The repeated visits to a small old pine tree in Kaivopuisto park in Helsinki that form a work called Pine of the Year - Year of the Pine are one part of the three-lingual three-year artistic research project Pondering with Pines - Miettii Mäntyjen kanssa - Funderar med furor (2022-2024). The core concern of the project is how to develop ways of recognising and engaging with the subjectivity of life forms such as trees, which we tend to consider as wholly ‘other’. This task is expanded by follow-up questions such as 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 pine trees and how to develop imaginative and poetic ways of encountering pine trees and engaging with them. Some of these questions I have tried to adress with various pines. With this specific pine tree the focus is on performing for and with the tree in a way that could be sensed by the pine, and thus creating a possibility for some resonance, although I did not use that term to begin with. The method consists in simply breathing through a blues harp and emitting sounds for the pine to hear or vibrations to sense, while recording the sounds with my phone and the performance as a whole and the tree with a video camera on tripod. Importantly, I repeat this once a month for a year, thus documenting the year of the pine, the pine tree and its surroundings during the shifting seasons. This repetition produces an experience of duration and the work can be linked to the questions in the call: How artistic research affect and change our experience of time? What time-based artistic research methods can enhance our sense of belonging?
Annette Arlander
Academy of Fine Art, University of the Art Helsinki
Annette Arlander, DA, is an artist, researcher and a pedagogue, former professor in performance art and theory and professor in artistic research at University of the Arts Helsinki, 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.