In the soft gray of the evening suddenly, the top of a stone soars up and
becomes a titmouse, then it is a stump whose bark rises and spirals
upwards, spreading its finch wings. Leaves, branches take flight before you
can realize that it's a wren. In fragments, in shreds, the forest flies up and
recomposes itself.
Baptiste Morizot, On the Animal Trail
This project was born from a collaboration between Abigail Jara (choreographer and dancer) and Juan Pampin (sound artist and composer). The work was created during a residency of MUSSE DC at the Department of Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) at the University of Washington in Seattle in April 2022. The work explores the concept of “enforesting oneself”, introduced by the French philosopher Baptiste Morizot, in his book 'Sur la piste animale' (On the Animal Trail). In his book, Morizot proposes that this new reflexive verb is necessary to describe a new relationship with nature (a term he criticizes as colonial): “Enforesting oneself is a twofold movement, as the reflexive verb suggests: we go out into the forest and it moves into us." We decided to investigate this concept from the construction of sound maps from field recordings made in the forests of Washington, California and Oregon. Based on the organization of sounds by their timbral qualities, these maps deconstruct and reconstruct the soundscape of the forest. The performance is an exploration of the territory based on sound maps, the use of sensors enables the performers to carry out a space-time reconfiguration of the forest based on its sounds, which has the body as its axis, and movement and time as its organizing principle. In turn, the performers are part of an audiovisual ecosystem in which their bodies are captured by infrared cameras –similar to those used by scientists to investigate the presence of animals in the forest– showing the ambiguity that prevails at night in these territories mostly occupied by animals, as well as the partiality and limitations of these observation systems. A second layer of video breaks down the performers' movements into point cloud textures that are projected onto their own bodies, imperceptibly integrating them into the audiovisual environment. In each section of the work, the performers explore this interactive audiovisual space based on certain concepts related to the forest, such as the animal, the arborescent, the vegetal, the aviary, and the spectral.
Credits
- Abigail Jara, Juan Pampin: conception and artistic direction.
- Marcin Pączkowski: technical direction and programming.
- Laura Luna Castillo: interactive video design.
- Raúl Mendoza Rosas: lighting design.
- Performers: Abigail Jara, Sofía Gándara, Itzamná Ponce, Emilio Olvera, and Tlathui Maza.
- Field recordings: Juan Pampin and Joseph Anderson.
- Custom design and production: La CalaCa Design.
- Co-production: Musse DC, DXARTS.
- With the support of the Mexican Consulate in Seattle.
