DAY1
03/ 08/ 23
DAY2
11-12/ 23
DAY3
29/ 12/ 23
How to mutate the word tree into a verb?
What new wordnoises does this tree trunk dream of?
A polyphonic performance
Duration: 37 min
Within the context of the work-in-progress with the title
wide wood web friendship.
It is not first through the voice that one becomes animal?
Deleuze/Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus
On July 24, 2023 in Humboldthain Park Berlin
A tree was struck by lightning.
The oak tree was leaning across the park path.
Its trunk was torn open in pieces.
In November 2023 Franck-Lee Alli-Tis aka V. Stylianidou started an ongoing
process of reading/decoding/drawing the opened-up skin of the fallen oak tree.
A series of drawings have been produced.
On December 29, 2023 a collective polyphonic performance takes place at the Humboldthain Park Berlin. Invited artists and performers read a text written by
Franck-Lee Alli-Tis aka Vassiliea Stylianidou. The participants voice/ breathe out
the drawings of the opened-up tree skin using the sounds of the environment.
The language of the text and its meaning are disrupted and mutated
by the sounds and noises produced by the overlapping voices of the participants.
New polyphonic and embodied languages full of pleasure, playfulness and affect
have been shaped.
The performance generates of a new network of materials, situations, actions, voices and bodies that interweaves the participants with the existing network of the tree.
The work embraces the paradox of its own materiality: graphite, wood, paper, ink, plastic, electricity, time, minutes, hours, more electricity, data, metal, coper, a studio,
a tree, bodies, organs, intestines, air, worms, caterpillars, flies, soil, moist: mycorrhizal symbiotic associations.
The project How to mutate the word tree into a verb? Or What new wordnoises
does this tree trunk dream of? poses questions on the entanglement of language
to patriarchy and domination, on the potentialities of language decomposition and
on the relationship between human and non-human forms of life.
Who has the right to take care of this tree?
Who has the right to cut down this tree?
Who has the right to coordinate its materiality?
Who has the right to sit next to this tree?
Who has the right to speak to the tree?
Who has the right to translate this tree?
What other polyphonic languages can be heard
that empower life in its complex entanglements?
What unheard wordnoises does this tree trunk dream of?
An alphabet in the momentum of the air.
How to mutate the word tree into a verb?
What new wordnoises does this tree trunk dream of?
A polyphonic performance.
Within the context of the work-in-progress
with the title wide wood web friendship.
By Franck-Lee Alli-Tis aka V Stylianidou.
With: Ayşe Orhon, Ioanna Angelopoulou, Daphne Dragona,
Theemetra Harizani, Oyto Arognos, Marta Jurkiewicz, Ioannis Savvidis, Lina Theodorou, Yiannis Loukos, Chryssa Tsampazi, Eva Lindenmaier,
Özlem Cengel, Franck-Lee Alli-Tis.
Dramaturgy advisors: Ayşe Orhon, Ioanna Angelopoulou,
Daphne Dragona, Theemetra Harizani, Oyto Arognos.
Camera: Theemetra Harizani
Video Editing: Franck-Lee Alli-Tis, Theemetra Harizani
How to mutate the word tree into a verb?
(2023 ongoing) is part of 15m² a mobile
exhibition platform initiated by Panayiotis Michael.
Performance Text
We read together the following text. We decide intuitively and impulsively
where to stop or when to startreading. We could also change it and/or add
words, sounds, phrases. Overlapping voices are welcome.
This text is a network of (re)sources
A questioning organism
A breathing network of bodies sitting around
A fragmented chopped tree trunk
This text is open to change and mutation
Is this tree open to mutation?
