Our third workshop In Conversation with Trees will take place on the 11th and 12th of September in the Forest of Dean. We'll be working with the Wye Valley Area of Outstanding National Beauty. In this post Richard Coles, who is organising the workshop, shares some of his thinking behind the event.
Forest of Dean (John McConnico CC BY 2.0) For the next workshop we move from the animal kingdom to the plant kingdom to have ‘conversations with trees’. We will immerse ourselves for two days and nights in the forest environment in order to seek to understand some of the dimensions and processes that trees express through their unique physiology and expressions of growth.
Trees feature prominently in the human psyche. Many of us are drawn to them as major symbols of a natural and healthy environment. Trees span generations and have a permanence which seems to defy the fragility of human existence, forming markers and providing foci of memories and events recorded in history. Trees have been and still are the most prominent permanent features in the landscape. They form boundary markers and many individual trees are commemorated in names which record their importance, symbolism and associated events – The Tree of Life, The Mitre Oak where the Bishops of Worcester and Wales met, The Sherwood Oak associated with Robin Hood, Adam and Eve (two ancient oaks that once stood in Moreton on Lugg Herefordshire). Our woodlands have the same associations, ‘Flora’s Wood’, for example, planted and named to commemorate the tragic death of a loved daughter. Forests are linked with ideas of freedom, environmentalism, tree hugging, the natural. Our conversations with trees are well developed, deep seated and profound.
There are many folklore associations between trees and conversations. The wonderful tree, the Black Poplar featured by Constable in his landscape paintings, is said to talk to the traveller as its leaves rustle and chatter in the breeze and to foretell the coming of bad weather - an approaching storm. But the conversation continues in the use of a tree's timber, the structure of the grain, its unique qualities and precise memory locked within its growth. The Ginkgo (an ancient tree far preceding the existence of human life) continues to express its geological pedigree through its unique aesthetic where we attempt to capture its longevity by extracting herbal products in the belief that we can assimilate its apparent ability to defeat time.
Trees feature prominently in the human psyche. Many of us are drawn to them as major symbols of a natural and healthy environment. Trees span generations and have a permanence which seems to defy the fragility of human existence, forming markers and providing foci of memories and events recorded in history. Trees have been and still are the most prominent permanent features in the landscape. They form boundary markers and many individual trees are commemorated in names which record their importance, symbolism and associated events – The Tree of Life, The Mitre Oak where the Bishops of Worcester and Wales met, The Sherwood Oak associated with Robin Hood, Adam and Eve (two ancient oaks that once stood in Moreton on Lugg Herefordshire). Our woodlands have the same associations, ‘Flora’s Wood’, for example, planted and named to commemorate the tragic death of a loved daughter. Forests are linked with ideas of freedom, environmentalism, tree hugging, the natural. Our conversations with trees are well developed, deep seated and profound.
There are many folklore associations between trees and conversations. The wonderful tree, the Black Poplar featured by Constable in his landscape paintings, is said to talk to the traveller as its leaves rustle and chatter in the breeze and to foretell the coming of bad weather - an approaching storm. But the conversation continues in the use of a tree's timber, the structure of the grain, its unique qualities and precise memory locked within its growth. The Ginkgo (an ancient tree far preceding the existence of human life) continues to express its geological pedigree through its unique aesthetic where we attempt to capture its longevity by extracting herbal products in the belief that we can assimilate its apparent ability to defeat time.
Forest of Dean Bluebells (kennysarmy CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) To refine our conversations we will be adopting a range of approaches which can be broadly described as ‘performative’ and which draw upon different techniques often derived from an art based intervention approach. The idea that the landscape performs is well established in landscape circles. While the landscape is often perceived as static, when one moves through it different interactions occur, cued by sensory engagement and creating a dialogue between observer and the environment like a performance. In doing so the dynamic processes are revealed and a conversation initiated. Exactly what these conversations are and what the trees tell us we will find out.
Performative approaches are gaining popularity and credibility as important qualitative technique in the fields of anthropology, cultural studies and similar. They require specific tasking/actions involving shared interactions and experiences highlighted as helping to understand human behaviour, especially regarding aspects that have problematic representation (see Wikipedia's performative turn for a brief overview).
We will use the approach to elicit our conversations with trees, we will linger in the forest, listen to the trees, ‘tune in’ and hold our conversations, examine their memories, work with their very substance of the trees to feel their grain and pattern of growth. We will consider their different languages and expressions of form and function, their aesthetic, we will sensitise ourselves to the qualities, properties and processes of the trees. We will hear from our hosts, the Wye Valley AONB about their work involving the unique qualities of the forest and their own conversations, how they elicited them and the consequences of their actions.
Performative approaches are gaining popularity and credibility as important qualitative technique in the fields of anthropology, cultural studies and similar. They require specific tasking/actions involving shared interactions and experiences highlighted as helping to understand human behaviour, especially regarding aspects that have problematic representation (see Wikipedia's performative turn for a brief overview).
We will use the approach to elicit our conversations with trees, we will linger in the forest, listen to the trees, ‘tune in’ and hold our conversations, examine their memories, work with their very substance of the trees to feel their grain and pattern of growth. We will consider their different languages and expressions of form and function, their aesthetic, we will sensitise ourselves to the qualities, properties and processes of the trees. We will hear from our hosts, the Wye Valley AONB about their work involving the unique qualities of the forest and their own conversations, how they elicited them and the consequences of their actions.
RSS Feed
