PURPOSE, SCOPE AND PENALTIES

2016

Video (color, sound), 18min

Exhibitions:

Cappadox Festival (Uçhisar, Turkey), ‘Let Us Cultivate Our Garden’, 2016. Curated by Fulya Erdemci and Kevser Guler.

‘The Empire Remains Shop’, ERS, London, 2016. Curated by Cooking Sections.

‘Accumulation by Dispossession’, Delfina Foundation, London, 2019. Curated by Dani Burrows.

This work was produced within the framework of 2016 Cappadox Festival which operated under the motto “Let Us Cultivate Our Garden”.

Following the question “What is it that prevents us from cultivating our garden?” Molinos decided to tackle the bureaucratic obstacles in agriculture and address one of the most controversial plant biodiversity laws introduced over the past few decades in Turkey; the Seed Law no. 5553.

In close collaboration with independent researcher Ayse Ceren Sarı, Molinos conducted meetings and interviews on the transformation of agriculture with several people in Cappadocia and across Turkey, among them farmers, agriculturists, gardeners, environmental activists, PhD students, academics, researchers, villagers and seed traders.

Focusing on the specific case of Seed Law no. 5553, Ayse and Asunción tried to understand seed policies and what these policies imply for the region through the opinions and comments of the interviewees.

The work resulted in a filmed conversation among the members of an informally created committee selected from among the interviewees: the farmers Berin Ertuk, Rasim Özkiliç, Ibrahim Sakinan and historian Emin Naci Akkuyu.

Asunción and Ayse asked the committee to evaluate the given law in the local coffeshop of Uchisar, a place where most farmers come to have tea, read the newspaper and talk about the prospects of the annual harvest.

In the video, the members of the committee discuss from their perspectives, personal experiences and struggles, the limitations on seed trading and the process of the access to seeds being handed over to the hegemonic multinational corporations, indicating how the seed - a living entity - is regarded as a commodity.

The film was screened during the festival, at the same coffeehouse where the committee’s conversation was filmed, located at the heart of Uçhisar Square.