-PROVFLUX ARTIST-
Manifesto
by the Potato Planting Brigade
Hypothesis: Dead zones, rivers of poison, dead trees, endless concrete, these make an environment of desperation, desperation is revolution and desperation is chaos and the end of love. Planting potatoes is a polka dotted knee patch on a pair of worn and torn blue jeans. We are pointing out the rip, tide of human hope and ingenuity. As if dirt were not toxic, we grow food on the streets of our cities.
Given: Some have more urban greenery than others.
Given: Some people have more time to maintain greenery than others.
Given: Saving seed is important.
Given: Knowing we can save seed is important.
Given: Every seed is a story, and the potato encompasses not only familiar narratives of Irish potato famine but also the history of Quechua, Aymara and other first nation horticulture that honors diversity and seed saving as a buffer against disease.
Given: Johnny Appleseed may be a misunderstood or misguided figure, a seed colonization, but there is beauty in the love of a seed-story and we can reclaim our topography through a planting of older stories and a localized recolonization of space.
Given: We plant for our own sense of beauty and story because we know, no one will plant for us.
Given: Howie is friends with farmers for a reason.
Given: We honor human’s love of touch and experiment, even if we are not all agronomists.
Given: We, the potato project, love taters.
Given: Beneath concrete, between asphalt and blame, there is land, land is earth, earth is our home.
Given: We love cracks in the concrete, and we see fixing things, our way, as a way to be part of our environment, topography and community.
Given: The act of planting is an act of self determination. Self determination is and has always been revolution.
Given: We need not plant for our own children.
Given: Potatos are not polite, they are thick stemmed and persistent.
Given: We walk, and walking we touch the ground with shoe sole, and taking only footprints and leaving only photos assumes the existence of a functioning nature. We assume the existence of urban dead zones remarkably rich in life, we assume creative responsible human interaction with the environment is a necessary part of urban ecology. Seeing as urban environments are people created islands within the context of larger ecosystems.
Given: We feel a horticultural connection between here and south central america from the stories of our friends, neighbors, and lovers. Seeds are stories, we are all travellers, and we carry our stories with us.
Given: It is good to have people, and not to have them dying.
