Monoculture is a large-scale dynamic installation interpreting current trends in urban development as a form of human habitat loss.
The humanist approach to urban planning, epitomized in the garden city movement, serve as the formative backdrop for western society in the early 20th century. This approach put individual wellbeing, socialization, and leisure at the forefront. It evolved as a counterpoint to the 19th century’s industrialized urban environment, which mainly focused on the individual as an economic unit.
Toward the end of the 20th century, cities were rebuilt by the emerging society of the 21st century. Monoculture deals with current trends in urban development, and the forces shaping these trends. It contrasts the ideals of the Belle Epoque with those shaping the urban landscape today. The work emphasizes the feedback loop formed between the environment a society builds for itself, and the ultimate effect that environment has on the society living in it
Technically, the work consists of a large rectangular plot on which a multitude of flowering grasses is planted based on the grid of a garden city neighborhood. Over the course of the exhibition, a robotic mechanism moves across the plot applying a selective herbicide designed to eradicate any plant not of economic value. As the exhibition progresses, a new urban grid is revealed, planted in strict utilitarian cash-crop monoculture. The work is currently in production, for completion by late 2020/early 2021.