FOREST

LabZone Forest proposes a collective exploration that examines our living spaces, specifically our interactions with trees and the forest as a complex ecosystem, as well as the role we play, as artists, in preserving this essential habitat and observing the phenomena of life.
Like all plants, trees play an active part in transforming the world. They contribute to soil formation, shape landscapes and play a major role in maintaining the climate balance. They produce oxygen and provide numerous essential resources, such as fuel, food, building materials and shelter. They also constitute complex ecosystems, within which a multitude of species coexist and maintain interdependent relationships. Trees also have a unique relationship with time. Their existence is not measured by the ticking of a clock, industrial time or human activities, but by their own temporalities, embedded in their cycles of growth, transformation and renewal.
Through readings, film screenings and lectures – such as those by François Hallé, Ernst Zürcher and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing – as well as walks in the forest in the Emmental/CH and the Forest of Orléans/F and meetings with artists and foresters, students are encouraged to develop research projects in the visual arts, sound, painting or performance.
In the first semester, in addition to group readings and site walks, the artist and poet Michèle Haenni/CH and the founders of the Ateliers dans la forêt, Alexandre Benjamin Navet/F and Rémi Bracquemond/F will be invited to give a lecture and lead discussions.
In the second semester, we will spend a week at the Ateliers dans la forêt, situated in the heart of the Forest of Orléans, in the Loiret, at Boismorand/Les Choux/F.
During this week, we plan to immerse ourselves in the vastness of the surrounding forest, possibly including a visit to the Arboretum national des Barres, as well as creating ephemeral sound instruments from wood or clay, with a view to communicating with the forest.
Participants will present their research at the end of the first semester, as well as at the end of the week spent in residence in the forest.