Mycological provisions
(2016)
author(s): Christopher Lee Kennedy
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition considers the use of mycology and chance operation as a method and material for arts-based research. The exposition details a series of mushroom hunting excursions designed to engage four artist-teachers in collaborative dialogue about their practice and identity. As participant and researcher converse, the hunts unfold as dérive-like encounters with a landscape interrupted through chance and embodied experience. The project draws from the work of artist and composer John Cage, who used fungi and mushroom hunting as one of many devices for exploring sound and its relationship to environment. Contextual research and documentation offer a glimpse into this process, while considering unstructured, kinetic, and uncertain ways of knowing in qualitative and arts-based research. The aim is to explore mycology as a post-formal lens for understanding the pedagogical and creative practices of the artist-teacher as a networked, fluid, and relational system.
A study of two dead trees
(last edited: 2020)
author(s): Iver Uhre Dahl
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
In a forest in the Hague there are two dead trees. The trees are neighbours of similar age. The have fallen over next to each other, felled by the rot of an invading fungi, which also appears long dead. The stumps and the roots, still attached to the ground, have been completely hollowed out by the rot. The hollow extends into the earth, seemingly through the roots.
The dark stumps stand in dark contrast to their vivid surroundings. The holes in them, created by the invading rot, and the dryness of dead wood make for a weird acoustic. It began as an attempt to study them. By drawing, climbing, listening to and singing into them I had hoped to unlock the potential I saw. This document is a journal of my observations on the trees, on my place in the forest and a report on the interventions they inspired.