Feral Practice and Laura Harrington (Great North Bog, United Kingdom)
Laura Harrington (UK) and Fiona MacDonald (UK) are artists and researchers with extensive experience of developing interdisciplinary research and collaborative art projects in partnership with ecological and cultural conservation initiatives. Both artists recently completed their doctorate in Fine Art and write for academic and artistic contexts. The artists worked together in 2019 on Fieldworking - a project and artists’ camp initiated by Harrington at Moor House-Upper Teesdale National Nature Reserve. This involved bringing together artists, an ecologist and filmmakers to highlight blanket bog habitat interspecies relations and artists’ field-based activities.
For WaterLANDS, Harrington and MacDonald will build a collaborative research practice centered on the Great North Bog that uses shared experience and expertise to inform new thinking, participation and outcomes. Their methodologies will be inspired directly by the beings, processes and materials of these landscapes and their restoration and will aim to generate new stories and relationships between bodies, systems, flows and elements over the four years, echoing the complex, heterogeneous and porous nature of peatlands slowly accumulating over time. While open-ended, they anticipate that the final outcomes will bring immersive and diverse soundscapes, sculpture and visuals together.
