CAPITALISM IN THE PUBLIC REALM – The Sugarcane Labyrinth – A monumental agricultural Land-Art work and short film created in collaboration with Sugarcane farmer Ronnie Waguespack Jr and Agricultural Economist Alexandre Vialou
I leave to several futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths.
From The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges, 1941
The Sugarcane Labyrinth is a 1,4-acre (5880 sq meter) agricultural land art work located on a farm in Theriot, Louisiana. The Sugarcane Labyrinth was created March 2009 until it was harvested for Ethanol production December 2009. Amongst the research that went into the project and the ideas surrounding the creation of the agricultural land art work, a chief focus was to demonstrate agricultural sustainability in order to create awareness about farming culture as a vehicle to local rural and urban social sustainability, as well as the idea of introducing agriculture back into the urban environmental infrastructure, to build up an agricultural awareness as a way of a natural resource in times of economic failure, and re building local urban environmental support after natural environmental destruction such as hurricanes and earthquakes. The Labyrinth itself is a literary and mythical symbol of “the Path”, as well as symbolizing constructions of interweaving realities. It is traced back to Greek mythology and religion, as “The Path to enlightenment”, the path of the task, or the path through life. It is also a game and a landscaped architectural construction for people to interact with, wander through – the labyrinth creates aesthetic value. The experience of finding one’s way within the Sugarcane Labyrinth, with 12-14 foot tall Sugarcane and the walls being 6 foot thick, will be experienced as bewildering and overpowering, recreating the notion of loss of direction and confusion, it is a cognitive and aesthetic monumental art work. The sensorial experiences, the effects on the human body and brain, are exalted by an unusually high intake of oxygen from the Sugarcane.
Essay published in DRAIN – a refereed online journal published biannually:I Am Not Here: Identifying Contemplation in the Cool Spaces of Contemporary Art, by Dr Celina Jeffery
Without leaving his door – He knows all the ways of heaven – For the further one travels – The less one knows – Therefore the Sage arrives without going, - Sees all without looking, – Does nothing, yet achieves everything.
Daodejing, 47 (Waley 1934: 200)
Bridging the deluge of Polidori’s images and the uncanny tranquility of Cape’s waterlines is Anne Katrine Senstad’s site-specific earth project, The Sugarcane Labyrinth, 2009. Senstad first responded to ideas of recovery in post-Katrina New Orleans with the The Light House, created for KK Projects (December 2007 to March 2008). In an abandoned and derelict home in the St. Roch neighbourhood, Senstad punctuated the debris with industrial office lights. They create unusual formal interactions amidst the chaos, glowing to reveal the nuances of the personal remains: toys and sections of furniture that once ‘lived’ in the space. As the daylight changes into night, the light becomes the only living presence in the house, acting as a shrine in which we experience a “sublime sacred space.”[16] In The Sugarcane Labyrinth Senstad continues this theme of reverence by developing a one-acre sugarcane labyrinth on a farm in Theriot, Louisiana. The Labyrinth engages with local farming strategies in an act of sustainability, purifying the excessive salt in the soil which has been caused by erosion. Yet it also signifies a spiritual ‘path’ in which one is invited to become lost in the landscape. As in wu-wei, we yield to fluid channels to find consolation in our constant sense of placelessness, a connection that Max Carfard established in the previous essay Deep Play: All of our experience is this turning back and forth of the inner and outer, exploring regions that are both inner and outer, and neither inner nor outer, and everywhere in between.
LABYRINTH INTERIOR VIEWS AND LAND ART PRODUCTION
THE SUGARCANE LABYRINTH Short film and in the media
The Sugarcane Labyrinth film trailer:
The Sugarcane Labyrinth is a 1,4-acre (approx 5800 sq meter) living sculpture/agricultural Land Art Work placed on a farm in Theriot, Louisiana, that Anne Katrine Senstad created over 12 months in 2009-10. The labyrinth was produced in collaboration with farmer, Ronnie Wagespack and Triple K & M Farms. Louisiana’s coastal wetlands are eroding at an alarming rate. Since 1932, coastal Louisiana has lost more than 1,875 square miles (1.2 million acres). The aim of the labyrinth is to demonstrate agricultural sustainability in order to create awareness about farming culture as a vehicle to local and urban sustainability. The choice of sugarcane is based on the social and economic history, which also talks about slavery, exploitation and imperialism – and ecological aspects of the coastal region and agricultural farming culture in Louisiana, as well as the usage of sugarcane for production of ethanol as transportation-based fuel (bio fuel) and for consumption purposes such as sugar, rum and sugarcane juice production as local sustainable industries. The short film shows the experience of the walk through, getting lost in the labyrinth and the physicality of the volume of the labyrinth through the use of split screen. The text and words running through the film, are extrations of poetry and literature that brings the viewer into the labyrinthian experience of the mind, symbolism and visually as word play.
