One reimagines the opium factory in Patna resurrected by making kin. As an acknowledgement to its past, as a place of production, various herbs and flowers are grown on the grounds, and are tended to by agricultural drones, thus making it a symbol of multispecies collaborative inventiveness.
The flowers are distilled for perfumes, scents and potions that promote multi-species love.The remains are digested by herbivores and all manner of tiny critters that aim to compost. The factory produces excellent perfumes, manure, flower fed herbivore milk and these products are distributed from the banks of the Ganges with the help of homing pigeons (air) and the enthusiastic Gangetic River Dolphin (water), who make delivery parcels for morsels. A cycle of freshness and decay is maintained in the factory by humans, AI, plants, insects, and animals. Those previously engaged in terraforming are now engaged in various stages of collaborative production. The freshness and compost is bottled and sold while creating an atmosphere filled with colour and fragrance, reinvigorating the sense of smell that was lost by many during the pandemic.
The rooms in the erstwhile Opium Factory have been repurposed with regards to the air, water and light quality for the various companion species engaged in the production of perfume. The pillars of the old drying room are used to raise the main production room for all manner of ground dwelling compost buddies to shelter underneath. The production room contains agricultural drones and the automation required for repurposed copper alembic stills. The original staircase room is further lengthened to provide the silo for the storage and distribution of various products in the factory, with openings and dwellings for all manner of air and water dwelling creatures. Thus, all elements and creatures are engaged in making and promoting multi-species love.
Terrapolis is for companion species, cum panis, with bread, at table together- not “posthuman” but “compost […] Companion species are engaged in the old art of terraforming […] Unexpected collaborations and combinations, in hot compost piles…
—Staying with the Trouble, Making Kin in the Ctuhulucene, Donna J. Haraway
Ecotone | The Sentient Ruins 