Debris of old, discarded cables and devices are gleaned and brought together as part of an unfolding habitat in this new iteration of slowth (habitats) (yet). This iteration is an open, shared practice, a communal rehearsal, towards habitats that are not yet but simultaneously here already.

 

The broken bodies of cables and device joints are remnants of accelerated circulations. They are infrastructure who once enabled constant connectivity, transmission of energy and instantaneous communication. Carriers of signals. Electrified activity. Networked speed. Collapse of distance, of space, by time.[1] Are they witnesses who once embodied this circuit of seamless availability? Are they an ‘afterlife’ of speed?

 

Released from their function as infrastructure, they become part of a slower, metabolic habitat within slowth (habitats) (yet). Gleaned and foraged from the surroundings—buildings, cities, homes and scrapyards—they hold memories of the circuits they were once part of.[2] They now embody interrupted flow, deactivated connection, infrastructural pause and technological afterlife. Leftovers and residue. Could they weave themselves into a substrate? Would they return as a habitat such as a sloth’s dense, symbiotic hair made possible through her pace of being? Sloths seem to have chosen slowness over speed as their strategy of survival. Their extremely slow metabolism means weeks of digestion and minimal activity to conserve energy. This, in turn, allows her to operate under the threshold of detection by predators and enables a stable substrate on her body for others[3] to thrive. The algae growing on her hair become her camouflage and a source of nutrients in times of scarcity. What if infrastructure served metabolism rather than acceleration?

 

slowth (habitats) (yet) is a temporal and spatial habitat. As much as a specific and unique site such as Brunssummerheide requires diversity of habitats[4], species and even conservation methods to maintain its metabolism, temporal habitats require diversity.[5] Slowness, here, may be felt as a container that allows room for these richly varied durations and rhythms to come alive in their full textures, rather than flattening them. Slowness may be a container that resists fragmentation of time into razor sharp units that are replaceable, disposable and profitable.

 

At Greylight Projects, elements and agencies from the previous iteration of slowth (habitats) (yet) appear and take part in the communal rehearsal, in their quiet persistence or reincarnated form. Photosynthetic microorganisms dwelling in the fibres of the garment take part in the inhaling and exhaling of gases. 설쇠 (seol-soe)[6]’s beckoning resonance invites encounters and entanglements between presupposed categories: animate/inanimate, past/present/future, abundance/scarcity, self/other.

 

Lynn Margulis shared in an interview that: ‘the past is all around us. Darwin’s biggest contribution was to show us that all individual organisms are connected through time. […] [The pioneering Russian geochemist Vladimir] Vernadsky showed us that organisms are not only connected through time but also through space. The carbon dioxide we exhale as a waste product becomes the life-giving force for a plant; in turn, the oxygen waste of a plant gives us life. This exchange of gas is what the word spirit means. Spirituality is essentially the act of breathing. But the connection doesn’t stop at the exchange of gases in the atmosphere. We are also physically connected, and you can see evidence of this everywhere you look.’[7]

 

Brunssummerheide is a remnant of a larger heathland, now partially wooded, buried under a landfill or built upon. It was once a common land, which would have been accessed freely by communities for pasturing and gathering peat, turf or small wood. These commons of various types were present throughout Europe. Brunssummerheide’s history is also entwined with the process of enclosure—through privatisation and reclamation—that took place over centuries, particularly between the 16th and 19th century, across Britain and the rest of Europe. In Brunssummerheide, the need for sheep farming disappeared around 1900 with the introduction of artificial fertilisers. The heathlands, then seen as ‘devoid of function’ were reclaimed on a large scale, which occurred throughout Western Europe. It is said that this process proceeded even faster and ‘more silently’ in South Limburg, partly due to the fragmentation of the heathland area.[8]

 

Fragmentation of spatial habitats has been and is at stake in this landscape. Plants and pollinators need space, at least in the form of a ‘corridor’, to roam, survive and thrive. What if the same fragmentation is happening to temporal habitats? Currently, large-scale extraction of minerals continues on the other side of the thin barbed wire fence that marks the border between Brunssummerheide and the quarry. The site mainly excavates and processes silica sand, which is made of quartz. Sand and quartz have also found their way into the history of measuring and ordering time, with increasing precision, from hourglass to quartz clocks. While having a wide range of applications, silica sand, in its purest form, is used for optical fibre, electronics and semiconductors.

 

The sand in this area is a trace from the Miocene, some 23 to 5 million years ago, when significant parts of this land were by the coast. This makes it much older than almost all the sandy hills in the country. Back to the present, the mining of sand is expected to continue until 2045 in the vicinity of Brunssummerheide, based on the current permit. The final plan of the quarry includes integrating the site to Brunssummerheide, after which it will merge with the nature reserve by 2032. Eventually, three bodies of water will be shaped through the activity of the quarries and become part of the landscape.

