Covering with Earthworms: A little bit of everything

Authors

  • Emilie Gallier

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Keywords:

earthworms, zine, soil gatherings, eyes as feet, covering to regenerate

Abstract

Covering, with earthworms is a study of the zine des Minières, an ongoing collective and participatory documentation practice. The zine partly appears to the reader as animated gif (online version) or as a scrolling collection of images (PDF version). When read in performance, the zine pages physically covers soils, inviting readers aboveground while invoking presences underground. Within regenerative farming, covering a soil (a future vegetable bed for instance) is to feed it with organic matter. The decomposition caused by the covering matter feeds earthworms who plough the underground. The article experiments with forms of decomposition of the zine, covering our eyes, and being digested through us, with soils.

Author Biography

Emilie Gallier

Emilie Gallier is a choreographer researcher who lives between Leiden (The Netherlands) and Les Minières (France). She developed the idea and practice of reading in and as performance, in her practice-as-research PhD: Reading in Performance, Lire en Spectacle (2021, Centre for Dance Research Coventry University, DAS Graduate School). Her engagement with artistic research as a researcher (Amsterdam University of the Arts), a tutor (THIRD), peer (PEERS, Zürich), co-editor (De Nieuwedansbibliotheek), bookworm, gleaner and spectator, shapes her attention and experience with forms of writing and publishing, and with what is active in practices. She is co-founder of Les Minières in Normandy (France), gathering regenerative agriculture and performing art practices.

References

Bigé, Emma. 2023. Mouvementements: Écopolitiques de la danse. Éditions la Découverte.

Darwin, Charles. 1881. The formation of vegetable mould, through the action of worms, with observations on their habits. John Murray. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.107559

Jemisin, N. K. 2015-2017. The Broken Earth Trilogy (The Fifth Season; The Obelisk Gate; The Stone Sky). Orbit.

Jullien, François, 2018. Living Off Landscape: or the Unthought-of in Reason. Translated by Pedro Rodriguez. Rowman & Littlefield. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9798881812294

Rivière, Léa. 2023. L’odeur des pierres mouillées. Éditions du commun.

Williams, Lu. 2021. “Zines as a Tool for Activism.” Online conversation with Sheila Coates, Hamja Ahsan, and Rhona Ezuma, 22 May 2021. Accessed 5 June 2025. https://www.estuaryfestival.com/event/detail/zines-as-a-tool-for-activism.html.

Published

08-10-2026

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