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AGRO-FABulous: Agriculture Enters The Discourse of Site-Specific Installation
WATCH OUT CHRISTO & JEANNE-CLAUDE! I’m coming down the tracks with a 4 foot long roll of white, gauzy fabric! I’m ready to wrap the immediate landscape like you’ve never seen before! I’m out to question the bounds between the fragility of life and the virility of the natural world! I’m…I’m…
…I’m actually trying doggedly to be a good gardener and save a crop of heritage raspberries with Agro-Fabric (“agro-fab” for short). This gossamer, fibrous material comes in custom rolls, and is used to protect delicate crops from insects, birds, and sometimes frost (in the early spring). It’s porous, and let’s 95% of the sun and rain in, but keeps pests like japanese beetles OUT!
Don’t get me started on the Japanese Beetles… Metallic green and THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE, they appear benign, but use their 6th insect sense to detect the exact hour that your precious berries are ripening and….THWACK! There they are, nibbling and mating and decimating your ruby red babies. They had their way with a Fairy Rose Bush in the garden, but I am putting up a fight for the berries. I’ve only been here about 3 weeks, but if I had to choose something to label “pride & joy”…the raspberries would be it.
So 2/3 of the patch is covered with Agro-Fab as an experiment to see if it really does let the good stuff in and keep the bad things out. When I tell people that I’m 50% Agricultural Adventurer and 50% Artist, I’m telling 100% Truth!
In the same spirit of creativity and aesthetic discourse, I have created a short film of the wrapped patch and my harvesting efforts…
Written by robin on 07/24/2009 in AITA Original | Blog | Food | Gardening | Philosophy | Sculpture/Installation | The Farm | Theory/Criticism | Video
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