¡Ahí viene la plaga! / Here comes the pests!(click here to go to the project website) is an interdisciplinary and site-specific art-research project developed in landscapes shaped by monoculture, particularly the Brunca Region in Costa Rica and Chiltoyac and Xalapa in Mexico. Bringing together artistic-academic teams from Mexico and Costa Rica, the project explores the concept of “pests” from multiple socio-environmental perspectives. Through field visits, local dialogues, and collective reflection, the team questioned how pests are defined, who defines them, and how these definitions are shaped by ecological, political, bodily, and territorial relations.
The resulting zine brings together the project’s journeys, debates, testimonies, and creative exercises. It moves beyond reductionist views of pests as simple threats and instead examines them as complex effects of monoculture, techno-scientific practices, and territorial transformation. Divided into three sections, the zine explores different understandings of pests, considers pest as a process involving bodies and relations, and reflects on pesticides through Derrida’s idea of the pharmakon — something that can be both remedy and poison.