Through the artistic process of research and creation, Mr. Monsanto questions the advantages and disadvantages of agricultural chemicals - a complex and contradictory topic. Choreographer Yeri Anarika, together with a dancer, a cellist and a video artist, explore possibilities of translation into a stage and short film format. Inspired by the painting „Monsanto und Freunde lassen grüßen“  by Gerhard Göschel itself a response to Caspar David Friedrich’s classic painting, Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, questions arose, among others: what has become of the "vagabond" of German Romanticism in the age of genetically modified food and the use of agrochemicals? How has the mentality "and the way of exploiting nature" changed in the last years of humanity compared to the mentality of 200 years ago, during the German romantic period where nature was connected to the divine?

 

In dance and musical improvisations, various approaches were developed, which the choreographer reduced to an essence. Beyond the technical physical research, interviews with people in the Uckermark who work in the agriculture industry were conducted and informed the creation process. 

 

The dancer, Juan Tirado costumed in a heavy antique coat, embodies a character who is driven by an initially hopeful vision of understanding nature and making it more productive for food and health yet in the process becomes genetically modified, a human being patented by greed, envy, violence. Musically, the three-part Sonata for Solo Cello by Georg Crumb emphasizes these stages, underlining them musically and dramaturgically. With cinematic means, the time span of the last 200 years is depicted, reality mixes with animations to show the process of losing oneself in one's own vision and its failure. In the making is a final dance piece that conveys both a controversial topic such as genetically modifying and monopolizing food sources and its effect on rural agricultural areas through the lens of contemporary dance art.

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Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste