PEAT RESTORATION: Wet Eco-Fictions
Within the chapter of “Peat Restoration: Wet Eco-Fictions,” the interplay between eco-fictional narratives and the complexities of rewetting peatlands unravels. The collaborating projects explore reparative aesthetics, healing, and resistance, where the undercurrents of hydrofeminism take center stage. They put a focus on radical futurities embedded in eco-fictions, anchored in etymological origins and on the web of connections with the more-than-human realm. The collaborators are dedicated to envisioning a transformative scenario, where the concept of peat restoration evolves into a narrative of ecological repair. In this pursuit, ecological artistic research emerges as a strategy, proposing a shift in our relationship with the environment.
Current
Peatlands are ancestors, are memory, are futures. WETBEINGS gathers “old stories and new ones that can be medicine for our broken relationship with earth” (R. W. Kimmerer) from the biodiverse organism and troubled ecosystem of the Aukštumala peatland. The transdisciplinary program roots itself in this 9000 years old living archive in the delta of the Nemunas river at the Baltic coast and one of the largest peat extraction sites in the Baltics. From, with and for this WETBEING the project gathers approaches and examples of living in and with peatlands which are based on mutuality and sustainable survival of humans and peatlands.
One of the earliest modern scientific studies on a peatland, Carl Albert Weber’s study of the Aukštumala peatland in Lithuania, published in 1902, is a starting point to critically interrogate the relationships of science and the utilisation, productivization, destruction and protection of peatlands across times and ideologies, and to activate diverse and wet perspectives on peatland ecologies, knowledges, cultures and economies.
Archived
Ingrid Bjørnaali, Fabian Lanzmaier & Maria Simmons, Ensayos, Geir Tore Holm, Søssa Jørgensen, Concordia Klar, Enn Kärmas & Villu Järmut, Kristina Norman, Randi Nygård, Laura Põld, among others.
Down in the Bog: Hibernation
The exhibition Down in the Bog: Hibernation takes us on a deep dive into the curious ecosystem of peatlands. It is an exhibition and a place for learning and sharing from peatlands around the world, arguing for the need for increased attention and care, located at Tromsø Kunstforening from March 22 to May 5, 2024, curated by Karolin Tampere.