i see trees falling as they cannot ground
roots can’t hold onto anything
that would give them stability
stability defines itself differently in the bog
fluctuation is reliable
change is stable
the in-betweens are the ever shifting coordinates
a tree can’t ground.
i relate
@bogstudies swamp of sadness Artax & Mike
i hear you preserve the past in your bodies.
i preserve the past in my body, too.
i feel it most when it hurts. i don’t know if you hurt.
your body is being preserved too. now that you’ve been drained, national government
bodies claim care over you.
i see your openings
how deep do they go?
@bogstudies anime ytgirldance
i open, ripple, swirl and it flushes me down sinkholes
you have a lot of water in your chart. me too.
your water is dark. mine too.
they say your soil is not nutritious. sounds like bad rep.
what do you make of it?
nutrients can be stored or released.
for whom is it nourishment in the end?
i want to make you my cate-gore buddy. massacre categories with you.
rip meaning-making apart-together.
that old story. let’s act out.
@bogstudies boys who bog dive together stay together
i see no escape but that’s not the point.
there isn’t time to look for one.
there are no sigils in the bog. it is above so below.
yet from beneath you it does not always devour.
because the narrative is not the plot and the lands have been plotted out.
our plotting is revolt.
and it happens often
ripped open, with other achy often less nourished bodies.
in bed bogs of temporal drag.
lying down and cripping up.
whispering to each other because sometimes we are so out of
breath just from climbing the stairs.
bogged down again
in times that we try to abolish
body making flesh
@bogstudies Rihanna and fall video
what’s the bog got to do with it?
Text and Images by Miha Brebenel and Sepideh Ardalani
Miha Brebenel is a Romanian-born trans disabled human. Their work is informed by feminist and queer practices, as well as the aesthetics and politics of screen (and other) technologies. Their long-term and expanding explorations are focused on the histories of Internationalism and solidarity, intersections with disability,gender,critical plant studies, law, social and healing justice, somatics.
They are developing research on the intersection between histories of herbalism and socialism, mainly in Eastern Europe and the Baltic region.
Sepideh Ardalani is an Iranian-born, invisibly disabled bunny (wordhippo AI suggestion), doing trans-species social work. For example in MASSIA, a self-organised residency space in coastal Estonia. Here, Sepideh invites for exchanges on socio-environmental matters and co-cultivating a garden invested in herbalism and a space invested in collective care practices.
Miha and Sepi co-organise FO.R.E.ST (Forum for Radical Ecology Studies), an experimental collective un/learning situation, which will have its next season in Spring 2023.