 

The weathered cables resemble the tentacular, intelligent stems of squashes winding their way towards the sun in my allotment in northeast London. They cross-pollinate freely. Siri Knowledge on my phone identifies the image of a broken tangled cable component as ‘pondweed’, who I encountered during a visit to Brunssummerheide with the conservationist and entomologist Hendrik Mertens. Their genus name Potamogeton means ‘river neighbour’. They hybridise freely. They are difficult to identify and there are more than 50 hybrids worldwide. Molecular analyses suggest that unknown cryptic species of Potamogeton exist.

 

In the heart of Brunssummerheide, Potamogetons live alongside many other neighbours in the area where Roode Beek emerges. There are fens where groundwater seeps and bogs where peat mosses nestle. Close to these spongy Sphagnum moss, who grow 1 millimeter per year, lies a layer of bubbling algae. They are venting oxygen from their slimy green bodies in this otherwise nutrient-poor bog. They are photosynthesising. Could this exchange of gases, of energy, be a form of metabolic dance?

 

In another patch, the mushy border between water and land takes on hues of red and brown. The bubbling water in this very source of Roode Beek contains iron, which immediately rusts due to the oxygen. ‘Rust’ in Dutch means ‘rest’ as in repose in English. ‘Rest’ as in remainder in English is ‘rest’ in Dutch. Remnants. Residue. Leftovers. ‘Rust’ as corrosion is ‘roest’, which sounds similar to ‘rust’ in Dutch, bringing me back to the resting waters of the mineral-rich red brook. The etymology of rust reveals a sense of ‘deteriorating or spoiling from disuse or idleness’.

 

I wrapped heavy, rusted metallic bodies from the scrapyard with wet cotton. Their decay is being imprinted. The textile is the same fleecy one that I used to piece together the garment where the photosynthetic microorganisms still linger. ‘Time is not something that you can accumulate. Time is something you can accommodate in, and take pleasure of the decomposition of yourself’, notes Franco Berardi. ‘Taking pleasure of the becoming-other of yourself. Becoming-other means being yourself without protecting yourself’[9]. Rust seems to exude a glimpse of how to stay with this pleasure.

 

Weaving the cables, I am brought closer to the rhythms and movements that their bodies retain. Their unruly bodies meander, erupt and sprout even as they merge. My body moves back and forth along their weft and warp. We are dancing together. This slow dance unfolds as woven habitats that are in proportion to the size of my body. The agency and affordance of each cable remnant may expand and be reimagined through encounters with other bodies in the communal rehearsals that are here and yet to come.

 

slowth (habitats) (yet) is perhaps a space and time, specific to this place and moment while belonging to other multiple possible habitats, that rehearses. Rehearsing temporal and temporary habitats where ‘hyper-mingling between organisms and environments […] over time turns environments into bodies’.[10]

 

 

* This text was written between January and March 2026 during my time in Heerlen in the Netherlands, where I nurtured a new iteration of slowth (habitats) (yet) (2023 – ongoing). The images are part of this research and process.

 

[1] Paul Virilio, Grey Ecology, 2009. Karl Marx, Grundrisse, 1857-1858.

[2] I would connect this to urban animism.

[3] The algae Trichophilus Welckeri, who only live on sloths’ hair, and a range of sloth moths who lay eggs in sloths’ dung, live on their hair and contribute to providing nutrients for the algae. It is likely that they have co-evolved through this symbiotic relationship.

[4] Peat bogs, wet and dry heaths, grasslands, sandy plains, swamp forest as well as coniferous and deciduous forests are found within walking distances.

[5] This connects to chronodiversity.

[6] A brass and wooden percussion instrument played in shamanic rituals in Jeju, a volcanic island in South Korea. Percussions are considered as instruments for getting closer to spirits, deities and ancestors.

[7] Jonathan White, Talking on the Water: conversations about nature and creativity, 2016. Margulis was an evolutionary biologist who transformed the understanding of evolution by expanding on the importance of co-operation in evolutionary change when the dominant idea saw competition as its main force. Her insight was that complexity could emerge through symbiosis between organisms of different species.

[8] H. Hillegers, ‘Heidevelden in Zuid-Limburg’ in Natuurhistorisch Maandblad 69 (9), 1980.

[9] Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi in Bifo: After the Future, directed by Gary Genosko and produced by the Infoscape Centre for the Study of Social Media, Ryerson University, 2011.

[10] Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Gaia and Philosophy, 2023.