Anne Yoncha
anneyoncha.com
anneyoncha.com
Re:Peat V, ink, gouache, watercolor, conte and graphite on paper
18" x 24", 2020
18" x 24", 2020
Re:Peat VI, ink, gouache, watercolor, conte and graphite on paper
18" x 24", 2020
18" x 24", 2020
Re:Peat VII, ink, gouache, watercolor, conte and graphite on paper
18" x 24", 2020
18" x 24", 2020
Re:Peat VIII, ink, gouache, watercolor, conte and graphite on paper
18" x 24", 2020
18" x 24", 2020
Re:Peat, Layers of Peat in Northern Finland, a Look and Listen is a current EDUFI Fulbright Finland Fellowship research project by visual artist Anne Yoncha and science researchers Oili Tarvainen, Anne Tolvanen, and Anna-Liisa Välimaa of Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), composer Daniel Townsend of University of Florida, and Gerard Sapés of University of Minnesota. The four drawings submitted here are one of the outputs of the project. Each is made of about 20 layers of images of Sphagnum moss at a conserved peatland site, with only the negative space worked. These works aim to highlight the space around the Sphagnum plant, since this is the anaerobic environment the organism creates which makes the peatland ecosystem so distinctive; similarly to many of the ways we construct our human environments, Sphagnum engineers its own “home”. The work also hopefully raises questions about land use and conservation—exploring how Finland navigates complex issues of natural resources and bioeconomy may help us in the US approach our own ecological “home”from a new angle.
Project Statement
Re:Peat aims to explore the often-hidden structure of peat and provide a new perspective on how we perceive and value post-industrial landscapes. Peat, made of decomposed sphagnum moss, is an important source of heat and jobs in north-central Finland, and a complex extraction issue. Currently, peat provides a majority of fuel for Oulu’s Toppila Power Station, a combined heating and power (CHP) plant which uses a continuous underground water heating system throughout the municipality – hundreds of kilometers. While peat is technically a biofuel, it is not a renewable one. Sphagnum builds up slowly (humificating into peat at the rate of one millimeter per year, or less), engineering over centuries or millennia an acidic, water-logged desert in which it is one of the few life forms which can survive and thrive. It also sequesters carbon and preserves climate data in the form of pollen molecules (sometimes 50,000 per gram of peat). The study sites for this project underwent two to three decades of extraction, which ended in 2014 and 2015, and even if it is possible for peatland to regenerate, no one knows how long that would take. A series of long-term studies explore alternative ways to rehabilitate these landscapes.
Re:Peat aims to explore the often-hidden structure of peat and provide a new perspective on how we perceive and value post-industrial landscapes. Peat, made of decomposed sphagnum moss, is an important source of heat and jobs in north-central Finland, and a complex extraction issue. Currently, peat provides a majority of fuel for Oulu’s Toppila Power Station, a combined heating and power (CHP) plant which uses a continuous underground water heating system throughout the municipality – hundreds of kilometers. While peat is technically a biofuel, it is not a renewable one. Sphagnum builds up slowly (humificating into peat at the rate of one millimeter per year, or less), engineering over centuries or millennia an acidic, water-logged desert in which it is one of the few life forms which can survive and thrive. It also sequesters carbon and preserves climate data in the form of pollen molecules (sometimes 50,000 per gram of peat). The study sites for this project underwent two to three decades of extraction, which ended in 2014 and 2015, and even if it is possible for peatland to regenerate, no one knows how long that would take. A series of long-term studies explore alternative ways to rehabilitate these landscapes.