Thanks for signing up to take part in THE COMMUNITY IS NOT A HAPHAZARD COLLECTION OF INDIVIDUALS.
The first step of participation asks you to spend some time with the information that follows. To advance through the information, select the pink arrows at the bottom of each page.
A bit about the project:
THE COMMUNITY IS NOT A HAPHAZARD COLLECTION OF INDIVIDUALS considers the ways that plants help us to remediate land impacted by the petrochemical industry while also wondering how we might support them in return. Participants are invited to think through together (at a distance) strategies for working with plants in ways that are more supporting: that move beyond thinking about them as ‘technology’ performing a task, but rather as collaborators. Calling for a recalibration of perspective, the project invites participants to consider how, instead of relying on plants to do all of this work for us, we might in turn offer aid by supporting their ability to grow into the future.
Upon committing to participate in the project online, you will receive a Natural Plant Community Toolkit (to be picked up at Museum London) as preparation for planting your seeds in the summer and/or fall. Each toolkit contains a custom-made package based on information you share, that includes seeds that have the potential to facilitate phytoremediation in sites contaminated with Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons.
This project WAS initially designed for those planting seeds in Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec):
That’s because, the Canadian plastics industry is concentrated in these three provinces:
Alberta [primarily thermoplastic resins derived mainly from natural gas].
Ontario [primarily thermoplastic and thermoset resins derived from both crude oil and natural gas].
Quebec [primarily thermoplastic and thermoset resins derived from both crude oil and natural gas].
We are bound by imposed colonial provincial borders:
These borders often differ from, and are at odds with the historical, cultural, and ecological realities of regions.
Plants, though, are bound by specific geographies and locations based on their growing needs: they don’t recognize constructed borders.
The political realities of these regions means that they are also now shaped by the centralization of the petroleum industry. While this project determines locations based on provincial borders out of convenience, it is my hope that you will consider the impacts of these imposed borders while you engage across it.
The project hopes that, together, we can consider how plants might help us to think about these borders otherwise. Participants are asked to locate themselves with the help of native-land.ca