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| '''proposal:'''
| | proposal: boundaries of air and migration |
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| '''Toward a “Wetland Aesthetics”'''
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| Specimen: sphagnum moss
| | ▪ Tracing how objects, bodies, plants, organisms and places are linked into |
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| | relations of mutual shaping and interdependence |
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| Location: Puhatu Wetland Complex, da-Viru County, Estonia (Puhatu soostik)
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| '''Background info'''
| | ▪ Emphasis 1: tracing shifting boundaries of waste, residue, raw materials and |
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| Northeastern Estonia are home to peatlands, which are carbon sinks shaped over millennia by slow accumulations of plant matter in water-saturated, anaerobic conditions. These landscapes have undergone forceful drainage, to repurpose the wetlands for agricultural or industrial uses. Not only that, decades of industrial pollution of ash, particularly from oil shale combustion has also increased the alkalinity of these bogs, which limits their carbon holding capacity. Contemporary efforts in restoration have reconsidered the biodiversity and carbon retaining abilities of sphagnum moss in bogs. Recent scholarship prompts us to reconsider the ‘unintentional designs at sites of disturbances (Tsing, 2023) and the spontaneous potentials of “wastelands" (''The Baltic Atlas,'' 2016). How do these peatlands mediate between ongoing industrial violence and future climatic hopes? I aim to unpack how it becomes a carbon bank—a slow body that stabilizes what once moved rapidly and violently through the air. Through this lens, the peatland is not merely a landscape but an entangled infrastructure of storage, filtering, and reconfiguration.
| | resource and how they facilitate, diffract and/or redistribute life-enabling or |
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| '''Main Objective / Field Focus'''
| | constraining potentials and capacities across times and scales |
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| This fieldwork centers on sphagnum moss growing in acidic conditions of northeastern Estonian peatlands. It is a situation of a multispecies and multi-elemental assemblage with the atmosphere, sphagnum moss, oil shale ash, vascular plants and microbial life. I focus on tracing the photosynthesizing process of sphagnum moss in different peatlands samples, and how particularly how atmospheric residues linger in the bodies of plants and soils. The samples will involve environments altered with oil shale ash to see how the increased carbon dioxide, released through oil shale combustion, is being re-sequestered by the carbon sink-wetland substrate. Using the idea of a "wetland aesthetics," I examine the wetland as a site which redefines excess carbon pollution. However, perhaps once this carbon pollution is stored in an inactive state, its toxicity status can be reconsidered. Through this investigation, my artistic intervention builds on the abstraction of how the sense of time, and movement is obscured in the peatlands, where decomposition is slowed due to the acidic of the soil being anoxic (oxygen-deprived) in peatlands, which restricts the activity of many decomposers, which are organisms that break down organic matter.
| | ▪ Emphasis 2: unpacking less noticeable tensions, collaborations, solidarities and |
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| '''Technical Description'''
| | attunements emerging from ‘non-consensual inhabitations’ of land, bodies, |
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| Possible fieldwork methods include observational journaling, photographic documentation, and elemental mapping (e.g., visualizing zones of higher moss activity or ash residue). I will collect air and soil temperature/humidity data (using a portable CO₂ sensor?) and include sound recordings to document the peatland’s auditory atmosphere (wind, water movement, birdlife). Additional elements could include aesthetic transformation of the land, and speculative visualizations of carbon entrapment over time.
| | ecosystems, or soils, etc. |
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| '''Preliminary References'''
| | * Feel free to set your own focus within the main objectives of this program |
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| # ''Ots, K., Tullus, T., Sild, M., Tullus, A., Täll, K., & Tullus, H. (2023). Ash treatment promotes the revegetation of abandoned extracted peatlands. Land, 13(10), 1623. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.3390/land13101623</nowiki>''
| | Key Steps (in preparation of field week) |
| # Paal, J., Vellak, K., Liira, J., & Karofeld, E. (2010). ''Bog Recovery in Northeastern Estonia after the Reduction of Atmospheric Pollutant Input.''
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| # Tsing, A. (2023). ''Bestiary of the Anthropocene'', Chapter: “Unruly Edges.”
| | ▪ Select an object, organism, specimen, people or places to study |
| # ''The Baltic Atlas'' (2016). Baltic States Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale.
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| # Wojcik, M., & Almeida, A. S. (2024). The role of peatlands in carbon storage and climate change mitigation: A review of ecosystem services, threats, and restoration approaches. Science of The Total Environment, 915, 170501. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.170501</nowiki>
| | ▪ Conduct preparatory research on de/re-composition of elemental flows they |
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| | embody and to what effect |
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| | ▪ Summarize your research interest/planned experiment in an idea paper on the |
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| | course wiki |
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| | o 5+ sentences background info, |
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| | background: |
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| | Estonia's accession to the EU in 2004 regulated the air pollution of local power plant emissions. In order to stay within its now tighter standards, the estonian power plant industry underwent a large reduction. One of the biggest buildings in Narva was the power plant and it is now almost empty. (ref) The buildings we are visiting K.., the ghost towns |
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| | I hypothesise that such economic consequences of EU's accession have reshaped the Narva population and the local labour force. I want to trace. |
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| | o 10+ '''sentences description: main object/focus of fieldwork, research''' |
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| | '''question, anticipated outcomes''' |
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| | '''o 5+ technical description: tools, method, process''' |
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| | o 5+ references |
proposal: boundaries of air and migration
our task
▪ Tracing how objects, bodies, plants, organisms and places are linked into
relations of mutual shaping and interdependence
▪ Emphasis 1: tracing shifting boundaries of waste, residue, raw materials and
resource and how they facilitate, diffract and/or redistribute life-enabling or
constraining potentials and capacities across times and scales
▪ Emphasis 2: unpacking less noticeable tensions, collaborations, solidarities and
attunements emerging from ‘non-consensual inhabitations’ of land, bodies,
ecosystems, or soils, etc.
- Feel free to set your own focus within the main objectives of this program
Key Steps (in preparation of field week)
▪ Select an object, organism, specimen, people or places to study
▪ Conduct preparatory research on de/re-composition of elemental flows they
embody and to what effect
▪ Summarize your research interest/planned experiment in an idea paper on the
course wiki
o 5+ sentences background info,
background:
Estonia's accession to the EU in 2004 regulated the air pollution of local power plant emissions. In order to stay within its now tighter standards, the estonian power plant industry underwent a large reduction. One of the biggest buildings in Narva was the power plant and it is now almost empty. (ref) The buildings we are visiting K.., the ghost towns
I hypothesise that such economic consequences of EU's accession have reshaped the Narva population and the local labour force. I want to trace.
o 10+ sentences description: main object/focus of fieldwork, research
question, anticipated outcomes
o 5+ technical description: tools, method, process
o 5+ references
