Lucy Jane MacAllister Dukes GroundWorks Gallery Norfolk - AER Report

My research whilst here has been inspired by Potawatomi Bryologist Robin Wall Kimmerer’s idea that mosses are “a vehicle for intimacy with the landscape” (2021:x). Mosses have survived many apocalypses and could be our greatest teachers if only we were able to listen. Moss evolved around 450 million years ago, some of the first green things to exist outside of the ocean, when there was no soil, only rocks to cling onto with their rhizoids. Because of this they have no roots and are non-vascular, meaning the only way they get water to photosynthesise is directly through their leaves, 1 cell thick and perfectly shaped to welcome water. Try pouring some water on a dried crust of mosses next time you are outside and see them swell and open, green and happy.

I have long loved mosses; their softness, the way they light up the forest floor, their tranquillity and peace and virulent greens, how they open to the sun and water, embracing everything and letting it go. The sun evaporates the water, but they live inside this contradiction; they thrive in these brief moments and micro-climates of humidity and miraculous micro water bridges formed by capillary action and then they survive for millennia. They have survived every single known extinction event; we clearly have a lot to learn from them. This very act of waiting, listening, and learning from moss transgresses the current boundaries between humans and other-than-humans. Their rhizomatic structure, thriving through entangled communal exchange, challenges the borders and boundaries forged by extraction.

Drawings: Borders, Boundaries & Multispecies Entanglements

We all draw borders and boundaries through which we process the world, but these distinctions are constructed and often arbitrary. Whilst at Groundwork I drew borders to start my drawings, drawing in my positionality as a view of the world. But as I got drawn into the site, I often went over the borders, they are a part of the drawing, not an ending but an unruly edge where multispecies connections begin. Like Zheng Bo, I believe “For every project I claim only half of the credit. The other half belongs to plants and friends. They sculpt and play. I live and breathe.” Zheng, B (2020).

This landscape (drawn and real) is a continued dialogue between humans and more-than-humans but so often extractivist mindsets require us to ignore the animacy inherent in everything: from the rivers flow to the rocks they deposit along the shore, to the wind that pushes the water and the clouds, to the light that glints, reflects, scorches and glances and gives life to everything, to the wind turbines that seem from a distance like quiet giants on the edge of the world. These drawings (pastel and watercolour on A4 paper) were all done in situ with the mosses who live there and in places where I sat for hours to look and see and feel and understand something non-verbal about the connections between the species of the land, water, and sky. In these drawings, as in the world, everything is equally alive: from the mosses to the minerals in the mud and stone, to the tidal flows, and wind patterns. There is no distinction between humans and more-than-human or living and non-living because they are more-than-human landscapes (as all landscapes are) where each drawing has entangled multispecies stories living and dying, intrinsically connected to each other.

Mosses: arrival, bogland, fenland, moors, salt marshes

When I first arrived at Kings Lynn, I was greeted by the mosses in between the paving stones, virulent green, glowing in the interstices and leading the way to the gallery. Mosses have a pull, they thrive in their entangled communities, completely connected to the air, water, light and ground of their site; their tangled leaves slow down air currents to create microclimates where a biodiversity of microbes and insects and seeds can flourish - they are microcosm, universes within universes. What would happen if we made our human society more like moss’? What do mosses have to teach and if we are only open to listening, learning?

Mosses filter air and water, build and stabilise soil, connect live giving resources in the land. From the bog, the water held by the mosses is slowly filtered and flows through rivers into Kings Lynn, out to the Ouse and then the sea. Along the land that flows beside these waters, from heath, to fen, to bog, to wetlands and marshes, to dunes, to town pavements, walls and roofs, lives a multiplicity of mosses, each deeply connected to their place, and together connecting everything. They are both indicators of the minute chemistry of life of a specific site and also they are everywhere, even where you least expect them. What would happen if we learned to “see like a moss” (2021:82)?

During the residency, I visited a nearby bog which merged into a fen and moorland with a brilliant bryologist and ecologist, they had worked for 40 years restoring the site from scrubland to the dynamic and diverse ecosystem from the bronze age 4000 years ago. They read the land, citing soil chemistries from the plants growing above - calciferous or acidic - they read aeons from the land, forces both human and geological, all animate all the time. Opening me up to this, they gave me small samples of species, each with its own special name and relationship dynamics, some I kept in my notebook, flattened between pages, others in tiny envelopes of folded scrap paper they showed me how to make; I wrote down as much as I could and since then I have been full of awe and fascination for these species. In response, I did drawings from memory and imagination into foil. These are not anatomically accurate, which only a bryologist would notice, but upon seeing the drawings, she thought they were possible future mosses and hybrid sundews, as they may evolve in years to come.