Tree
Treen
Treenformation
tree treen, treo, treow *trewam trio, tre, triu "tree", *drew-o-, *deru-
*dreu
dru, daru , drys "oak," drymos , dor, drievo,
drvo, drva drevo, drūtas "firm," derva "pine, wood;" drud, dron "strong," derw "true," derb "sure," daur, derwen "oak;" drusk "oak;"treo, treow "tree," triewe "faithful, trustworthy, honest."
betroth; dendrite; dendro-, dendrochronology; dour; Druid; drupe; dryad; duramater; durable; durance; duration; duress; during; durum; endure; dryad; indurate; obdurate; perdurable; philodendron; rhododendron; shelter; tar, tray; tree; trig "smart, trim;" trim; troth; trough; trow; truce; true; trust; truth; tryst
Etymological memory of the tree
Words as noise
Noise as disruption of normative meaning
We read this text together as an always-coming-home-tale
Ursula Le Guin whispers,
“the immediate relationship between speaker(s) and hearer(s) may increase
freedom by increasing trust. Speaking a text and listening to it constitute
a relationship, a connection of present contemporaries, “people breathing
together” Words are becoming common property given by the breath by one individual to another”
Pauline Oliveros whistles the environmental dialogue in our ear
Close your eyes
Observe your breath
Observe your breathing cycle
Listen to the sounds around you
With each breathing cycle you become more aware of the field of sounds coming
from your environment You absorb/chew/swallow/suck and digest/recognise/receive more and more sounds
You begin to reinforce any sound source that catches your attention
To reinforce means to amplify or sustain the sound source by merging your voice
with that sound
for as long as one breath lasts
After 10 min open your eyes and continue reading the text
The Hum.ming bold.t collective from the South - Report July 24, 2023 / Humboldthain Park Berlin
Moist
Soil
Trunk
Θρόισμα φυλλώματος
Leaves rustling
Cloud
Low clouds
Sudden violent gust of wind Cloudburst
Downpour
"be firm, solid, steadfast," treowen boom,Baum, beam
Rain
Thunder Thunderstorm Tornado Aνεμοστρόβιλος Crack
Boom
Baum
August 3, 2023 / Humboldthain Park Berlin
A tree was struck by lightning
Its trunk torn open in pieces
The Hum.ming bold.t collective from the South visited the site after 9 days
The tree was leaning across the park path
Traversing the path
Passers-by walk under its loose threads
Ξεχαρβαλωμένη μηχανή δέρμα ίνες μυών
Unraveled muscles skin fibers machine
It’s an Eiche, It’s an Eiche, they say
November-December 2023 at the Hum.ming bold.t Studio in Gesundbrunnen
Berlin. The Hum.ming bold.t collective from the South started an ongoing process
of reading/decoding/drawing the signs of the opened-up skin of the fallen Oak tree
A series of drawings have been produced
We want to excavate
Did you say excavate? Queermeasure
the signs
of its unfurling skin Then we voice the signs we breathe them out
We ask ChatGpt if trees can talk (to humans)?
(to each other)?
They answer
„No, trees cannot talk in the way humans do. They lack the vocal cords, mouth,
and other physiological structures necessary for human-like speech. However,
trees communicate with each other and their environment through various mechanisms, such as chemical signalling and root systems.
Mycorrhizal networks, which are underground symbiotic associations between the roots of plants and certain fungi in the soil, allow trees to exchange nutrients and information. This underground network, often referred to as the "wood wide web," enables trees to share resources and information about environmental conditions“
Tree
Treen Treenformation
We thank ChatGpt
And wonder
Can a tree be translated?
How can we mutate into more-than-human creatures by reading the signs
of a fallen and shattered Oak tree? Friend.ling a fallen open tree
Friend.ling is translation
What about its roots?
I enter ‘oak, belowground, words, tree’ in the searching machine
This is what I got:
„Oaks depend on hidden diversity belowground
function.
Beneath our feet, plants are engaged in a constant dialogue
The roots of an oak help hold the soil together
Eichen können eine ungewöhnliche Vielfalt von Insekten beherbergen
Eichen-Arten sind Nahrungshabitat der Raupen von vielen Schmetterlingsarten
Oaks support more that 950 species of caterpillar” they support the survival
of vegetation assemblages soil
moisture
temperature
light intensity
biotic factors predators
biological interaction feeding behaviors parasitism micropredation
array of resources the living barks
Does a tree always come home?
Even if it lies εγκάρσια στο μονοπάτι
traversing the path?
Εμποδίζοντας
b/othering
The tree b/others us
us
human bodies
coming to the park
coming to the woods to feel at home
The thunderstorm brought the tree to a different place, to a different state
of being in the world Thunderstorm and tree, when they meet, a new world
-making is evolving
We pass under its torn flesh
It emits signs above our heads
We hear the sounds
Can we?
