Biochar Witchcraft is a series of site-specific ritual acts working with soil, microbes, plants, and touch.
Each iteration unfolds as a multi-sensory gathering in which biochar is prepared, charged, and returned to the ground. Participants work with herbal and microbial brews — nettle and comfrey ferments, rainwater, seaweed infusions — handling living materials through gesture, attention, and shared presence.
The work rests on the understanding that human and microbial life are inseparable. Microbes gathered from forest and sea — from beneath an ancient oak in Ruissalo, from bladderwrack, seawater, and rain — enter into contact with human bodies. Through handling soil, plants, and ferments, participants become part of the same living system they tend.
Resonating with ancestral practices such as Nordic slash-and-burn agriculture and Amazonian terra preta, the work treats biochar as a vessel: for microbial life, memory, and intention. Rather than producing outcomes, the ritual acts cultivate conditions — slow, collective gestures of regeneration.
A moving trace of the work:
Documentation Leo Kääriäinen,
Music ”Heitä miulle mustat mullat” by Inkeri Kurkilahti
Inkeri Kurkilahti 