goopie bloopie

The swamp, it’s said to be where human history began, many of the world’s first civilizations took root in marshy, water-rich environments. Some even say the garden of Eden nested within a swamp. The swamp gave shelter, food, and fertile ground. And yet for centuries, it was seen as something dangerous. A place that could swallow you. Maps stopped, demons, monsters, spirits, disease and death were said to live here. The swamp doesn’t offer clear paths or solid ground. It resists being fixed or known. Between land and water, life and death, visibility and mystery. In myths, it’s often depicted in a right of passage: the place you pass through when you’re about to change. You don’t go into the swamp to stay the same. It has always been a refuge for those pushed to the edges. People hiding from the law, from society, from violence. At the same time, it’s a cradle of life. A zone where decay and creation are constantly happening together. Frogs, moss, insects, vapors, seeds, whispers. Everything steams, seeps, ferments and mutates. It’s thick, wet, sompy and tangled. Now, the real danger is not what might be hiding in the swamp, but what’s coming into it. Humans. Development. Draining, building, controlling. Poisoning the terrain that was once invinsible and intruding the societies and tribes that found refuge there, with severe poverty as consequence. The swamp is being dried out: physically and symbolically. We want it mapped, owned, managed, destroyed. Not realizing that we are destroying ourselves in the process too.

ZOEF

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