FORESTS

RESEARCH PHASE

Year:

2017-2019

In 2017, Henry McGrath invited 9 artists to attend a 2-week period of work to begin exploring ‘Forests’. Driven by a desire to imagine the world voice communicating it’s perspective on deforestation and ecocide, the intention was to develop approaches to learning and listening to forest environments and finding our human connections with the more-than human worlds. The first week began in a basement in London, experimenting with expressive forms through titled ‘events’. These grew into conversations that sparked new improvisations - searching to descend into the entanglements of the projects themes and original question, ‘How do we give voice to the living planet’.

The second week we were invited by the ASHA Centre, an educational centre located in the Forest of Dean, to continue our studies. The wide-reaching, dense and historically rich forest environment began to serve as an important laboratory space and the essential third partner to our research. The group undertook considerable expeditions into the forest, to an Iron Age Hillfort, scowles (ancient mines) and numerous broadleaf and pine forests, developing a layered approach to its work. Each artist led sessions from their own practice, leading artists and practitioners in voice, sound, somatics, text and ritual.

From 2017-2019, the group returned to the ASHA Centre, taking up residency in off-season periods to return to the work, each time entering a new stage to the research in relation to the changing seasons of its members. Over 12 periods of work, between 3-7 days, the company began to slowly articulate a story, woven from the happenings, encounters and personal circumstances of its creators, formulating a layered fable that was profoundly personal and ultimately universal.