WORKSHOP
NEW PERSPECTIVES
TO UNDERSTAND PEATLANDS
During four meetings, artists from different disciplines and parts of the world shared their work and reflected on the intersection between science and art, with a specific focus on peatlands. Four artists presented their projects, stimulating inspiration and dialogue among the participants. Through this process there were dialogues, exchanges of ideas transcending disciplines, language and geographical barriers. The work of the participants and the results of this collaboration can be found here.
THE ARTISTS
Agustine Zegers
Agustine Zegers is a Chilean artist, graphic designer, and student of sympoiesis. Their work uses text, olfaction, and ritual in an attempt to comprehend and commune with flows of ecological collapse as well to question the pervasive systems that produce them.
Annie Mar Forrester
Annie’s artistic practice explores personal narrative through painting and drawing, manifesting in dreamlike depictions. Her work seeks kinship with and connection to the natural world, forging a navigation of self through the life she shares her environment with. This comes to the fore in her animation projects, where she illustrates many of Ireland’s ecosystems with an empathetic attentiveness.
Sol Rezza
Sol Rezza is an Argentinian composer, sound designer, and audio engineer who specializes in next-generation audio. Her work combines experimental electronic soundscapes with advanced 3D sound technology to create immersive experiences for virtual ecosystems and live performances. Sol Rezza offers lectures and workshops related to immersive audio and digital sound storytelling. The main focus of these workshops is to develop production methodologies for sound digital narratives, emphasizing the components of immersive audio. www.solrezza.net
Kate Foster
Kate Foster graduated in Environmental Art from Glasgow School of Art (2001), having switched from social research. Since 2016 Foster has been working on a long-term project on peat and wetlands, collaborating with environmental projects as a creative practitioner and working outside of the traditional gallery space. Since 2020 this has also included scientific and museum contexts in Wageningen University, the Netherlands.
PARTICIPANTS & PROJECTS
CYNTHIA CAMILIN (USA)
Motivated by ecological thinking in a time of climate change, my work in the last several years has circled back to the social and ecological history of places where I was raised in the coastal Southeast U.S. Lately my research has turned to specific wetland sites in the coastal Carolinas, the unique ecosystems of Carolina bays. Named “bays” by colonial settlers for their abundant bay trees, these Sphagnum bogs, tannin-rich lakes and seasonally wet savannas dotting the coastal plain once numbered in the thousands. Anamorphic Carolina was my first piece in the new series, a diagonal installation of 150 small abstract paintings. Many are inscribed with quotes from colonial naturalists and settlers evincing both wonder and the drive for “improvement” that destroyed these places.
MARIANA ALEXANDER (ARGENTINA)
As a “citizen scientist,” I find the learning curve on peat to be steep, continuous, and compelling. I have focused on the experience of walking on peat, on the interaction between oneself and the peat bog. In addition to photographs documenting the plants and animals in the peat, I have used hand-printing processes. Although they have not been very successful in identifying plant types, as intended, they have provided unexpected results. For example, although sundews cannot be identified in either the monocopy or plaster casting processes, their absence has provided a distribution pattern. In addition, the varied textures of the prints containing mosses, sundews, and other unidentified plants divert attention from identification on my own terms. The process of pressing in situ temporarily changes the holding pattern of growing plants that would otherwise be locked in place. Plant matter is pushed, stretched, and altered by the human hand. This reminds me of my physical impression, my footprint, as I walk through the bog, a movement in and out, from another place. The bog is not my home. It is not my habitat and I do not speak its language. Perhaps the unfamiliarity of identity and expectations will allow me to better respond to the bogs on their own terms. To be continued.
Betiana Bellofatto y Florencia Díaz (Notro Espacio)
Turbal: Identity and Territory explores the interrelationships between people and a peatbog located within the urban area of Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, ARGENTINA. The project explores the existing and potential links between individuals, the community and the peatland through a participatory mapping, which invites neighbors of the city to record a tour of the territory in different media. From a psycho- geographic approach, it focuses on the effects of the environment on individuals, using the drift methodology, which becomes an instrument of reappropriation of space. The idea is not to record reality “as it is”, but rather how the environment affects us during the journey (thoughts, emotions, sensations, etc.) and to generate an encounter with a concrete purpose: to get closer to the wetland. With the material resulting from the drifts, an interactive map was created that allows users to virtually tour the peatland through the different views that emerged from the experience.
Mercedes Chiesa (Argentina)
In the heart of Tierra del Fuego, lies a unique and essential ecological treasure: the peatlands. These seemingly modest wetlands play a vital role in the sustainability of our ecosystem. This mural project is not only an artistic expression, but a call to action, an opportunity to share the richness and fragility of peatlands. We are here to present a proposal that seeks not only to beautify our streets, but also to raise awareness of the critical importance of preserving these wetlands to governmental agencies and the environmental community. The mural we propose is not simply a visually stunning work of art; it is a window to public understanding of the relevance of peatlands to our environment. Through creativity and visual narrative, we aim to highlight their role as carbon sinks, their contribution to biodiversity and their impact on water regulation. This mural will not only be an aesthetic work, but a catalyst for reflection and collective action. Peatlands, often overlooked, are silent guardians of our planet.
Catherine Higham (Australia)
My field activities included documented aerobic layers of peat; its living plants and animals, near my home on the south coast of Western Australia.
As well as identifying plants and animals with photographic software, I experimented by rolling mosses and plants with hand ground charcoal paint. From this I took prints. I also experimented with plaster casts. I thought it might not work because of the softness of the ground, largely this was correct but I did get enough information to continue working with. Future plans include practice based research of peat formed at the Great Artesian spring mounds of Witjiri-Dalhousie, on the edge of the Simpson Desert.
Peatlands are vital to ecosystems within them, and the Atmosphere that surrounds them. After fire and climate change, my greatest concern for peatlands in Australia, is drying cause by the impact of groundwater extraction for drinking water, mining, irrigation and numerous other uses.
Amira Salom (Argentina)
Recognizing the microcosm is born from the intimate relationship that one generates with that space to which one returns systematically. From a scientific approach to a field diary, this project hopes to share from a personal point of view the journey of years of visiting and inhabiting Isla de los Estados, Argentina for short periods of time.
Going to the island became a ritual. Each navigation as a purge, an anticipation of the procession towards the internal. Stepping on dry land confirms the victory of the eviction of modern society… and there in the middle of everything and in the middle of nothingness the mob. Each encounter becomes a recognition, an act of observing with pause, in a living present, making time slow down. The peat speaks to me of layers, of surface and depth, of immensity and the minuscule. Concentrating the mind in unraveling the hidden messages in its networks and processes, of things “that will be, that are and that were”. The peat brings us closer to this world that seems random and ephemeral, and veils the eternal of permanence.