Pearl and Theory are two artistic personas created by Kate Clayton and Sophie Seita for a lockdown project of remote composting. With the worms as our collaborators, our intergenerational (70 meets 33) earth-based dialogue investigated how compost can become a metaphor for transformation and sustainability. Compost is a re-interpretation of the earth to create new forms. A fermenting. A digesting. Since lockdown in March, Pearl (aka Kate Clayton) took possession of a compost bin and raised bed in Perthshire, Scotland. In response to Sophie’s performative character, Theory, via email, phone, and Zoom, the bed was worked on through the growing seasons (spring and summer), fed by Theory in London who spouted definitions from a laptop in the raised bed or composed worm-arias for Pearl to dance to. Pearl and Theory took on the workmanlike humility of worms. Pearl chewed her way through Theory’s inputs: discarding, breaking down, assimilating, and integrating. Theory, in turn, responded to Pearl’s in-situ performances through texts and sound. This back and forth represents for them the layering and collaborative care that compost symbolises. The raised bed constantly reinvented itself as a frame and stage for installation, text, and performance. Old habits and behaviours needed to go into the bin to be transformed by a feasible and sustainable way forward and a new politics of care. In this time of precarity and isolation, Pearl and Theory moved through what they have in common likeawormthroughsoil. Pearl believes that you can make a purse out of a sow’s ear. But, more importantly, sows’ ears can be made out of purses.