This proposal was developed in response to walks and conversations in the grounds of Reading University with Miranda Laurence, Arts Development Officer at the University. It also connected with a project I was working on at the time, in People’s Park, Banbury, where I used a collective approach to gathering research and to a past project developed in 2017 with Susanna Round called ‘Generation Exchange’ when we worked with art students and members of an AgeUK art group to carry out creative visual research at Morden Hall Park in Wimbledon.

This collective, creative approach to research leaves room for subjectivity, personal responses, and the potential for both individual experiences and the interactions between group members to inform the outcomes. It is an open-ended process without a specific objective but with the potential for a range of creative responses and developments.

The research process
During the micro-residency I walked with small groups of participants to different areas of the university site where we made records of the trees using a range of processes including drawing, impressions using plasticine, photographs, collections, measurements and estimates. I also recorded conversations with participants about their experience of the process and observations or thoughts that came out of participating.

During the first phase of the tree walks project collaborators from across the university created a substantial body of ‘data’ in the form of drawings, impressions, ideas, recordings, experiences and collections. These reflected different approaches to collecting and documenting, from capturing images through drawing to technical analysis of space, interpreting natural forms as time-based schemes, engaging with the physical aspects of the environment in haptic processes and translating the experience into words. The collective experience drew attention to the overwhelm of information in these natural spaces and how the act of noticing and recording is influenced by our particular outlooks, academic disciplines or perhaps simply by chance. There was a high level of commitment and enthusiasm from collaborators who took part in the walks and their outcomes were experimental and playful. Many subsequently took part in a workshop at The Merl and studio exhibition at The Cole Museum where parts of our archive were displayed with opportunities to respond and develop visual ideas from the archive through printmaking and drawing.

Reflecting on these processes I have become interested in ideas around visual language and forms of notation. One of the participants developed her collections, drawings and frottage into an idea for a graphic score. The repetition of a shape in the bark suggested a sense of time and pitch. Many participants overlaid transparency and tracing paper with other drawings and collections, combining images to create interesting textural juxtapositions. I see in these something orchestral – a sense of harmonies and dissonance between the visual ‘sounds’ – and the potential for different strands to work alongside each other in a form of visual ‘polyphony’.

A question running through many of my projects is that of how to work with an archive and activate it as a way of understanding the archive better and expanding it’s relevance. I am interested in the potential for an archive as a tool to stimulate creativity, opening up starting points for conversations and experimental ways of thinking or working. Working with an archive, there is often some distance from the material to bridge, with imagination and conjecture filling the gaps. Creating a new form from this starting point we can think of as an act of interpretation and translation within which the individual is necessarily situated.

The gathered material was exhibited so that it could be shared publicly, however rather than presenting the exhibition as a final outcome and resolution I shared the work as a ‘studio’ in which visitors were invited to respond through sharing their thoughts or responding creatively to the material. Responses could take the form of creative writing, written reflections, drawing, printmaking, sound / composition, designs and could be shared within the studio or be developed beyond the residency. A range of materials and tools were available for this purpose and I was present to facilitate and work alongside visitor participants.

 

“I am, we each are, the inmost of an endless series of Russian dolls; you who read are now encased within a layer I built for you, or perhaps my stories are now inside you. We live as literally as that, inside each other’s thoughts and work, in this world that is being made all the time, by all of us, out of beliefs and acts, information and materials. Even in the wilderness your ideas of what is beautiful; what matters, and what constitutes pleasure shape your journey there as much as do your shoes and map also made by others.” (Solnit, 2014)

This suggests to me that our acts and ideas are possibilities which will be modified, adapted, re-used and translated by others. And they came to us from others’ acts which we have responded to and synthesised. Transformed to play a part in our time and place.

Through this project I wanted to look at practices of connectedness – whether through collaborations between artists and communities or in practices that influence artists – and also practices which are open and give other performers, thinkers, audiences a space to complete the work through their imaginative leaps, or through participating in some way.

In thinking about ways to approach this I drew ideas from the ‘Poetics of the open work’ (Eco, 1962), which identifies the freedoms generated by the openness of graphic scores, enabling the performer to complete the work, an approach which embraces uncertainty and the potential for change.

MA Fine Art students from the university embraced this freedom in creating an exhibition in response to the tree archives. Working over a three day period, the students interpreted the material that had been gathered through installation, sculpture, projections and painting. The students took different starting points, but as the exhibition evolved their work overlapped and the boundaries between individual practices became more blurred. This was an exciting end to the project.

I am grateful to all participants for the energy, enthusiasm, curiosity and generosity that they contributed and to Miranda Lawrence for inviting me to work with her on this project. This project is dedicated to the memory of Sonya Chenery (instagram @sonyachenery), artist and performer, who volunteered as a research assistant and offered so much through her thoughtfulness and deep creative engagement with ‘Talking Trees’.

Solnit, R. (2014) The faraway nearby. London: Granta Books.