Like snakes, the roots of trees, Coil themselves from rock and sand

And, like snakes, the roots of trees Coil themselves from rock and sand, Stretching many a wondrous band
— fragment from Goethe’s Faust when a ghost light emerges in the story —

Swamps, moors and wetlands: in both historical and contemporary stories, they are often the symbolic setting for sinister events; a place of mischief and mystery. For instance, the ghost lights created by the slow ignition of swamp gasses often fulfills the role of spirits in sagas and myths because of its mysterious form. Or think of the macabre phenomenon of bog corpses being mummified by the preservative effect of the anaerobic peat soil. At the same time, wetlands are associated not only with death, but above all with life. They harbor a very diverse ecosystem that plays an important role in the context of climate change as carbon sinks and storm buffers. The landscape Eeraerts and Aparicio Ronda create in their exhibition is inspired by the Kirkpatrick Marsh in Maryland in the United States. In this marsh, scientists from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) are studying how plant, microbial and animal species respond to fluctuations in CO2, temperature, nitrogen, methane and sea level rise. Global climate changes are manipulated in architecturally specific and automated infrastructures to replicate the situation of the next century, in anticipation of a new reality. The overall installation ‘like snakes, the roots of trees, coil themselves from rock and sand’ connects parallels about an uncertain future with impressions of an undisguised nature and humans seeking a place in it.