Festival

Juror’s Special Mention, Big Muddy Film Festival

Credit

Sarah Kanouse, “Around Crab Orchard”, HD video, 69 min, 2013. Contact me for private link to full-length video.

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America’s Heart of Hearts Tour

Campy image of corn ears growing above the St. Louis Arch
Promotion image for alternative tour, 2011
 

While the global reach of the United States military is well-known, the ways it has shaped the interior geography of the country is more obscure—even to many Americans. Get a fresh perspective on the Heartland by touring the domestic sites that helped to produce America’s military might, and you may catch a glimpse of the nation’s future.

The centerpiece of your four day/three night stay in the Heartland states of Missouri and Illinois will be the Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge, a fascinating and lovely natural area created on a former US Army ammunition plant. A private defense contractor still uses the refuge to manufacture munitions, and the thorough clean-up of contamination stemming from these and other industrial operations is ongoing. Crab Orchard boasts recreation facilities for boating, hunting, fishing, hiking and wildlife observation. Crab Orchard will be your base for day trips into other military sites in scenic southern Illinois, including civil war sites, the ruins of a World War II prisoner of war facility, and a military boot camp for convicts. You’ll fly into and out of St. Louis, affording side trips to the Museum of Westward Expansion, Scott Air Force Base and the corporate headquarters of Monsanto, the agribusiness giant whose herbicide Agent Orange was used as a weapon in the Vietnam War.

Exhibitions

Beijing, China – Homeshop, 2011

Credit

Sarah Kanouse, “America’s Heart of Hearts Tour,” in Dan S. Wang and Stephanie Rothenberg’s “The Journey West,” site-specific intervention in Beijing, China, 2011