Chapter 3: "Librettising" ecology to create Lipote: An Interconnected Journey
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Context of the Research and Influences
3.3 Synopsis
3.4 Developing the Script
3.4.a Communication: Influence from the Science
3.4.b Exploring Different Worlds: Panarchy and Adaptive
3.4.c Soil
3.4.d The Fungal Network
3.4.e The Narrator
3.4.f The Humans
3.4.g The Rainforest
i. A Framework for the Rainforest
iii. Exploring the Rainforest through Cycles of Collaboration
3.4.h The Palm Tree Plantation
3.4.i Lipote as the Loner Tree and the "Fiery Edge"
3.4.j The Strangler Fig
3.4.k The Forest Garden (or Taungya) and the Marriage
3.6 Future Steps and Conclusion
3.4.k The Forest Garden (or Taungya) and the Marriage
As previously mentioned, when talking to Prof. Adrian Newton we were pointed in the direction of exploring the concept of forest garden or taungya. This is a type of agroforestry system in which crops are planted and rotated in cycles around the forest to ensure the health of both the forest and the harvest. It is a food production system which emulates the ecosystem of a woodland or forest as closely as possible (Nair et al., 2021). It makes use of technologies and knowledge to maximise the forest's rewards. It is a system which has been employed all over the world at various different times, although there are many accounts of forest-dwelling societies in rainforests making use of such a system. Soils are allowed to remain healthy; fertilisation is not so important and humans manage the forests to make best use of the resources available while also acting as guardians, monitoring and maintaining the health of the system.
In Managing The Wild (2018) by professor and ecologist Charles M. Peters he describes communities who live in tropical forests around the world, taken from his 35-year career as a researcher. The book contains an account of the practices of the Dayak people in the forests of West Kalimantan. The Dayak people are the indigenous non-Muslim group in Borneo who have been living in, planting, and managing the forests for centuries. He describes how the people knew each tree by name, as well as the name of the person who had planted each of the fruit trees. This is referenced in the Forest Garden song in scene 6 when the King Durian says ‘Cared for and named / Beneath their feet . . .' Names exchanged for floors of nuts’ (p. 18, lines 435, 436, 458). When referring to a walk across the forest Charles M. Peters says ‘[t]o the untrained eye, I appeared to be in a beautiful, relatively undisturbed, piece of mixed Dipterocarp forest. How had these people created such a marvellous homemade forest?' (2018: 60). In his account of the Teduray society Stuart Schlegel says:
In the local version of Teduray creation stories, Tulus, the Great Spirit who created all things, actually made human beings four different times, but in each case the purpose was “so that they could take good care of the forest.” In the fundamental Teduray cosmic scheme, the forest - or nature in general - was created to supply humans with abundance of life, and they were to live harmoniously with it and to see to its wellbeing. (1998: 80)
This account, along with discussions during seminars held by Nature Art and Habitat, is what lead me to describe the forest garden with 'walking caretakers'.
Charles M. Peters goes on to describe in his book how the Dayak people live in communal housing, around which they plant fruit trees. Once the trees grow too tall for them to live in that particular spot the residents will dismantle and move their houses to a new site. They will then go back to visit the previously planted trees to harvest, weed and engage in recreational activities. In particular, when the Durian trees start fruiting the whole village will move out to the old housing sites (called tembawang). The women will prepare rice while the men prepare small huts and weed to make the fruits easier to find. During this weeding process the unwanted plants are taken away while the more valuable seedlings and saplings are saved. This becomes the community’s new home for the entire durian season. This is referenced in the Song of New Knowledge in scene 7 (p. 23, lines 561-564): ‘We learned how trees are planted / We heard how grounds are cleared / We felt the fruits are picked / We saw with tall trees huts disappeared’ . One chapter particularly describes the fruit forests of Borneo, and cites the durian as the king fruit of the market:
Durian can be counted on to be a conversation starter. . . . everyone speculates about the harvest. Will the fruits be large, meaty, and aromatic? Will the price be as good as last year? Which villages will bring the best fruits to market? Once the durians start showing up in town, the conversation turns to where to find the tastiest and best-priced varieties. . . people talk about it all the time. (2018: 53-54)
Due to the great reverence and ritualistic importance given to the durian, as described in this book, I decided to create the character of the King Durian in the Forest Garden. The end of scene 6 shows another type of system collapse, as the ground is razed by machinery. The 'walking caretakers' disappear as the Forest Garden is destroyed.
In this scene the music is closer to musical theatre, with elements of plantation (voices in harmony) and elements of the Rainforest (polyphony). This is due to the nature of the Forest Garden as a world which has been kept as rainforest whilst being managed and planted by humans. It is somewhere on the scale between opera and pop without settling on either, as we move towards a more human but not anthropocentric, world. The trees in this landscape are less burdened with competition than those in the Rainforest. Many of the fruit trees, especially the King Durian represented on stage, are kept alive and aided in their growth and health by the human communities that live among them. The design and concept of this scene therefore took on a party atmosphere, where the King Durian and surrounding trees are able to dance and enjoy (see figure 22). Please go to timecode 00:57:50 for the full song.
The ending of the work (scene 7) was decided through chance. It did not appear obvious to me what outcome the Rainforest might incur after its long journey, and just as the future safety and security of such systems is under question, the ending of this work seemed to me to be open and unanswered. In order to decide the form of the ending I wrote down various different traditionally structured endings e.g. death, marriage, death and marriage, birth etc, as well as the possibility of moving away from this underground world of trees across the globe to see the life of the humans who are purchasing the commodities which directly affect these forests. One was chosen at random and the ending I was provided with through chance was 'marriage'. This actually enabled me to create an open ending which would still involve the human element of the systems, as well as integrating Fleiss's research mentioned above, which suggests that human intervention is now necessary in the patches of pristine rainforest left between plantations (2020). I decided it should be a marriage between the humans of the Forest Garden and the Rainforest. This begins with the knowledge transferred from the fusing of the fungal networks of the Rainforest and Forest Garden. I directly referenced some of the practices, as described above, alongside others such as tooling – growing branches in the shape required for tools then pruning those branches, which in turn encourages the tree to grow more – in scene 7’s song of knowledge. Please go to timecode 01:11:10 to watch this section.
The people of the forest garden, their land having been deforested in scene 6, were displaced and so went in search of a new home: the Rainforest. The way the Rainforest becomes aware of the presence of the people of the forest garden is through the planting of a new baby durian tree. They tell the rainforest of the displacement during their short aria at timecode 01:14:35 (p. 24-25, lines 592-595): ‘Caretakers in crisis / Became displaced / A changing of state / Defoliated and dislocated / We were forced to go’. Charles M. Peters tells us of rainforest foresting communities that:
What all of these community silvicultural systems have in common is that they are operating at the seedling and the sapling stage to create a forest that you won’t see for decades in the canopy. (2018b: online)
The help and management of the people of the forest garden will have brought some of the support that the Rainforest now needs, to recover in the wake of the violent storm in scene 1, and the pressures from the surrounding environment, but it also means that they are now inextricably and directly linked.