Hello, welcome to the seventh digest from the Forest Portal 🌱
A place for sharing occasional updates and musings on the growing project ‘Conversations with the Forest’.
My current studio lease is ending in August, so to say goodbye to the space I have decided to host a couple of workshops to share the project and parts of my practice while everything is set up in Surfers. (I am also looking for a new space to keep growing the forest, if you have ideas please let me know).
Making Paper with Plants
Using plant matter, seeds and fern spores join me for a workshop and learn to make paper from plants.
After the workshop you can take some paper home or contribute it to the #conversationswiththeforest project where you can write a letter to the future forest I am growing in Surfers Paradise.
Date: Sunday 14 July, 11:00am - 1:00pm
Location: 4217 Building, 10 Beach Road, Surfers Paradise.
All welcome. Limited spots. Cups of tea included.
Letters to the Forest
An experimental writing and thinking workshop, where you will write, think, and share ideas encompassing more-than-human perspectives.
In this workshop you will be invited to write a letter to the forest, the letter will become part of the larger Conversations with the Forest artwork. In the future it will be planted with the forest and eventually grow into the trees.
Date: Saturday 20 July, 10:00am - 11:00am
Location: 4217 Building, 10 Beach Road, Surfers Paradise.
All welcome. Limited spots. Cups of tea included.
How does the forest listen?
I have been sitting with this question— how does the forest listen? thinking about the science of how a tree listens and thinking about the known and unknown ways that the forest is listening— listening for the water deep below, listening for the pfff of a mushroom pushing through the surface, listening for the crack of a new seed opening, listening to a myriad of birds and insects, listening to the patterns of vibrations warnings of incoming threats, listening for sunlight and rain, the forest is listening through a web of entangled relationships.
I’ve also been thinking about what it means to be a forest in a city? What sounds do urban trees hear? — the low rumble of traffic, the speed boats reverberating in the river, the conversations between humans sitting below, the clangs and bangs of scaffolding and cranes as another tower goes up beside them, the pounding of jack hammers cracking concrete, the high pitch of a siren, the warble of a magpie, the screech of a cockatoo, the squawking of noisy minors chasing honeyeaters, the ultrasound of a bat, the trees, the bats and us, we are all listening to this cacophonous symphony.
What would it mean for our cities to consider the impact of urban sounds on the more-than-human beings who inhabit the city? How might it change the ways we move, orient ourselves and notice others? How can we find space for more silence in the cityscape? How will we build community with humans and other than human beings in a post-Anthropocene world?
This morning I was listening to a conversation with adrienne marie brown (linked below) on radical imagination, and I was reminded of something I have been thinking about in relation to the ‘Conversations with the Forest’ project. I was reminded of the potential of imagination. We are living within the systems and city designs that were imagined by someone in the past, here in Surfers Paradise that includes mostly high-rises where there was once a dense littoral forest. With this project I want to imagine an alternative future to the one we are hurtling towards, to imagine beyond the constructs that our current system places upon us, to imagine something that might seem radical - a city that is imbedded and designed around sites for multi-species thriving. A city that imbeds the intelligence of forests and forest systems within its design.
With that in mind I would love to invite you to take a moment today to sit with your own radical imaginations to dream of a future you want to live in, that you want your great grandchildren to live in.
To ask the question what could the place you live in feel like, smell like, sound like and look like in 100 years time?
In process this week:
📖 Reading: The Peregrine, J.A. Baker (this was recommended to me by Lawrence English some years ago and I’m finally getting to it. Baker captures the experience of the peregrine and landscape with exquisite beauty, if you yearn for flight this book is for you).
👂 Listening: adrienne marie brown - on radical imagination and moving towards life
🌱 Propagating: Native Ginger
❓ Asking: How does the forest listen?
🚀 Other current/upcoming projects: This week myself and collaborator artist Laurie Oxenford are working on Parks Anonymous a new project exploring “interstructures” for public parks. The Carbon Dating project and my work Sewing the Seeds is currently on a regional tour in QLD it will be showing next at Redlands Gallery from 11 Aug - 29 Sept. And Ten by The Farm will premiere at Bleach Festival 3 - 10 Aug— you can catch us at the North Burleigh festival site.