I want to utilize my collage skills in the construction
this required me to document each bag and take note of how many of each I have
this led to me paying more attention to the labels and markings than I had before.
as I shook out any residual beans I tried answering an imaginary question from a viewer of the “finished” work:
‘have you done any research into the companies on these bags?’
well for this project I’m more interested in utilizing the bags for their material then anything else...
at least that’s what I was trying to convince myself towards, even as my practice answer included my interest in the material history of how they have found their way to my possesion. I have certainly started to ponder the implications of globalization and the decomposablity of the material links to nutrient robbing... it’s weird to bury something underground that has a foreign country name printed on it.
really I wasn’t planning to do much research on the companies because I’m already implictly aware that they aren’t good people*
*(I went back and forth on whether or not to use the term people as it felt rude to call the people within the company bad without knowing them as individuals, but then I remembered that in the US companies have personhood... also I realized my implicit empathy was misplaced)
then I saw one of the companies on the bag is LDC the louis dreyfus company...
louis dreyfus as in celebrity comedian julia louis-dreyfus??
turns out her great-great-grandfather started this company which grew to be one of the four “ABCD” merchant companies that control 90% of grain trade as well as a metric boatload of other agriculture (and non agriculture) related entities. They are one of the wealthiest dynasties in france, and have kept control over the company and its branches within the family (her dad ran the crude oil branch)
also of interest to me, the last name louis-dreyfus isn’t from two families but is simply the name of the guy’s father (julia’s great-great-great-grandfather)... he used his father’s name to start the buisness and then changed his last name later in life to match the buisness (except added the hyphen)... so this made up last name(more made up than others) is only held by direct descendents.