Michael Maranda
Pollination; Urban Wheat
project documentation in progress
public interventions
2004
statement . . .
Over the summer of 2004, I pursued two public interventions related to plants.
In Pollination, as a minor (and largely symbolic) corrective to the loss of natural pollinators due to ecosystem
fragmentation and profligate use of pesticides, I endeavored to hand-pollinate as many flowers as I could find. Although
one can hope, it is hardly likely that any of the seeds resulting from the plants so-pollinated ended up sprouting in 2005,
but the act of pollination is always based more in optimism than in results.
Urban Wheat consisted of an equally symbolic gesture. I planted and tended twenty heirloom wheat species in containers
spread across the urban core of Toronto. These varieties, while limited in their commercial appeal as cash crops, are inherently
valuable for their genetic diversity and robustness as compared with hybrid dwarf wheats commercially grown today.
At this point, these projects are documented in a limited series of digital prints. Further development of the documentation
of these two projects, including book works and sculptural elements, is in progress.