Is this tree
-cut in pieces, arranged, rotting-
still
translatable?
Fallen Oaks harbor an unusual variety of insects
A fallen oak is a feeding habitat for the caterpillars of many butterflies
They shape a breathing community with each other
We give our oral trust to the micro-signs of the tree fibers
What is the sound field of this tree? Ένας θόρυβος που
(some noise that,)
Οι ήχοι των πουλιών
(the sound of a bird)
Let’s start from
the sounds of logistics
The sounds of establishing security for human passers-by
Order and control Of the park paths After a thunderstorm,
a mass of interacting components that rely on each other
Who has the right to take care of this tree?
Who has the right to cut down this tree?
Who has the right to coordinate its materiality?
Who has the right to sit next to this tree?
Who has the right to speak to the tree? Who has the right to translate this tree?
Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung, the Josephine Beuys collective from the south suggests Stadtverwandlung statt Stadtverwaltung, the Hum.ming bold.t collective from the South proposes
We ask ChatGpt how
true
network of resources
Logistics of materiality
Do trees die of old age?
How does a tree maintain the spirit of the root network?
Has this tree left the roots of the neighboring trees alone?
Of the fungi that surround and support it?
Where has all the information that lived and moved in the roots gone?
Wide wood web friendship
Tree
Treen Treenformation
Ursula Le Guin wonders,
“Perhaps not many of us could say why we save so many words, why our forests must all be cut to make paper to mark our words on, our rivers dammed to make electricity to power our word processors; we do it obsessively, as if afraid of something, as if compensating for something. Maybe we are afraid of death, afraid to let our words simply be spoken and die, leaving space for new words to be born in. Maybe we seek community, the lost, the irreproducible”
The Utopian Collective from the Future (UCofFu) is a more-than-non-human collective
which works on an ongoing index that assembles the materials of all existing artworks.
:Bleistift, graphite, wood, paper, ink, plastic, electricity, time, minutes, hours, more electricity, data, metal, cooper, a studio, a tree, bodies, organs, intestines, air...
: The materials of this work breathe the paradox of its own materiality,
its complicity with forestry authorities
This text has been printed on hochtransparentes Zeichenpapier/ natural tracing paper/ papel vegetal
Does this work betray its home?
We read the text printed on natural tracing paper,
and through the words we see the tree trunk
Twig
Crone
tree value
works?
25-meter-long
Roots
Trunk
Branches
Leaves
Acorn
The fruit of an oak
Arrays of (re)sources
Wood
timber
Ξύλο
Ξυλεία
wood, especially when suitable for building purposes
Let the tree trunk disturb our eyes our ability to recognize
December 29, 2023: Humboldthain Park Berlin
In collaboration with you The Hum.ming bold.t collective
from the South is reading/voicing/ breathing out the tree signs
What is the sound field of this tree? Ένας θόρυβος που
(some noise that,)
Οι ήχοι των πουλιών
(the sound of a bird)
Can trees talk
(to humans)? (to each other)? I asked Chat Gpt:
Is a tree translatable?
How to mutate the word tree Into a verb?
To tree means to be alive to durate / curate, you said? /
To last
To sustain
To maintain
To support
A tree is always alive
To tree
Trees produce signs and sounds
Our task is to trace/voice/breathe out these signs environmental dialogue
Having in mind the experience, we continue -without a break- in small groups
of two or three people. We will decode/voice/breathe out the signs of the tree
with the help of the sounds around us. We can also follow/show what we are
reading with our hands or/and with our body.
Each group communicates with each other only through the sounds of the environment. Each of us can use any part of the signs/drawings they want.
We can read/decode/voice out simultaneously. Overlapping voices are welcome.
If we like certain voice patterns, we can repeat them. If we feel that we don’t want
to read/ decodeany more signs, we can move to the root stem while repeating the patterns we have chosen.
The duration will be around 10-15 min
:* Thank you so much for your breathing voices!
Dramaturgy advisors: Ayşe Orhon, Ioanna Angelopoulou, Daphne Dragona, Dimitra Harizani, Oyto Arognos Kamera: Dimitra Harizani / Warm thanks to Marta Jurkiewitz
for the support!