Magical Land

Matthew Moore, a 4th generation farmer and working artist. I feel so lucky that my video art class can have him for one lecture and a 3 hours workshop. I personally think what he's doing is awesome to put agricultural issues and art exploration together, and it's so notable that he's trying to put his work into public spaces and inform more people.

Instead of pointing out problems, his work is more about giving solutions. His work includes the sense of places, labor, time, and identity in agriculture as well as in community life. I think he is very passionate and there're many emotional and personal parts involved when he's doing the documentary about the sense of "the land we're from, and living in". 

I love his video work "Radish, zone 9: 40 days to harvest". It's a honest documentary video, which make everyday life into something magical and incredible. I see his emotions there in that video. It's hard to be not touched after watching the short film, which stands for a relative long period for those living plants. I can vividly feel the sense of "life" and energy there when seeing the greens grow. We human beings are also in such a process, growing up, being old, being dead and go back to earth. The plants are one elements in our life circle. They're living creatures, just like someone I know in my life. And the sense of eating them eventually and they're in a part of my living just got me emotional. So I think this is a great way to produce an art piece with certain educational/documentary functions but also working greatly in personal expression.

And today Matthew addressed one idea which I think is very interesting. He questioned about "how is agriculture communicated to the public?" The collaborative project I'm doing now with agricultural students can actually present one aspect on how we response to this question. 

From the ideas and knowledges we got from the media, the academics, and the society, we decided to narrow down the big "agriculture" topic to something personal. And the final product I come out with can also represent the communication product produced by the agricultural students, since their job is to let me know what are the issues in agricultural field. In other words, this art documentary work will present the communication outcome of today's agriculture in somehow.

http://www.urbanplough.com/