The underlying condition in which this exhibition came about is a global emergency, one
which is emerging out of an unfolding ecological crisis and can be attributed to the violent
process of rampant deforestation, which constitutes a continuation of imperial methods of
territorial control. This massive reshaping of the land, together with the shifting baselines
regarding what kind of green deserts we are willing to accept as forests, might be seen as
a symptom of our Anthropocene epoch. The show conjures up the ghosts of lost or nearextinct
species, forests and sensations.
The ongoing colonial and capitalist expansion has been ending worlds for as long as they
have been in existence, and is the main driver of the deforestation and species loss which
local habitats fall victim to. The displacement of communities and the severing of complex
entanglements follow in their wake. These processes interrupt our long relationship with
the ontological multiplicity of the forest that is teeming with connections, temporalities
and perspectives, a relationship that has defined cultures and even language. Hence, in
this exhibition the forest is understood as an ecology including human and non-human beings,
as well as the cultivation, social and cultural practices, politics, tensions and wars it
entails.
Nature and natural are culturally constructed terms that bear many historical and social
connotations and contradictions. They have been used to render exclusion and oppression,
and against which certain groups of people were defined. Similarly, the concept of the
‘wild’ was created by a colonial imaginary to reject both the Other and Other spaces as
being outside of its system. Further to this, the opposition of forest and city, much like the
opposition of wilderness and control, have been long-standing paradigms that perpetuate a
distancing between these systems and aid the exploitation of valuable resources.
In this exhibition, ideas around rewilding and renaturing feature as propositions with varying
aims and interests. On the one hand, rewilding is a visionary ecosystem management
strategy involving the re-introduction of certain keystone species in habitats depleted in
biodiversity (due to human interference). It kick-starts processes that give rise once again
to rich ecologies of multi-species entanglements. Without necessarily romanticising the
past, rewilding has the potential to create rich, dynamic and resilient ecologies. Rewilding
can be understood in an expanded social, political and activist sense, with the potential to
help recuperate the voices of the erased, including the subjugated and oppressed, the indigenous
and endemic, the human and non-human. The place ‘where wild things are’ represents
the anti-hegemonic, where disorder and disobedience interrupt neat narratives,
and where new kinds of structures can arise.
Rewilding and renaturing are also controversial terms. They claim multi-species relations
but remain a human-centred directive (man as saviour). Whilst they have great promise as
actual practical propositions to counter global warming and diversity loss, the same problems
remain with their implementation regarding who controls the territories, borders and
the rules of engagement, and what they expect to gain from such processes. The exhibition
probes this problematic as the artworks build on situated knowledges of ecologies from
diverse geopolitical areas and realities.
*The subtitle references sci-fi writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s novella ‘The Word for World is
Forest’, written in response to the Vietnam War in 1972. She examines colonisation, chauvinism,
racism and ecological disaster as intertwined forces. In her story a Terran military
logging colony sets up on planet Athshe at a time when wood has become more valuable
than gold. The non-aggressive native Athsheans are enslaved, the planet and its people
suffer much violence as the planet is ‘cleared up and cleaned out’ or ‘un-worlded’. Eventually
one of them, after the death of his wife, leads a revolt against the Terrans, and
succeeds in getting them to leave the planet. The novella takes a strong anti-colonial and
anti-militaristic position and explores themes of sensitivity to the environment, and the
connections between environment, language and culture.
Curated by Borbála Soós
All images copyright and courtesy of the artists and tranzit.sk, Bratislava