Tenderbog is an artistic research project by Feral Practice and Laura Harrington that explores parallels between peatland restoration and human health care. We have facilitated and recorded conversations with peatland contractors, digger drivers and on the ground labourers, and between pioneering scholars and practitioners in different disciplines of human medicine and peatland restoration. We understand all bodies as diverse multispecies communities, and their health as inextricably enmeshed across species and spheres.
While they can be forbidding and challenging spaces for humans to inhabit, peatlands offer up intimate moments of wonder to the explorer. Tenderbog experiences peatlands as a nested series of worlds within worlds. The creation and healing of damage in human bodies and peatlands is (differently) subject to flows: of liquids, of capital, of hearsay, of resistance. Using combinations of video, sculpture, sound, dialogue, drawing, microscopy and explorative eDNA analysis, we dip fingers and imagination in at global, regional, local and micro scales – exploring worlds full of living and dying bodies, all the way down.
Tenderbog emerges from our collaborative WaterLANDS residency 2023-26. Our site is the Great North Bog. WaterLANDS is a European Horizon Green Deal funded wetland/peatland restoration project. We are hosted within the Department of Geography (ICASP/Water@Leeds) at University of Leeds. As part of the WaterLANDS project, six Artistic Engagement Residencies have been established to engage with the project, the restoration, and the local communities in each of six action sites - in Italy (Venice Lagoon), Bulgaria (Drogoman Marsh), Netherlands (Ems-Dollard Estuary), Estonia (Parnu catchment) and Ireland (Cuilcagh-Anierin).
