Active Trees – Knowledge, Technologies and Futures

This research project is part of Material Form Function at the Cluster »Matters of Activity« and contributes to their research by developing an interdisciplinary and humanities-based perspective on forests, wood, and bark. It draws on posthuman approaches, STS, history of knowledge, decolonial thought as well as feminist theory and queer ecologies to map tree-related knowledges, technologies, and futures by drawing on scientific works, material cultures, and cultural production (art, film, exhibitions, literature). The project is heuristically structured in the three thematic areas that explore relevant examples and case studies:

KNOWLEDGE–TREE

Over a time span of several centuries, large areas populated by trees and its heterogeneous companion species have become the target of systematic human and state interventions as well as analytical science. Tree collectives are subjected to extractive practices and scientifically described to create profound knowledge about the manageability, functionality and processability of forests and woods. Such passivization of forest ecosystems as backdrop for human action as well as wood as an inert material for architectures, infrastructures etc. may be contrasted with situated local knowledges of plant-human entanglements aiming to repair and regenerate forest ecosystems. To explore the various material legacies as well as the often-conflicting knowledges entangled with trees and forests as active or passive matter, the project will go beyond a history of science perspective and focus on crucial examples of natural-cultural techniques, artistic practices as well as decolonial thought, feminist and queer theory to raise questions about the position and significance of forests, trees, and wood within Anthropocene environments.

TECHNO–TREE

Recently, forests are increasingly intersecting with technological environments such as digital media. Trees along with sensor media and global monitoring projects co-produce data on a large scale and aim to contribute to policies and measures to mitigate effects of climate crisis. Such techno-forests have a critical position in rethinking the futures of a damaged planet. Against this backdrop, the project sets out to critically describe the frictions created between decreasing or unhealthy forests, citizen science projects, media arts and platform capitalism. Thereby, it strives to investigate novel forms of data dissemination and communicative strategies with regards to trees, their activities, artistic interventions and digital consumer practices (i.e. search engines like Ecosia.org and reforestation campaigns).

FUTURE-TREE

While the future of trees and forests is at great risk, novel forms of more-than-human co-existence are emerging. City forests, tiny forests, wood as so-called renewable material, forests as ecosystem services, and other variations articulate the uncertainty and ambivalence of these future scenarios. Yet they also do incorporate expectations of building a common way out of the current crisis by tackling issues like sustainability. Hence the urgency to map wood, for instance, in its waste dimension and rethink residues like bark and infested wood for scrutinizing their potentials for building novel concepts in urbanism, architecture or fashion. In this research area, the »Active Trees« will particularly collaborate with design research and material science (Syntopic Architecture).

Subproject

›One Big Green Thought‹. Repair, Regeneration and Rewilding as Artistic Practices in Damaged Environments

Subevents