The city is a tree: the oldest forest of a new town. Urban forests as platform for somatic experiences in the city

    Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

    Abstract

    In this presentation, Beatrice will explore her process of working and exploring the foundations of MK through a series of research questions: How does the body become a living archive of the experience of landscape, and how such experience can be documented to reflect the process of the body immersing itself into landscape to construct a meta-narrative of terrain. Can choreographic work emerging from the experience of landscape create an archive of a place? How is the experience of the landscape translated into the actions of the body? How can a choreographer create a process, which enables dancers and non- dancers to actively deconstruct their experience of their environment? Will the outcome reflect the landscape in which the body is submerged as a stimulus for the process; or will the product, which emerges, become a personal narrative? How can cite specific performance become a social medium for the study of the political and cultural shifts of embodied terrain? She will explore how her project in MK places specific emphasis on the role of personal memory in the construction of the larger collective narratives of the city of MK. Her choreographic process and project has been designed to explore the city from the perspective of individual and often fragmented narratives, which then through collective dissemination and sharing seeks to enable the formation of a wider sense of the unique urban geography to form through the workshop process. Working closely with original planners, architects and designers of the city and relying on their narratives to guide her and travel through the city, this project explores how choreography and urban planning might truly collaborate to develop and expand our experience of place.
    Original languageEnglish
    Publication statusPublished - 20 Jun 2019
    EventEvolving the Forest - Dartington, England
    Duration: 11 Jun 201919 Jun 2019

    Conference

    ConferenceEvolving the Forest
    Period11/06/1919/06/19

    Bibliographical note

    Impact: Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.” — Herman Hesse

    They are the stuff of myth and fairy tale, fear and desire. We revere them for their age and beauty. We climb them, nurture them, carve them as memorials of lost loves, preserve them. We plant them. We cut them down to build houses and make toothpicks. We bring them into our houses in celebration of festivals whose historic roots we have long forgotten, or simply lost touch with. We build houses in them, bringing wings to our flights of fancy. Poets, artists and the weavers of stories continue to find inspiration in them, as they have for millennia.

    Trees are perhaps the most ubiquitous objects in our lives. Despite the fact that some countries - like our own - are largely denuded of ancient forest, we still feel a powerful tug of something primitive, ghostly even, as we look on a vast oak or a towering ash.

    Evolving the Forest is a three-day symposium drawing together a wide variety of voices to explore our wondrous heritage of woodland and forest. It marks 100 years of modern forestry in the UK and looks forward to the next hundred, incorporating the annual conference of the Royal Forestry Society. We hear the voices of foresters, environmental managers, policy-makers, scientists and other experts; we listen to artists and architects, writers, philosophers and others who wander and wonder in our varied British forests; and we learn from others around the world about their own cultural connections to trees, and the wood that produces some of the world‘s most useful and most beautiful objects.

    Organising Body: Art.Earth & Royal Forestry Society

    Keywords

    • Drama, dance and performing arts

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