Bog: an area of wet, muddy ground that is too soft to support a heavy body.

This future archive focuses on the bog as an ancient living entity of forest remembrance and knowledge. The bog is a historical record of past biodiversity and ecosystem development capable of composting, preserving and creating new life. Its acidic anaerobic atmosphere works to store carbon dioxide, and this brings into question the practice of draining bogs, which releases carbon dioxide into the environment. What if we have not appropriately valued this ecosystem that does not support our weight but rather attempts to consume us? Through this exploratory investigation, we look at the bog as a brain: a heavy entity consisting of dense layers of information, extinct plant matter, preserved artefacts and a deep understanding of non-human history. What would we learn from it? How would it communicate? How would we entice it to communicate? And would we learn to understand it?

The project was conceptualised in close collaboration between all three artists and was exhibited in three parts: the video installation directed, filmed and edited by Alexandra Stroganova, in which a fiction researcher from the future is trying to examine the bog, communicate with it, listen to it, smell it, etc., the protective costume of the researcher designed by Cynthia Blanchette, who also ideated and performed the researcher character, and the Bog archive created by Jana Siren.