Post Pollinator Ecologies

Abstract

Anthropogenic climate change has precipitated rapid atmospheric and ecological disruptions. The increasing temperatures are already exceeding critical thermal thresholds for many species; disrupting seasonal cycles, altering precipitation patterns, and intensifying extreme weather events. These shifts profoundly impact pollinators like Apis mellifera – European honey bee, whose survival is tightly coupled to specific climatic and floral cues. Angiosperms, which constitute roughly 85% of terrestrial plant species and form the foundation of global food infrastructures, rely on these pollinators for reproduction and propagation. However, sustained exposure to rising heat, habitat fragmentation, pesticide residues, and the erosion of forage diversity have destabilized these core interspecies relationships, driving steep population declines. The heat stress impairs bees' navigation, foraging efficiency, and reproductive success, while also interfering with their ability to regulate body temperature and perceive volatile organic compounds, the primary chemical signals of floral communication. This collapse not only disrupts pollination networks but also undermines entire ecosystems, threatening the stability of agricultural economies of billions of people.

The installation is paradocumental, envisioning a disrupted scene from a hypothetical, post-pollinators, post-extinction future. The scene centers on a spectral, artificial hive; a 3D-printed artifact, a monument to extinction and a materialized echo of forgotten labors. From within emits a high-frequency, mechanical hum of drones, mimicking the vibrational signatures of lost pollinators, similar yet unnervingly different in tone and texture. Projected onto the hive unfolds a durational choreography capturing aerial footage of human figures moving in the regimented, algorithmic patterns of artificial pollination. Their bodies trace the grids of absent orchards, enacting a choreography of entangled labor, loss, and absence. Together, the work evokes the uncanny absence of pollinators, framing the loss not as a discrete event but as a slow violence, an ongoing dissolution of the interspecies and intergenerational relationships that once sustained shared ecologies.