LINDA SEIFFERT

Entanglements of Earth

A Mythopoetic Swamp Shrine

Introduction: A Monster Reimagined

At the heart of Entanglements of Earth coils a reborn Hydra—no longer a monster to be vanquished, but a being to be beheld. Through eleven glass heads filled with mud, minerals, and microbial life, this ancient figure—drawn from Greek mythology and filtered through contemporary ecological consciousness—becomes a living conduit between myth and matter, spirit and science.

This exhibition reimagines the monstrous not as abject or marginal, but as central, (re)generative, and entangled. Here, the Hydra is a symbol of complexity—ecological, spiritual, and epistemological. Her breath no longer brings death, but provocation: a challenge to the boundaries between living and non-living, nature and culture, human and more-than-human.

A Shrine to the Slow Swamp

Entanglements of Earth is an elemental offering. It invites visitors into an immersive, multisensory environment—a sculptural swamp shrine made of ceramics, raw clay, steel, bark, projection, sound, and light. Inspired by microbial ecologies and mythic imaginaries, the installation becomes a site of encounter.

The swamp is both literal and symbolic. It is a liminal space where categories blur, where decay and rebirth coexist, where what lies beneath the surface is just as vital as what rises above it. Audio drips, tangled roots, lichen, moss, and shadowy forms evoke a living landscape—a mythogeography where the more-than-human takes centre stage.

Cosmologies of Mud and Microbe

This work seeks to celebrate and complicate the idea of “cosmology”—not as a fixed story of the heavens, but as a relational, muddy, and plural narrative of Earth. It draws from diverse epistemologies: microbial ecology, soil science, animist traditions (both Indigenous and Hellenic), and mythopoetics.

At the core of the installation are eleven Winogradsky columns—sealed glass vessels where microbial metabolisms produce vibrant gradients of colour, sediment, and gas. These columns function as speculative microcosms: living portraits of decay and transformation. They are biological, chemical, and aesthetic at once. As they bubble and bloom, they tell quiet stories of nutrient cycles, metabolic choreography, and ancient microbial entanglements.

These columns also act as heads of the Hydra—a being whose multiplicity resists singular interpretation. In some myths, her heads regenerate endlessly; in others, she guards sacred springs or underworld thresholds. In Entanglements of Earth, she becomes a site of convergence: a place where the mythic and microbial become kin.

A place where the microbes enters the myth. Creating new mythologies around microbes…

Animism, Myth, and Material

Rather than separating “natural” and “cultural” ways of knowing, Entanglements of Earth proposes an animist-materialist approach. It asks: what if rocks, rivers, fungi, and microbes are not inert resources, but beings with agency and personhood? What if artistic practice can help us attune to their vitality?

This project is deeply informed by theories of revised animism, as discussed in the works of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Deborah Bird Rose, and Boaventura de Sousa Santos. It also engages with monster theory and ecofeminist re-readings of classical mythology, in particular those that see mythical monsters as embodiments of nonbinary, transformative power (see Limpar 2021, Kirk 2008, Ruck 2016).

The Hydra becomes a vector for this inquiry—a mythic figure through which we ask new ecological questions. What can her multiplicity teach us about distributed intelligence? What does her toxicity suggest about the blurred line between poison and medicine, danger and vitality?

No patriarchy or modernity - the loss of the mystery cult derived from the feminine nature ritual.

Art as Entangled Inquiry

Entanglements of Earth is an open-ended, affective encounter—what might be called an act of “thinking-with” mud, microbe, and myth. It is both speculative and sensory. It holds space for discomfort, delight, curiosity, and ambiguity.

Through slow processes of ceramic firing, mud collection, microbial cultivation, sculptural assemblage, and projection design, the artists (Linda Seiffert and Gregory Crocetti) foreground a methodology of collaboration—not only between each other, but with material, environment, and unseen organisms.

This work does not seek to resolve ecological crisis through clarity. Instead, it insists on complexity. It invites visitors to sit in the thick, tangled, swampy middle—to dwell in the fertile unknown.

Conclusion: Listening to the Swamp

Ultimately, Entanglements of Earth is an invitation. To listen deeply. To approach the monster with care. To dwell in the swamp’s slowness. To witness the strange beauty of microbial life and the mythic figures we have ignored, banished or forgotten.

It asks us to consider how ecological attention might also be spiritual, how storytelling might also be scientific, and how art might open new portals for thinking and feeling through the Anthropocene.

The Hydra does not offer answers. She multiplies questions.

She waits.