Chapter 11: Becoming with Wheat, and Other, More-Than-Human, Others
Couch, Amanda (2026) Chapter 11: Becoming with Wheat, and Other, More-Than-Human, Others. In: Performing the Edible: Sustenance, Sensation, and Sustainability. Routledge, Milton Park, Oxfordshire, pp. 149-169. ISBN 9781032885933
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A series of artist pages combine photographic images and text to survey intersecting aspects of the project Becoming with Wheat (and Other More-Than-Human Others) 2018-2023. The project responds to the idea of a more-than-human commons where a collective of human and more-than-human others are all in relation, interdependent and entangled. Images document the branches of the project and overlaying texts reveal reflections on literature that intersect with performance practices, such Karen Barad’s ‘Agential Realism’, the world’s ongoing performances; Alison Knowles’ Fluxus performance and the everyday and as participation; as well as Donna Haraway’s ideas of companion species which are central to the project: The root of the word ‘companion’ being derived from the Latin cum panis meaning, ‘with bread’ recalling our relationship to wheat through food, our eating together and being eaten.
The pages employ the motif of the lozenge, an ancient symbol of fertility and the agrarian that recurs throughout the project. In our broken industrial agricultural system human exceptionalism severs us from the food on our plates and the human and non-human actors, landscapes and climates that transform plants into food. As a result, we need an urgent shift in our perception of our plant companions and the land as more than merely resources to be controlled and consumed. Becoming with Wheat… offers practices to re-evaluate our relationship with wheat, a ubiquitous food staple through ritual, performance, folkloric and mythic practices as well as observation, collaboration, growing, milling, cooking, eating, making, and writing to reshape a deeper and more holistic engagement with farming and food production collapsing the boundaries between plants, landscape, people and food.
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