hal-05021198 The Unusual Journey of a Corn Husk

The Unusual Journey of a Corn Husk is a film based on an investigation by Francesca Cozzolino into the production of design objects from corn cultivation in the state of Puebla, Mexico. Using the medium of a visual narrative, this film presents the researcher's fieldwork, and the data produced in the course of her ethnographic study, combining a local context (the decline of corn from Mexico's semi-arid Mixteca region) to an event in contemporary global history (the NAFTA free trade agreements). Narrated by an animated husk of corn which performs like a voice-over, the anthropologist recounts how Mexican designer Fernando Laposse, looking for a sustainable, local approach to design and a way to support a struggling farming community, successfully persuaded a group of families from the small village of Tonahuixtla in the state of Puebla to work the land using permaculture methods (milpa) and then take charge of processing the cultivated corn husks using semi-mechanical processes to produce an elegant coating material: Totomoxtle. The voice-over, along with montage and 2D animation techniques, draws on the researcher's photographic, video, and sound documents, as well as the creation of animated images, to convey the designer's approach and the wider environmental issues this case raises. Designed according to a three-voice approach, this film brings together an anthropologist, a documentary filmmaker specializing in the documentation of collective professional activities in the sciences, Coralie Maurin, and graphic designer Juliette Nier, who works with 2D animation tools to explore phenomena and confront realities that are difficult to grasp, sometimes incongruous or complex to explain. The film explores the codes of fiction, documentary, and animation, giving viewers insight into a project positioned on the edge of crafted tradition and technical innovation. More broadly, the case of Totomoxtle raises the question of how a technique is conceived and passed on, in a context where the complex cultural, economic, political, and ecological hybridizations that characterize our contemporary worlds collide.