the anatomy of climate: Reflections on ACT Lab Residency with Homo Novus by Zoë Laureen Palmer 

Zoë Laureen Palmer was hosted by Homo Novus festival in Riga, Latvia, for five days in June 2022. Artsadmin gave Zoë this opportunity as part of a collaborative EU-funded project that we partner on called ACT – Art, Climate, Transition, which is about climate change and social transition. 

Zoë’s collaborative work, the dream(ing) field lab, brings together acts of rest, ritual, care, creation and celebration offering a space for women and femmes of the African diaspora to re-vision their relationship with land in the context of climate breakdown. The dream(ing) field lab was a Common Ground Commission for Season for Change, a UK-wide cultural programme inspiring urgent and inclusive action on climate change from 2020-2021, led by Artsadmin. 

Zoë wrote this blog for Artsadmin about her time in Latvia.

the anatomy of climate 
 

with every step a shifting.  a sinking. a rupture.   

brown womxn bones meet brown earth water. 

sink(ing) up to the blue veins in my brown womxn neck  

up to my boxed-in brown blue voicelessness 

my nipple/ spine/ head 

the peat absorbed heart-eye/ my gut 

another eye looked out, peat too swallowed that 

inner climate sinking deeper. a shifting. a rupture 

into the oxygen deprived silence of  

compacted millennia 

cloudberries, sphagnum moss, roots of young pine  

nipples.  spine. guts. out of our minds  

in bog softness we are held, waterlogged 

infused with bright Baltic sunlight  

arms outstretched, fingers loop down + through 

the dream vault of the land  

the us beyond us 

an outrageously slow decomposition 

the dream(ing) is exhausted by relentless extraction  

the dream(ing) is a rapture of white-tailed eagle + bittern 

the dream(ing) is the thighs of tired brown womxn 

the dream(ing) is resting in a lukewarm infusion  

of herb + heart, death, light + vision 

the dream(ing) is a climate of fierce protection 

the dream(ing) is a muscle, mind, an expansion 

the dream(ing) is a burial of unbridled capitalism 

the wake + dance, the song, fire, feast, disintegration 

+ those of us  

whose anatomies always knew the collapse  

whose anatomies know the collapse 

whose inner climates… 

hosted by the homo novus festival in Riga, Latvia, for 5 days in June 2022 as part of the ACT Lab, we listened, watched, grieved + explored.  we moved through the watery landscape of Kemeri National Park taking lessons from its forests, fens + mires, lessons from its sulphur springs + peat bogs.   

here in the UK a battle is currently being fought to protect Danes Moss, a historic peat bog in Cheshire, from development into a housing + retail development.  our inner + outer climates are collapsing + yet the relentless drive of late-stage capitalism continues to prioritise the needs + demands of the market + profit over the health + regeneration of ourselves + our planet.

with every step our senses were invigorated + re-tuned, the science was astonishing – the peat in Kemeri forms at a rate of approximately 1mm per year + this is getting faster. and yet less than 3km from this important ecosystem Latvian peat is being extracted + exported to meet the increasing demands of gardeners across the EU to nurture their homegrown flowers + vegetables. peat bogs globally store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests yet globally around 15% have been overexploited + drained – releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  

spending time in the Kemeri bog, I became curious about notions of safety, solidity + how the landscape seemed to present metaphors for navigating the huge emotional, physiological, psychological + practical challenges presented by climate breakdown.  

in a peat bog there is very little solid ground – the landscape sinks + flexes with every step + we go with it, we are forced to sink, nothing is predictable or stable.  by the end we had taken off our man-made snow-shoes – a device designed to give us a sense of mastery over the landscape – opting instead for bare feet, allowing ourselves the pleasure of immersion, the fear + sensuality of being out of control, of not-knowing but absorbing the experience of what the bog required of us in any given moment.   

in that way our bodies, our anatomies, became decolonized, a vessel through which nature itself could dream. i will carry the reciprocity, flex + resilience of this dream in my bones through the change + overwhelm we know is yet to come. 

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This trip was supported by ACT (Art, Climate, Transition) through the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.