As a film about land practice and the phenomenology of earth, space and land, Senstad has included the process of construction and time, as agriculture here represents nature and labor of the land through working with farmers and farmhand through the seasons. By using pink ribbons to construct the architectural formation of the labyrinth, the ribbons represent both mythology (Minotaur) and the artists touch. The film is a portrait of The Sugarcane Labyrinth as a public process art work, from construction to final completion, and the experience of the work as experiential, contemplative, physical and cognitive, as well as aesthetic.
The Sugarcane Labyrinth has been screened at The Canadian Museum of Nature (2011), Prospect 3+ New Orleans (2014), Noorderlicht House of Photography (2019)
An essay on THE SUGARCANE LABYRINTH by agricultural economist Alex Vialou
Sugarcane – for those that grew up near one of its field evokes the fast growing stalks reaching gigantic heights, simple pleasure of chewing the canes or the sweetness of the air near a refinery when processed; but for those that didn’t grow up in tropical or sub-tropical producing regions it is still often associated in our mind with the infamous world of plantation where Native American then African slaves were exploited. Sugarcane is definitively an emblematic crop that through the centuries have unleashed much wealth and revolts. It is fortunate then that Anne Senstad is formulating a desire to channel through her labyrinth our own thoughts. Whatever our feelings with respect to it, this will be a journey that will not let ourselves indifferent. Sugar Cane production in Louisiana was developed by the French colonists who imported their techniques from the very successful field of the West Indies, especially Saint-Domingue – now Haiti. Since the first experiment by Etienne de Boré in 1795, later the first mayor of New Orleans under the American control; the main objective was the product of refined sugar. The process is complicated and requires the work of a sophisticated engineered and a refinery often located near the plantation. In Louisiana, the Mississippi river was an additional benefit to the location of very large farms along its banks filled today with antebellum mansions. Today thanks to modern tractors and a more chemical intensive agriculture higher yields are realized with less and less human work. Still a day work in a sugar cane field is arduous and occasional snakes surfing between rows may actually be the most entertaining aspect of it. Lower labor and environmental standards in the Caribbean; together with the ever more expensive cost of modern fertilizers have kept Louisiana agriculture under challenge. It survives now only thanks to subsidies. As if it wasn’t enough, Louisiana sugarcane growing areas take places in the low lying land of Southern Louisiana –extremely fertile land because once the bedrock of the Mississippi delta and nowadays threaten by erosion, subsidence and potential sea level rise. The farm where the Labyrinth is set up in lower Terrebonne parish is a good example of it. This is another problem that farmers face. What is striking nonetheless in Southern Louisiana is the resilience of farmers to keep their business open. Following the Brazilian experience with its ethanol from sugarcane automobile fleet, Louisiana farmers are now looking for a similar development for its sugarcane as a bio fuel. Controversial or not, this could provide some respite and take advantage of the US based innovation research. After all, sugarcane never had only one purpose. From it, one makes also earthy rums. A tradition in the gulf of Mexico since the seventeenth century. In its labyrinth, Anne invites us to get lost in Louisiana sugarcane past histories and future challenges.
Bio: Alexandre Vialou has a Master in Agriculture and Environmental Economics from the University of Paris X – Nanterre in France and the University of Maryland, College Park in the United States. While working on his doctoral dissertation, he has been involved in several projects studying how the concept of sustainable development can be applied to agricultural production and international trade. With his native New Orleanian wife, he has chosen to live in Southeastern Louisiana where the intricate relationship between farming, economic development and culture in the Mississippi delta rely on a fragile balance. In 2014-15 he worked for the oldest rum distillery in the United States, based in New Orleans that uses only Louisiana sugarcane. He is currently working with the French government and the Special Olympics.
Supported by Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Norske Billedkunstnere, Fond for Lyd og Bilde – Arts Council Norway
Advisory Board:
Anne Katrine Senstad
KK Projects
Triple K & M Farms/Ronny Waguespack – Sugarcane Farmer
Alexandre Vialou –Agricultural Economist
Emile Dumesnil
The Sugarcane League –Louisiana Division/David Grunyard
Tim Connover White – Ecologist
Capitalism in the Public Realm 