Deep Mapping in Greifswald

A creative research residency at the Peatland Library

From April 3-16, 2025, some members from our team spent two weeks at the Peatland Library in Greifswald, Germany, as part of our mobility project. The residency marked a key phase in our ongoing two-year Peatland Justice campaign, which aims to reduce peat extraction and consumption in the EU horticultural sector. Our time in Greifswald was devoted to advancing both the research and creative development of our Deep Map - an interdisciplinary tool that traces the trade, histories, and injustices embedded in the peat industry while weaving in cultural heritage and ecological knowledge.

During our stay, we explored a wide range of topics related to peat trade and justice in the European context. Gaining access to the library’s unique collection, of which many resources are not available digitally, allowed us to engage deeply with materials that have shaped the political, social, and ecological histories of peatlands.

Each team member focused on different strands of the map, drawing from literature, archival materials, and other resources available in the Peatland Library. Throughout the residency, we worked both independently and collaboratively, developing draft versions of the map and recording our process. We were also joined by other artists and researchers, which enriched the experience through conversations, informal exchanges, and shared reflection on cartographic approaches, expanding our views of what mapping actually even means. The resulting exhibition-in-progress brings together a series of maps and alternative methods of sensemaking, offering new ways to relate to, and engage with, peatlands across Europe and beyond.

This report outlines the activities undertaken, the outcomes of the residency, and key learnings, and provides documentation of the mobility in forms of photos, financial aspects, research notes and maps in development. 

Arrival

We arrived in Greifswald from numerous different European countries — travelling from Hungary, France, the Netherlands, and even Iceland. After long journeys by land and sea, which included a three-day ferry from Iceland and an overnight train from Hungary, we met in Berlin and continued the final part of our journey together by a rental car. The afternoon drive from Berlin to Greifswald marked the beginning of our time together and put us in the right mood for a collaborative and grounded residency.

Living Knowledge: Hans Joosten and the Peatland Library

The Peatland Library is one of Hans Joosten’s most recent and personal projects.

What began as his private collection has grown into a two-story archive dedicated entirely to peat-related literature. Recently opened to the public, the library feels like an extension of Hans himself; he knows every shelf, has handled every book, and carries an encyclopedic knowledge of the collection. Hans has been a tireless advocate for peatlands for decades and is widely recognized as one of the leading global voices for their protection and restoration. His expertise spans scientific research as well as cultural and historical peatland narratives from across the world. The library and Hans are inseparable, and it was an honour and privilege to be hosted by him during our residency.

He generously offered book recommendations, thoughtful input on our research direction, and moving stories about the history of peatlands, the peat trade, and local resistance efforts.

His presence was invaluable, and the residency felt like a profound moment of intergenerational exchange: a sharing of the baton of peatland advocacy.

Our focuses included Dutch peat trade history, the emergence of peat reliance, alternative peat-futures including paludiculture, decolonising peatland narratives and peatlands as transitionary spaces. Some of our findings and insights were also shared as stories in our latest newsletter edition, which you can listen to here.

Built on Peat: Tracing the Past and Future of Dutch Peatlands

The first topic we explored in depth was the history of Dutch peatlands. The Netherlands was literally built on peat and would not exist in its current form without centuries of drainage and extraction. In the past, this history revealed intra-national injustices, where poor and working-class turf cutters in the east laboured to fuel the prosperity of wealthy western cities. Today, we observe a similar dynamic playing out on a transnational scale, with exploited peatlands in the Baltic states supplying the Netherlands' lucrative horticultural industry. In the library, we found books detailing life in the peat colonies: the lifestyles of the workers, their humour, drinking habits, anarchist leanings, theatrical interests, and the harsh realities of exploitation. With the disappearance of Dutch peatlands and a national ban on extraction, these peat cultures have largely vanished. Against this backdrop, we asked: what might peatland justice look like today? And what responsibility does the Netherlands bear in this ongoing story? How can we honour these histories? And what does that mean for a just transition away from peat trade? How can we use culture as a way of moving through this transition?

