Sphagnum Time is an ongoing series of films and installations created by artist-researcher and filmmaker Sissel Marie Tonn, for which I have been composing and producing music and immersive spatial sound installations. The films and installatons take as their source material the cultural and ecological significance of bog wetland ecosystems. Bogs in many traditional and ancestral cultures have been thought of as awe-inspiring sites of contact with spirits and gods. Now they are globally threatened ecosystems which are key to counteract ecological decline.

The films and installations base their mythology around the discovery of mummified human remains, so called “bog bodies”, that have been discovered, and in recent decades archeologically excavated, from bog wetlands. In the musical compositions, these bodies and their ecologies are literally given voice, through operatic, polyphonic and digitally manipulated soundscapes and storytelling.

“Engulfed in the sound of three singing voices … we can start our meditation on what being a bog body means and might mean for us. …We are taking a step down, both corporeally to make sense, as well as symbolically within the hierarchy that perseveres. We are bringing ourselves lower, but not at all as a marker of shame. On the contrary, this humble gesture allows us to notice that the bog bodies are not at all other – meaning, alien – to us. They are us as much as we are them. We are all becomings, alongside the destabilising technological processes of extraction. … As we listen to the song of the bog bodies visible on three screens placed on the eye level, we learn:

Read my braided hair like a map of a basement rock, stretching out beneath the landscape […]. My body registers everything. Read my age by counting the layers of the tree rings of my body, absorbing and leaking minerals, chemicals, isotopes. Building up across thousands of years.

The bog bodies beautifully show us what it might mean to become earth, to become geological. They are living within the dirt of the earth: whatever happens to the earth, the same happens to them. They prompt us to do the same by noticing that we are not on the earth but rather we are the earth.”

~ Rick Dolphijn and Justyna Jakubiec

Sphagnum Time

Concept & Artistic Direction: Sissel Marie Tonn
Digital Environment& Animation: Martin Menso, Sissel Marie Tonn
Music Composition & Sound: Jonathan Reus
Voice Performance: Stephanie Pan, Florian de Backere
Project Support: Chee Yee Tang

Sphagnum Time is commissioned by: Magda Tyżlik-Carver (PL/GB/DK) & Anders Visti (DK) for Fermenting Data project.

More information on the three-channel film “Sphagnum Time” at sisselmarietonn.com

Sphagnum Time (Braiding Fates)

Music and Sound  Jonathan Chaim Reus
Vocalists Faye Houston aka. FayeK-47, Campbell Austin aka. C.T. Burnige, Kassia Zermon aka. Bunty

Recording Engineer Dylan Beattie

More information on the three-channel film “Sphagnum Time (Braiding Fates)” at sisselmarietonn.com