Material for the Meetings of the Artistic Research Working Group of PSi (Performance Studies international) 19 April and 3 May 2024
Pondering with a Pine near You
Annette Arlander
For the online working group meeting I present an ‘assignment’ for those interested to relocate yourself to the nearest pine tree, if there is one in the vicinity, either during my presentation, preferably on a day before or then the following day. I invite you to try to engage in some kind of exchange or dialogue with the pine tree and to document that pine tree and the engagement in some manner, to help me create an online map of the pines reflecting the locations of the participants, which I will then share with you.
To get an idea of the core practice of my current project Pondering with Pines and to help navigating among all the various materials archived online, I propose to look at and listen to one or two of my 22 talks with a pine in Kaivopuisto Park in the year 2023. https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1323410/1889522
They can also be listened to as a playlist of the podcast Talking with Trees https://soundcloud.com/user-90370389/sets/pondering-with-a-pine-in-the
The aims of the three-lingual artistic research project Pondering with Pines are expressed somewhat vaguely in the project blog:
“The main concern is how to develop ways of recognizing and engaging with the subjectivity of life forms such as trees, which we tend to consider as wholly ‘other’. How to develop acts of thinking, reflecting, pondering or speaking with trees, next to them or in some form of collaboration with them. How to consider historical, cultural, material and local aspects when encountering specific trees. How to develop imaginative and poetic ways of encountering pine trees and engaging with them.”
The project is now at its third and final year of gathering material, which can be engaged with on the project’s media archive on the Research Catalogue and as episodes on the podcast Talking with Trees.
Project blog https://ponderingwithpines.wordpress.com
Project archive https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1323410/1589526
Podcast Talking with Trees https://soundcloud.com/user-90370389
Annette Arlander, DA, is an artist, researcher and a pedagogue, visiting researcher at Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki; former professor in performance art and theory and professor in artistic research there, as well as at Stockholm University of the Arts. Her research interests include artistic research, performance-as-research, and the environment. Her artwork moves between the traditions of performance art, video art and environmental art. See https://annettearlander.com
