A Rural Idyll
In the Forest Garden
Inner Landscapes
Absent Presence
Trace
Photomontage
Performative Drawing
Act of Listening
About
@hortus_silvam
2019
Performative action; documentation as moving image
Winter frost glistens on the skin of a wizened quince fruit from the forest garden, where off camera the artist gently breathes onto its icy, frosted skin.
Single channel colour HD video, stereo camera sound
Excerpt: 40 sec
Cinematic screening: 4 mins 33 sec
The warmth from her breath slowly, imperceptibly at first, starts to melt the surface. Off screen the microphone intensifies engine sounds from vehicles driving by suggesting the environmental issues of pollution, damage, reliance and dependency.
Location: Forest Garden, Suffolk
The Forest Garden Project is a developing concept which exists somewhere between ecological research, quiet activism, ritual, experiment and performance. A space of contradiction, slowness and listening in collaboration with the flora and fauna. In response to a search for the ‘rural idyll’ in places of increasing marginalisation, where the rural and industrial intersect and elide; where genetically engineered technologies turn fields into labs blurring the boundaries between the natural and the synthetic. The Forest Garden Project attempts to counter this lonely place of silent disquiet which reflects a bewildered disbelief at the damage we wreak on the natural world.
forest garden, quiet activism, environment, time
© Sophie Standford