A Study in Dissonance: Performing Alternative Food Systems.

In December 2012, the Montreal performance art platform the SensoriuM presented Botanical Animal, featuring multimedia artist Amanda Marya White, whose work explores the relationships between people, cities and ecology. In Botanical Animal, White introduced a closed-loop system for growing tomatoes. The stage for this performance was a university staff kitchen, in which White displayed photographs, botanical drawings, and plants. The performance was participatory, as the artist instructed and invited those in attendance to make canned tomatoes and salsa together. In this paper, I analyze Botanical Animal to demonstrate the ability of performance art to extend affective capacities by reconsidering relationships between human, animal, organic and inorganic forms. Botanical Animal incited gut reactions in participants, thus increasing affective capacities and encouraging its publics to reimagine their places within globalized cycles of food distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]