on converting a spruce plantation into a forest & other projects that inspire, by Cathy Fitzgerald
From the category archives:
I like to make people stop using their eyes so much and pay more attention to the other senses like sound and touch. Touch is mostly noticeable as a sensation on your skin or your body when you are walking through a space, how you feel in a space. This is also [...]
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Some of you may have heard my news? I will be continuing my experiments in film-making about Close to Nature permanent forestry on a different level. I will be starting a PhD in film practice and theory on ecology at NCAD (National College of Art & Design, Ireland) this September!
Just to recap, I started working [...]
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I am creating an archive of movement portraits of 10,000 plants and animals. This research lies at the intersection of embodied cognition, phenomenology, natural history, and performance. The Somatic Natural History Archive is a work of conceptual art and experiential geography research. Following direct physical encounters with plants and animals, I [...]
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Image: Slovenian mixed species, non clear fell forest – what my Holly Wood forest in Co. Carlow will someday look like
When I went to Slovenia last Sept for the 20th anniversary of Pro Silva Europe and met with foresters from 27 member countries, I had little idea that I would be six months [...]
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Try to imagine a major Hollywood blockbuster in which a U.S. Army pilot hijacks a Marine Corps Blackhawk helicopter to shoot down fellow U.S. choppers in order to protect indigenous people fighting to save their rain forest from U.S. oil interests. Don’t think that could happen? Think again. It just did, says Harold Linde, Environmentalist and [...]
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Things have been busy in our woodland over the last year and the year ended in a dramatic fashion with a storm from the east that saw 10 of trees come down (four more have to come down as they are leaning precariously – if you are coming to visit don’t dawdle on the driveway!).
Over [...]
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Above: Cecil Rangendra reading at Culture | Futures 2009
The lines in the heading are a quote from an amazingly heartfelt poem Requiem for a Rainforest by celebrated Malaysian poet/lawyer, Cecil Rajendra. Cecil read it during the keynote presentations at the first Culture |Futures Symposium at the UN Climate summit, Cop15.
I went up to him [...]
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There is a growing list of cultural activities planned for the Copenhagen Climate Change summit in December, not so much in Ireland but more in the UK and Europe. See the RSA Arts for COP15 site for more info – you can join this site if you are creating work/exhibitions or just interested.
Probably the most [...]
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‘I have been aware of the sea as an enclosing presence, both sheltering and dangerous. But most important, I have noticed that the atoll (Suwarrow) belongs to the organic world; it is a living island’
RD Frisbie, ‘Island of Desire – the story of a South Seas Trader, 1944
Readers,
I have been overwhlemed by the response to [...]
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‘Almost anything you do will seem insignificant,
but it is very important that you do it‘ M. Ghandi
It’s funny how things can come together so quickly. Last weekend I was looking at all the people across the globe coming together to mark the 350 global day of climate change awareness and still thinking, I should be [...]
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follow me on twitter/ecoartnotes
My art & ecology notebook documents a SLOW ART project. It's an ongoing diary in images, short films; conversations between myself, foresters, our local community & beyond, detailing an example of how we are turning our small monoculture spruce plantation into an ecologically & economically, permanent real FOREST.
I am also interested in using film to convey personal stories of small backyard environmental actions in response to global ecological concerns. I am developing a personal, poetic narrative film-making style, that while documentary in certain aspects, allows a larger range of ideas and emotions to be presented, in contrast to standard nature documentaries.
My project 'the Holly Wood Diaries'has allowed me to create two experimental film sketches, 'burning bright' (08) and 'once i counted birds' (09) and builds on previous stories with beginner foresters and their young trees/new woodlands in the more traditionally styled documentary film 'the local project revisited', 2006
I also write about other eco-art works that inspire me & which may be inspire others.
rsa art & ecology blog Nils L. Elliot: Mediating Nature
