PROTO(U)TOPIA
Terraform, Alliance, Territory & Response-ability
Understanding ecology means understanding alliances and Cyanobacteria.
Cyanobacteria is blue green algae. Cyanobacteria gave us Oxygen during the Protozoic (the route word being Greek – proto “former, earlier” and -zoic, a suffix related to zoe “life”). 2.5 billion years ago, Cyanobacteria oxygenated the earth’s atmosphere through photo- synthesis.
Prior to the Protozoic was the Archean, contrary to the Greeks description, anaerobic life existed, be it much more primitive. Reliant on the carbon dioxide and Sulphur rich environment, the change in atmospheric elements, irreversibly affected these early forms of life. The changes made by Cyanobacteria is a story of alliance and territory.
Our current situation is not a new one, changes in environment have a consequence, a Tentacular dimension (to use the urban dictionaries description “referring to a body of work that has many dependent and independent parts. As such, it is difficult to manage, difficult to understand and often difficult to finish.”)
The main point to raise, is to dismiss the notion of biological individualism, or any kind of individualism for that matter; we have never been individuals1 is a notion critical to the study of how we have socially developed and apply data to our symbiotic position; we rather neglected and
/or forgone our alliances that have maintained our collective interdependence.
We do exist in a complex symbiotic alliance, as Cyanobacteria still maintains its alliance with all the plants in existence on our planet, continuing to carry out photosynthesis as chloroplasts.
Bacteria shapes our thoughts as Cordyceps manipulate the ant, sending their host on a death march to infect the rest of the colony.
In order to continue our story, we need to act, we have response-ability2 (as Donna Haraway would state, the act of, ability to respond).
Proto-garden — Forest Garden & Hunter-gatherer — Pastoralist – Agrarian?
As a species, our time in the prehistoric can be dismissed as a naive tumble through existence. Or we can evaluate some of the intricate relationships established during these formative periods of developed symbiotic sharing of territory, spinning together a story of response-ability.
A presence that has been pushed to the sidelines, often left to small groups of indigenous peoples and considered an ontological deli- cacy – Animism – often considered pagan or shamanistic in practice, shapes a symbiotic culture of storytelling, praise is given to the relationships that provide, stories of heroic partnership between flora-fauna and human-kin are passed between the ages.
Our thirst for development has encouraged an idea of “progress” through “modernity” – reductionist, empirical data driven expansion that requires energetic consumption of resource and territory. Science is afraid of art, storytelling is art.
Storytelling advanced our symbiotic interdependent, interpretational, relationships with territory.
The stories that need to be told are those stories of the forest garden, of dwelling and stewardship. Our technologies should not evoke dystopic visions of malpractice, elite synergy of carbon and silicone based lifeforms, and embrace an alliance of new methods of becoming comfor-table with all matters of the soil.
The agrarian lifestyle established by the Mesopotamians footprints proceed and follow the society at writ, “modern” society placed a blindfold on and held its hand out to progress for guidance.
It is imperative to re-engage with storytelling as science, memories of dusty plains where there were once years of nourishing crops of corn fade away in the mid-west American agricultural stories. Replaced now by automation, however the memory is burnt on the soul, its twins are fertilizer and herbicide.
How to reconcile colonization – cultivation – management
The uestion challenging our proto-topic investigation manifests in underscoring alliances, establishing stories and taking response-ability for futures- potential. Management is stewardship, cultivation is negotiation, territory is not a boundary or enclave, it is a cultivation of interrelationships developed, nurtured, studied and evoked through art.
We are in the grip of challenges beyond our comfort, we must continue to spread stories and make new alliances, we use a screen
to contact, we sit in a chair for comfort and we sometimes feel the need to compose our surroundings to suit the perception of who we are.
1. Gilbert SF, Sapp J, Tauber AI.: A symbiotic view of life: we have never been individuals. Q Rev Biol. 2012 Dec;87(4):325-41. doi: 10.1086/668166. PMID: 23397797.
2. Haraway, Donna J.: Staying with the Trouble, Durham : Duke University Press, 2016