Missing Trees

Event Information

Come, let’s sit down under a tree and tell our tales.

This is an invitation to participate in an online gathering to talk about our relation to trees and share your thoughts about MISSING TREES.

Imagine sitting down together under a huge tree – and share our stories.
The conversation is conceived as a kind of joined inquiry.
By looking into the question of missing trees we are simultaneously looking into the presence of trees. How are we aware of the presence of trees and missing them?
Can we find words to describe this awareness? What kind of language can we use?

Ryszard Kapucinski wrote:

I noticed .. the relationship between naming and being, because I realized... (that) I had seen only that which I was able to name: for example, I remembered the acacia tree, but not the tree standing next to it, whose name I did not know. I understood, in short, that the more words I knew, the richer, fuller, and more variegated would be the world that opened before me, and which I could capture.

We develop relationships with treess - certain trees in particular.
We don't always realize what this means to us and what is the importance of this awareness. When trees are felled or dead or simply out of site they can be dearly missed.
Where there are no trees you could long for them.
Are we aware of this? How does this absence present itself?
How do we relate to this? How would you describe your relation to a tree and the way you communicate about this? Could we consider trees as friends?
How do we communicate with trees - would it be possible to think of 'tree-tongue' a kind of interspecies language.

MISSING TREES is linked to my blog from the 2020 Urban Tree Festival, TO BE TREE and the Prompt that goes with it.

from the blog:

Some thoughts on trees and being. For as long as I remember trees are present in my life. There is the huge birch tree in my grandmother’s garden, that I loved and can still smell when I think of it.
The chestnut tree that I found near the hospital when my father was dying, that consoled me thoroughly.
The plane tree in front of my studio – that is always there, and seems to always have been there, from ancient times to the present age showing in its bark. Many people are inclined to briefly touch it in passing.

It was only a few years ago that something shifted in my awareness.
I started noticing that I was extremely drawn to certain plants and trees as if they were calling me, reaching out to me. This sensation is what I like to refer to as resonance.

Contributor

Ienke Kastelein bio and statement

"Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears" Pauline Oliveros

Artist Statement

Ienke Kastelein is an interdisciplinary artist interested in perception and the senses. She is engaged in context and habitat. Hence walking and sitting have become essential research methods as well as performance practices. Public space and interior space are conceived as the studio or the stage. Walking is approached as a performance in which participants are the audience. Her approach can be perceived as scenography or dramaturgy of space. She embraces the lightness of play. Throughout the years trees are recurring presences. Her whole body of work is a research and a reflection on being present and presence itself.

Bio

Ienke Kastelein holds a BA in History of Art (Utrecht University) and studied photography. Next to her art practice she is an experienced teacher in art and photography, and a guest lecturer at Master in Education ARTeZ, Pécs University Faculty of Art, Winterlab ARTeZ and Dropping Summerlab at ARTeZ (on walking and performance). She is teaching sensorial and performative walking practices at Master of Scenography (Utrecht NL), Minor creative design HKU (Utrecht NL), Master CorpoReal at ARTEZ Academy (Zwolle, NL) and Art Academy Minerva (Groningen, NL). In 2013 she was awarded the Boellaard prize. She lives and works in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

See more about Ienke’s work on her website.