About LICHEN
Lichen is not one organism. It’s at least two, in symbiotic mutualism: mycobionts, fungi that can flourish in all kinds of places, and photobionts, algae that can nourish the whole by photosynthesizing chlorophyll. Sometimes there’s cyanobacteria, too. The fungi gets to eat sugar from sunlight, and the algal companions get to live on bark or rock or a fence, so cozy, all and only because of each other. The feeling is: mutual!
Lichen are obviously, visibly, gloriously interdependent af. When these fungi and algae have each other, they make a gorgeous thing that’s nourished by sunlight and flourishes in otherwise inaccessible places.
And: they are sensitive. They don’t happen everywhere. They are indicator species because if the air is shitty, no dice. No lichen dice.
About PRACTICE
We too can make and be glorious things together that we can’t make or be apart, and conditions matter.
This country as a political entity was founded on the genocide of Indigenous people and the enslavement of Black people for the sake of white profit. Our systems are designed for white, patriarchal, Christian, cisgender domination and exploitation of all of us who aren't all of those. That's the water we're in here and it's shaped how we know to stay afloat.
But we can learn new ways to float, and we can practice together.
Project South says: we can't do it alone, and we don't want to.
So this site is...
a ongoingly-if-irregularly revised attempt to make sense of living in this actual world while trying to create a different one
mycobionts finding photobionts
a place to try things out and then abandon them
constantly in danger of collapsing under the weight of it's own earnestness sooooo I don't know but I hope it doesn't?? :/
malleable so if you have an opinion, I am interested <3