Nele Möller – Spruce Speaks Before It Breaks
Sunday, 13 September⋅10:00 – 10:45am
At 10am this morning – Brussels-based artist and researcherNele Möller tunes into the environmental, historical and ideological echoes of the Thuringian Forest in the East of Germany in the audio essay, ‘Spruce Speaks Before It Breaks’.
The piecelistens with trees and bark beetles, with foresters and culture women, with myths and ideologies. Through interviews, field recordings, and storytelling, this experimental audio work aims to trace the development of the current environmental collapse of the forest.
The Thuringian Forest is an ancient grown forest, estimated to be 10,000 years old. In the last two centuries of heightened industrialisation, much of the ancient forest has been replanted with a monoculture of fast-growing, straight, spruce trees. This monoculture forest has struggled to adapt to hotter and drier climatic conditions, with the weakened trees being devastated by an outbreak of bark beetles (Ips typographus). To prevent the spread of the bark beetle, the forest management answers with extensive clear-cuts to remove the supposedly “infected” trees.
This audio essay is part of the PhD research project “The Forest Echoes Back — Receiving and Transmitting Forest Conversations Through an Ecology of Listening” and was produced in the framework of TRANSMIT at LUCA School of Arts.
Thanks to the City Archive of Ilmenau and the Archive of the Forestry County of Frauenwald, as well as to Wendy Morris and LUCA School of Arts Brussels