The myth of peat reliance in horticulture 
Secondly we started looking into the relatively recent reliance on peat for horticulture, sparked by books in the library written to introduce peat and how to use it to gardeners. We traced the rise of horticultural peat extraction by making a timeline and placing this into context with broader developments in industrial agriculture over the past 50 years. Given that one of the primary reasons provided by horticultural peat proponents for its continuation is that it is too hard to grow otherwise, it’s fascinating to see that this is a manufactured state of being, that peat was once seen as a too difficult alternative to adjust to. This underscores that peat is not the only viable option and that other alternatives are not too complicated or inconvenient to try, rather that the political will has not been present. 

Interweaving Wet Futures with Paludiculture

This map explores paludiculture, the cultivation of wetland crops like cattail and reed on rewetted peatlands, as a regenerative response to the degradation caused by drained land use. It highlights how this practice supports soil integrity, supports biodiversity, enables sustainable material production, and offers an economically viable incentive for landowners to rewet their land. Rewetting helps prevent further carbon emissions from draining peat soils, positioning paludiculture as a vital climate strategy.

Rooted in the histories of northern Germany and the Dutch province Friesland, where wetland plants once sustained marginalized communities through everyday crafts such as baskets, brooms, and thatched roofs, the research traces paludiculture’s shift from subsistence practice to climate-resilient solution. It explores the evolving relationships between people and peatlands, touching on cultural meanings, social tensions, and environmental hopes.

By combining archival research from the Peatland Library in Greifswald with fieldwork and conversations with key actors, the map brings together scientific insight, policy perspectives, and grassroots experience. These actors include, but are not limited to: paludiculture pioneer Hans Joosten, who introduced us to the world’s largest cattail site in northern Germany; Jasper van Belle who is developing a Dutch cattail paludiculture site;  and Aldert de Boer who is experimenting with integrating peatland rewetting into dairy farming.

By interweaving historical context with contemporary practice, and symbolically weaving cattail from Germany and Friesland, this map envisions a future in which rewetted peatlands are thriving, multifunctional landscapes. It signals the urgent need for action as climate and ecological systems reach critical tipping points, already posing serious threats to the environment.

Stories from the Peat

Since a large portion of peat traded in Europe comes from Estonian peatlands, we also investigated this local context.

More specifically, we mapped literature related to peatlands in Estonia, with an emphasis on cultural heritage, local histories, and place-based narratives. The aim was to trace how peatlands have been represented, remembered, and connected to communities across Estonia, and to surface the stories that are often overlooked in dominant environmental or trade-focused discussions. Upon arrival, it became clear that the Peatland Library held limited material on this specific topic in the region. This challenge prompted a broader research effort: we identified key gaps, explored existing bibliographies, and initiated the process of sourcing and ordering new books to expand the library’s collection in this area. This stage of the map is still in development, but the residency provided vital time and space to clarify the conceptual framework, build the foundation of the archive, and set a clear direction for the next phases of the work.

Peatlands as non-binary and transitionary bodies

Lastly, we explored peatlands as transitional, non-binary, and unbounded spaces. Peatlands often resist conventional mapping techniques, which impacts their visibility and limits the protections they can receive under standard conservation frameworks. Their fluidity, lack of fixed boundaries, and the absence of a universal classification system mean that peatlands frequently slip through the cracks. This context makes mapping peatlands and peat trade a very complex and interesting task. We see strong parallels between peatlands an non-binary gender identities. Both are often framed as illegible, unruly, or in need of control. Queer bodies, like peatlands, are regularly cast as unproductive within dominant systems. What might it mean for these two, peatland bodies and queer bodies, to learn from each other? And what might queer theory teach us about peatland justice? This inquiry will take the form of a zine, using modular binding and layered, blurred imagery to reflect the themes of instability, resistance, and multiplicity.

Unmapping class erasure around northern German peatlands
A colleague of ours who lives in the area joined us for some days, her reflections of the time spent:  “In the peat library, I found books that leaned into the working class struggles in relation to peat in northern Germany. Most narratives on turf cutters I found position them as heroic in some way, which, when coming from outside, can potentially erase the violent conditions under which workers had to live and struggle for survival. It also erases the mechanisms of marginalization of many people sent to the moors and performs a sort of class erasure. While it is important that communities themselves can be proud of their own resilience and shouldn’t be victimized, the history of Moordorf people I found in the library, too, challenges dominant narratives as they were the poorest moor colony and tried to stand up against inequality and discrimination by joining the communist party when it entered the area. Their history and their own recollections expose the reality behind today’s romanticized narratives of moor colonies as Moordorf. The way they were, due to their uprisal, structurally discriminated as unclean, sterilized and killed by Nazis shows the way the narratives around the poor are one means of structural oppression to keep them in place and disempowered.”

