'When the horses are all gone'
Part of larger body of work Cowgirls are Forever. This photographic series, and performance work explore a future where cowgirls no longer ride horses and instead work to pollinate abandoned flowers.
‘I’m a cowgirl because… I like to run
I’m a cowgirl because… I like to breathe deeply
I’m a cowgirl because… I like to be outside all day, I don’t mind being in the sun, or the rain, or the wind
I’m a cowgirl because… I don’t like to be held down, I like to pack lightly, I like to walk everywhere or ride if I can.’
Who will pollinate the plants when the bees and moths have left? How can we listen better to the trees? Who will breathe for us when the air is too thick for our lungs? We are all eating and being eaten.
Pollinators have declined at rates of 25-60% over the past 20 years (conservative estimates) if our current rates of species loss continues, there will be a time in our not too distant future when our systems for agricultural food production will collapse. In this work I wanted to explore the plants that might be forgotten in technological solutionism by looking at the future of pollination for non-agricultural plants and plants that humans don’t have a direct use for.
The project speculates a future where the populations of pollinators have decreased to a level in which they are not able to maintain the pollination responsibilities for the earth. The "cowgirl" is an embodiment of possible multispecies support for the pollinators – she becomes a human pollinator.
The future cowgirl sub contracts for the 'Bureau of Mutualisms', in her role she works with the flowers to support their reproduction, while the bees, moths, butterflies, ladybugs etc are being repopulated by the Bureau of Mutualisms a future lab working specifically on the question of symbiotic and mutualistic relations.
