Ex Situ - Plants For a World Waiting to Germinate

This book is a tool. An invitation to become allies, to raise questions about the complexities and opportunities of an earthly site-specificity. It is a call for an alliance with plants. Plants allow us to tell sometimes painful stories and penetrate the stratification of history. Their roots inhabit it, and their seeds sprout, giving new meanings to it. The intensity and violence of enduring colonialism and its extractive processes imperil the planet. This is nowhere more dramatically apparent than in Democratic Republic of Congo. Here, Ex Situ embraces what arises from a locality, listening to it, learning from it, understanding its importance, and sharing it. The project aims to repair an ecosystem, and to act beyond the global economic system, including its values, narratives, teachings and institutions that produce our identity-driven, consumerist, nationalist societies. Acting with the culture of remedial plants, tilling the detritus of toxic ecosystems, and regenerating them, Ex Situ proposes cultivating a new sensibility of radical care.