VIDEOUNDER THE PEATLAND: ARCHIVE
Exhibition View HIAP Open Studios, Suomenlinna, Helsinki, 2025 ©Siavash Minaravesh



Video Essay
21:33 min
Color, B&W
Sound
English, Russian, German spoken language
English subtitles

Supported by
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Scholarship
Scholarship Kunstfonds Bonn
Sensing Peat, Succow Foundation

The film moves through European peatlands as ecological, political, and cultural archives of ongoing transformation. Centered on Lithuania, Latvia, and Russia, it traces how wetlands bearing the imprint of imperial infrastructures and cycles of erasure and survival. 

At its core lies a parallel between landscape and body. The scars of exploited peatlands echo in the exhausted, injured bodies of female workers whose labor sustained the industry. Violence against land and violence against workers’ bodies converge, revealing wounds that are both hidden and enduring. 

Working in a speculative documentary form, the film layers archival fragments, found footage, and animation. Under the Peatland: Archive invites viewers to perceive wetlands as witnesses, as living entities that remember extraction, embody trauma, and resist through endurance.


WATCH EXCERPT 4 MIN


Exhibition View HIAP Open Studios, Suomenlinna, Helsinki, 2025 ©Siavash Minaravesh


Exhibition View HIAP Open Studios, Suomenlinna, Helsinki, 2025 ©Siavash Minaravesh

























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