ABSTRACT
On 1 May 1982 the conceptual and environmental artist, Agnes Denes, began planting the first furrow of a field of wheat, in a two-acre landfill site in Battery Park, Manhattan (Denes 1993: 387–95). Over the next two months, together with two assistants and a small group of volunteers, Denes cultivated and harvested a crop of wheat that has continued to resonate over the past thirty years as a potent image of the complex relationship between environmental resources, urbanism, architectural and spatial practices. Denes’s writing about this site-specific environmental artwork highlights the fragile artifice required to produce its temporary ecology: the clearance of industrial waste metal, domestic rubbish and building rubble that had to be undertaken before the mere one inch of topsoil, brought onto site by eighty lorries to allow sufficient growth, could be spread. This labour, together with the irrigation system and fertilizers used by Denes and her team, formed part of the ‘care’ required to enable the crop’s growth (Denes 1993: 390).
