Performing Sphagnum: Ecological Ethics in Cryptic’s Below the Blanket

Below the Blanket (2019), a performance installation at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, staged the enmeshed multispecies relationships present in the Flow Country, the largest blanket bog system in the world. While Below the Blanket represented the Flow Country through various artistic mediums, the physical matter—the sphagnum and peat mosses—that comprises the bog was conspicuously absent. Using critical plant theory, ecodramaturgies, and performance theory, this article grapples with the ethics of staging ecological matter such as mosses within the colonial contexts of the botanic garden and provides insights into the complex ethics of ecological performance.