Sin Maíz No Hay Vida: Corn, Politics, and Ethical Hemispheric Engagements in a Collaborative Performance Intervention
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract: In this article, I reflect on my own experiences as a participant in Sin Maíz No Hay Vida, a transnational multimodal performance intervention intended to raise public consciousness regarding Monsanto’s application to plant 250,000 hectares of corn seeds across northern Mexico. Facilitated by the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics and the Yes Lab, Sin Maiz involved the activist-performance tactics known as “identity correction” (Bichelbaum) and “ethical spectacle” (Duncombe). Specifically, I discuss the Carnival del Maíz as a performance that works toward realizing the tenets of an ethical spectacle by being open, participatory, and democratized while also generating alternative political imaginings. I then investigate my own positionality as a Canadian visitor in San Cristóbal during this process, and how this cross-national interaction works within larger hemispheric contexts. Finally, I reflect on further hemispheric visions and considerations that ethical spectacles open up.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.025 | 0.024 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".