Drawing with reclaimed foil is a way of drawing with space and time, opening yourself to the many layers of extraction they have gone through to be here in this form, allowing yourself to learn from the material knowledge and agency of these molecules. In theory foil is infinitely recyclable but in practice this is rarely the case and will take hundreds of years to decompose into the soil, but the drawings I do are ephemeral, they can be flattened in a moment. At Groundwork, these became ways to question how we think about time in extractivist contexts. Being surrounded by artists and their work exploring material extractivism made me realise that the materials we use now connect us across vast time scales, they are minerals and molecules from deep time, and simultaneously the way we extract, use, and dispose of them is part of the future we are bringing into being. When we imagine the future, who are we thinking of?

Salt Marshes are some of the best flood defences imaginable, a giant sponge capable of holding massive amounts of water, slowing down the tidal/wind forces and protecting everything further inland. In this way they have a similar logic to mosses just on a much bigger scale. Different mosses can hold massive amounts of water, slowly releasing it; in doing so they slow down torrential rains, holding and gently letting go, preventing soil erosion and benefiting the microbes and other species growing there. So many reciprocal systems exist in this multispecies world, yet so many of our current human-made systems contradict this. Walls are short-term thinking that destroys ecosystems on the seafloor (which themselves help mitigating flooding). Beavers create pools for water, their dams don’t stop the water but instead slow the flow right down which in turn filters and cleans it. These habitats are also excellent at storing water and mitigating floods. Salt marshes and beaver dams are giants of mossy logic. What would it mean to embrace this mossy/salt marsh/beaver dam logic, when it comes to how we interact with water, how could we create a shift in thinking and being in our watery relationships?

In trying to learn from mosses, it didn’t feel right to “use” moss as a material. Normally material experimentation and drawing are how I begin making sense of something, thinking through doing. Instead, I had to work around this. I went to the places where there were mosses and spent time with them. I still drew but also collected samples of the sediments they grew with/ were connected to (e.g. mud from the Ouse at low tide, where the water held by the bog eventually flows out). I also harvested small amounts of edible things growing in mossy spaces to create flavours connected to these sites (e.g. dried bog cranberries, wild strawberry vinegar, dune berry jam and even bog myrtle kombucha brewed with the help of my friend Zak). I used our leftover tea to make ink and our used foil to make drawings, connecting us to our investigations (using waste and by products is much more accessible too). I picked up materials that had already been extracted (e.g., quarried chalk and poor peat dug up as part of site restoration), each that has its own specific soil chemistry uniquely suited to specific mosses.

Reading Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss told me that trying to grow moss where you want it is a fool's errand, mosses choose where they grow and this takes time, but every site instead has “the possibilities of mosses”, this phrase so beautifully encapsulates all that I’ve begun investigating. With this title, I brought everything together, drawing on the wall with site-specific materials to map my explorations around the Ouse; this includes mixed media drawings, cyanotypes, sculptures, edible things and even some tiny local mosses to pour water on and see under the loupe. To further share these ideas, I also created small RISO booklets with instructions, following ways to learn from moss, and how to do foil drawings and ran workshops with them in the gallery.

Bibliography

Kimmerer, R, W. (2021) Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. Dublin: Penguin Random House

Povellini, E. (2016) Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism. Duke University Press

Zheng, B (2020) Art as MultiSpecies Vibrancy. Art Asia Pacific Magazine 119

Related Links

• Lucy's winning AER Residency Application
• Art for the Environment International Residency Programme (AER) 
• GroundWorks Gallery
• UAL Centre for Sustainable Fashion
• UAL Post-Grad Community

Art for the Environment Residency Programme

The Art for the Environment Residency Programme (AER) provides UAL graduates with the opportunity to apply for a 2 to 4 week fully funded residency at one of our internationally  renowned host institutions, to explore concerns that define the 21st century – biodiversity,  environmental sustainability, social economy and human rights.

Founded in 2015, internationally acclaimed artist Professor Lucy Orta, UAL Chair of Art for the Environment – Centre for Sustainable Fashion, launched the programme in partnership with  international residency programmes and UAL Post-Grad Community.