Miranda Whall

I have been awarded £25,000 from CO2RE to develop and produce When Peat Speaks and When Peat Speaks which will include When Peat Speaks: A Boggy Cloudy Performance a 24-hour live-streamed expanded drawing performance that will take place on the degraded peat bog in the Cambrian Mountains in June 2025, and When Peat Speaks: a Boggy Ensemble a collaborative performance also to be staged on the degraded bog, in May 2026. The grant forms part of the UK’s national research hub for Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR), part of a broader £30 million initiative funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The creative initiative within the hub is supported by a flexible fund of £150,000 from which seven grants have been awarded to arts and humanities projects.

I will be working within the GGR-Peat Demonstrator Project, one of five interdisciplinary GGR demonstrators funded by UKRI. My focus will be on the Pwllpeiran Research Upland Centre at Aberystwyth University, which is one of the three key sites within the GGR-Peat initiative.

The project, titled When Peat Speaks, will be developed in close consultation with Professor Mariecia Fraser and the team at Pwllpeiran. The work will incorporate a variety of datasets gathered from treatments, measurements, and interventions conducted across 32 plots (20m x 20m each) on a degraded peatland. The project will utilise the scientific data to generate drawings, sculptures, sound notations, and sonic and musical scores.

The performance When Peat Speaks: A Boggy Ensemble will be staged directly on the bog, adjacent to the study area. The ensemble will feature three musicians and a Butoh dancer, responding to the datasets – sound notations and sonic and musical scores to create an immersive exploration of the peatland’s ecological and cultural importance in situ.

This is a unique opportunity for me to contribute to the conversation around Greenhouse Gas Removal, working within the intersection of art and science in a way that will resonate with both academic and public audiences.

The project will run from May 2025 – June 2026.

A Boggy Cloud

Hundreds of thousands of pinpricks and hundreds of meters of tangled paper strips are accumulating over time to resemble a large amorphous cloud-like form. The weightless network of delicate perforated paper strips is paradoxically composed of dense ecological memory, millennia of carbon, organic matter, and environmental history.

The cloud is formed via a process of accumulation and erasure. The empty holes render the data void – illegible and therefore useless, referencing the often inaccessible and impenetrable nature of unprocessed scientific data.

The strips of paper resemble discarded off-cuts, referencing data degradation, misinterpretation and instability.

The cloud literally materialises the data; when handled, thrown, or suspended in the air, it gives shape to otherwise abstract information, it becomes momentarily active lively matter.

The durational project makes time visible in ways that challenge anthropocentric narratives. It is not just about human endurance—it’s about more-than-human rhythms, ecological time, and data as an active lively material participant.