P008 → The Cornstitution (2021)
With Jan Christian Schulz and Anda Lupascu
Monocultures are covering much of the world‘s arable land and their conventional cultivation poses a threat to biodiversity and ultimately to food security. Corn is one of the most widely grown crops in the global system, dominated by a variety called Yellow Dent #2. Highly bred and modified, the crop is predominantly grown for non-food products and their extraction driven economic system not only consumes an enormous amount of resources, but is also inefficient at feeding people.
Based on traditional knowledge, The Cornstitution recognizes corn as personhood and gives them its own rights under the law. It reimagines the mutual relationship between corn and human beings and, with its 10 amendments, establishes a way of living with the plant that no longer relies on exploitation and vulnerable monocultures, but celebrates the variations of corn. The Cornstitution opens up a new future – a respectful and harmonious relationship with corn that embraces and nurtures its biodiverse environments and their inhabitants.
The project was shown within the ‘Zero Hunger, Zero Power’ exhibition commissioned
by Netherlands Food Partnership and the UN World Food Programme at Dutch Design Week 2021.
A visitor signing the Cornstitution during Dutch Design Week.