Mapping together

During the residency, several other artists, who are involved with the Deep Map making, joined us for a few days to conduct research and exchange ideas. Each brought their own perspective and approach to mapping peatlands. Some focused on mapping the intercontinental flows of the peat trade and its environmental impacts, while others explored local tensions around peat extraction in contested landscapes. Some maps use clay and portraiture to imagine peatland beings, and others trace the hidden presence of peatlands in urban environments through alternative photographic techniques; some maps look at post-socialist peatland histories, or the value of marginal ecological spaces facing urban pressure. Others experimented with language and sound as ways of expressing the multi-sensory and layered nature of peat. These diverse approaches contributed to a broader understanding of how peatlands can be sensed, represented, and reimagined.

Field explorations and community connections

On the 4th of April, we also took part in the National Night of the Libraries, which we co-organised with the Greifswald Mire Centre. The evening began with an introduction to the Peatland Library, followed by a multilingual reading session where we shared passages from books discovered during our first days of the residency—each in our own native language. We then presented Books ’n Bogs, a storytelling project developed in collaboration with a library in Ireland, which collects and shares personal stories about turf cutting and human-bog relationships. The night closed with informal discussions and networking, creating an open and welcoming space for exchange between local residents, researchers, and artists.

In addition to our research and map development, we participated in several field-based and public activities that enriched the residency experience. One highlight was a field trip led by Hans Joosten, deeply involved in peatland research, who guided us through a variety of sites near Greifswald. We visited a rewetted peatland, a paludiculture site, and a research station equipped with flux chambers and eddy covariance towers. Despite the harsh weather, we consider this outing as a great experience, offering valuable context for our mapping work.

A second excursion, organised in collaboration with Moorbündis, a local peat group, brought us into the wetlands in search of a rare species of Moor Frog that turns blue only briefly during mating season. This was a great way to explore queerness as the moor frog is a great example: during the mating season, the male moor frogs turn their skin as bright blue as possible in a beautiful drag act, to seduce the females.

Conclusion & Future

Our time at the library was incredibly valuable. It allowed us to dive deep into various subtopics related to the peat trade and access rare, otherwise unavailable literature. Just as importantly, it offered space to build and strengthen relationships with other peatland custodians, researchers, and advocacy groups. These connections enriched our internal conversations around peatlands and the European peat trade, and sparked exchanges that will resonate far beyond the residency. We also made significant headway on our Deep Map by taking extensive notes, sketching initial concept maps, and detailing our vision for the exhibition later this year.
Looking ahead, the maps will be displayed at a hybrid exhibition—a layered and evolving body of work developed through the Peatland Justice project and shaped in part during our residency at the Peatland Library. Instead of being a fixed exhibition, we envision multiple physical iterations of it, taking place in a unique variety of spaces and contexts across geographies that are relevant to its subject matter. Physical iterations will offer immersive, multi-sensory experiences that reimagine mapping and storytelling on peatlands. Alongside the physical exhibition, we will offer public programs including talks, workshops, and participatory mapping sessions designed to actively and collaboratively engage visitors.

A big thank you to Hans Joosten and John Couwenberg for welcoming us and sharing their time and knowledge. We truly appreciated every moment.

Podcasts recorded during the residency

This mobility project is supported by Culture Moves Europe, a project funded by the European Union and the Goethe-Institut.

This work was produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union.

Thank you to the Europe + Heritage Programme 2025–2028 for supporting our project Peat Traces: The history and legacy of peatlands in Germany and the Netherlands, supporting artists and communities to come together.

Written by Mari-Liis Bago and Bobbi, formatted for the blog post by Holly Bartley and Monika Narozna, with images by Lu Fraser and Holly Bartley.