ARCHIVES OF THE EARTH is a site-specific research performance which consists of the simultaneous act of on-site printmaking and text writing. The project sets out to rethink the possibilities and intentions of contemporary landscape archiving. The first series of this project is focused on the volcanic systems of the Reykjanes peninsula in Iceland. By locating specific coordinates, which are permeable to be transformed, an embodied practice faces questions that seem to be at the core of any performing art: what is the present moment and how can a human vessel translate it? In the fall of 2023 the DEER DEAR artist duo Isadora Alves and Christoph Matt, were invited as guest lecturers to conduct participatory research with the students of the MFA Embedded Design program, HDK-Valand, Gothenburg, Sweden, and the MA Design & New Environments program, Iceland University of the Arts, Reykjavik, Iceland. During the time of the lecture series, an imminent eruption on the Reykjanes peninsula was predicted.

This publication is a collection of remote and on-site inquiries of the immediate environment of the Reykjanes peninsula and its volcanic habitat. Departing from individual experience and critical reflections, each research perspective (based on ecological, social, and economic entanglements), in combination with a critical lens, contributes to the research object through written associations and materialisations connected to the interdisciplinary research context.