Uprooted : a handbook of levitating flowers and other fashionable nonsense

A speculative piece of fiction that is part photography, is definitely sci-fi, could be used as a handbook, recants the ordeals of a 1950s plant breeder who grows species given to her from travellers to outer space (found on Wikicommons), performs acts of flower propagation via the active nourishment of words and contains magician’s coding.

Uprooted is a ramble across multiple worlds both real and imagined. At its core a reframing of plant taxonomy from a poetic perspective, entertaining the notion that a poetic understanding of the world is as viable a convention as one of argument and reason.

A process condensing research and readings, visual exploration, observation, curation and creating connections, play and critique; Ursula le Gruin refers to this as composting, a fitting analogy for the creative process. In the end the work became more than poetic fancy, rather a handbook of provocation.

Uprooted is a reflection on what philosopher Donna Harraway would see as a statement on the blurring of species identity politics. The accompanying texts and quotes throughout the book affirm the problem of the hierarchy of being: machine over plant, human over machine. Here, the plant speaks back.