In a Strange Place is a meditative 9-channel video installation and social engagement project that delves into the future of our forests and those who care for them.
Born out of a multi-year, international research and engagement process with communities, In a Strange Place features 150 foresters, ecologists, activists, conservationists and land keepers from England, Germany, Norway, and Canada performing abstract, slow-motion gestures in the woods. These improvised choreographies are reflections of the participant’s care work, their connection to their local forest, and their role in an uncertain multi-species future.
The aim of In a Strange Place is to translate the complex knowledge and expertise of forest caretakers into emotional and visual gestures for a non-science audience. Showing forest work as an embodied practice, each video—a type of slow portraiture—captures the forest workers waist up and wearing handmade masks of imagined future forest creatures.
Born out of a multi-year, international research and engagement process with communities, In a Strange Place features 150 foresters, ecologists, activists, conservationists and land keepers from England, Germany, Norway, and Canada performing abstract, slow-motion gestures in the woods. These improvised choreographies are reflections of the participant’s care work, their connection to their local forest, and their role in an uncertain multi-species future.
The aim of In a Strange Place is to translate the complex knowledge and expertise of forest caretakers into emotional and visual gestures for a non-science audience. Showing forest work as an embodied practice, each video—a type of slow portraiture—captures the forest workers waist up and wearing handmade masks of imagined future forest creatures.
