Artist Story: Claire Pentecost

I collaborated with Critical Art Ensemble and Beatriz daCosta to create a project of public science using Monsanto's patented RoundUp Ready (soy, canola and corn). These seeds are genetically engineered to tolerate the world's most widely used herbicide, Monsanto's RoundyUp (check the garden section of any hardware store). Corporations fiercely guard trade secrets, but when they file for a patent they must publish all relevant research documents.

A study of this patent material suggested that the genetic trait for herbicide tolerance might be temporarily impeded if the plant were sprayed first with a solution of P5P, a safe, commonly available B vitamin. This is what we set out to test in the gallery. After seeding about 600 pots under grow lights, we prepared a team of students to care for the plants, speak with exhibition visitors about the issue and at the end of 6 weeks spray one group with P5P and RoundUp and the other group with RoundUp only.

The experiment was inconclusive, as all of the plants seemed to wither equally! It could have been that, grown in the small pots, none of their root systems were hearty enough to withstand the herbicide. Maybe if tended a few days beyond the spraying, some plants might have revived. Or or or-any number of possibilities. Such is science.

Given that the bioengineering of agriculture was approved in a rush with no public discussion, no independent tests on human health effects, no plan for the predicted environmental pollution which is in fact taking place, the question is how to give nonspecialists a purchase on the issues, as well as a sense that they can understand such technologies enough to participate in how they will be developed and commercialized. These decisions affect all of us - the food we eat, the water we drink, and the condition of our world.

Today, the biological sciences are overwhelmingly directed by private interests. A huge percentage of the most widely cultivated food plants in the U.S. are protected as the intellectual property of a single corporation who has prosecuted over 500 farmers for allegedly saving seed for the next year, or selling or sharing it (all forbidden in the buyer's contract). To perform a public experiment on this "property" is a political act bordering on civil disobedience. Monsanto's lawyers did send us cease and desist letters but when we ignored them, they left us alone, highlighting the difference between artists and farmers particularly with respect to access to publicity. But it's not enough to do this in the relatively safe space of galleries and museums.

Any work that seeks to overcome the quite successful marginalization of the "fine arts," must occupy multiple distribution streams- publications, websites and discussion threads, public lectures and discussions. Especially if we want to do more than comment on a corrupt system. The more compelling challenge seems to propose different ways of being creative, producing joy and resistance to a system that clearly serves a very few.


Claire Pentecost is an artist and writer, engaging a variety of media to interrogate the imaginative and institutional structures that organize divisions of knowledge. She has exhibited and lectured in the U.S., South America and Europe, and recently enjoyed a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship at Bellagio, Italy. Pentecost is Associate Professor and Chair of the Photography Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.