Swamp

[swɑmp, swɔmp]

Related terms: Biodiversity, Blended (and Blending), Habitat, Leaking, Marshland/Wetlands, Open Form (Oscar Hensen), Overlapping, Porosity, Spores, Voir Venir (French)

Swamps are sinks not only for carbon but likewise for our imagination. They belong to the realm of the uncanny, the uninhabitable; they are both wet and dry, land and water, stable and unstable. The swamp is primordial and ubiquitous; however, it has always been seen as dangerous and impenetrable. The lack of oxygen in a swamp has been said to cause hallucinations – myths of swamp monsters often arise in places with large areas of wetlands and marshes. Swamps are equally responsible for providing habitats to a plethora of beings and biodiversity that flourish in the morass. To make a swampland arable for development, it has to be entirely drained – thereby eradicating the wide range of life that thrives off of it. Once the swamp is drained, the remaining void inevitably becomes very unreliable land, plagued by sinking landmass, mudslides, and sinkholes.