The Compost Heap
A living an-archive. Working more like compost than a museum.
This is not a library. It does not preserve. It transforms. What you bring here — a recording, a photograph, a poem, a practice, a piece of science — mingles with what others have brought, breaks down, nourishes something new. Layers seep into one another. Meaning is always collective, woven from the interplay of roots and breath, carbon and memory.
The Compost Heap is organized not by medium but by ecological theme — so a poem and a field recording and a scientific essay might all live together under Decomposition/Recomposition, speaking to each other in ways a conventional archive never could. Tag connections between contributions. Let a sound piece inspire a painting. Let a painting link to a contemplation. Let things mingle.
The Five Themes
Energy Exchange —
Wind patterns, water currents, mycelial networks, bioelectricity, breathwork, electromagnetic fields, thermal cycles, photosynthesis, bioluminescence
Diversity & Multiplicity —
Umwelt, sensory attunement, nighttime ecologies, endosymbiosis, multispecies assemblages, holobiont communities, microbial worlds
Decomposition/Recomposition —
Composting processes, human composting, seasonal cycles, weathering, elemental belonging, matter transformation, threshold spaces, blurred boundaries
Change & Transformation —
Migrations, metamorphosis, geological time, awe & wonder, co-evolutionary responses, climate patterns
Relationality —
Mycorrhizal networks, entanglement, ecotones, intra-action, quantum physics, Indigenous wisdom, Black Diasporic thought, lichen symbiosis, biogeochemical cycles, holomovement, rheomode, response-ability
Browse
Enter any theme to move through what has been contributed. Listen, look, read. Tag what moves you. Tag what connects.
Contribute
The Compost Heap grows through what you bring. Audio recordings, field notes, photography, artwork, writing, practices, rituals, scientific intra-actions — anything that opens toward ecological re-cognition. Contributions are tended: reviewed for alignment with our ethical commitments before joining the heap.
- Choose a theme (or more than one)
- Upload your contribution
- Tag any existing contributions that inspired it or that it speaks to
- Add a brief note about what moved you to make it
Contributions are tended in accordance with CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance and African Data Ethics frameworks. See our ethical commitments on the About page.