In a sporangium-shell, “SymBIO-Bodies” is an eco-art mobility designed as an inter-media investigation on interconnectedness. Like all our projects in Plastic Art Performance collective, we address humans’ disconnection from the environment and propose ways of re-engaging with our ecological self. Taking place between 17.07 and 31.07 in Brussels, the residency revolves around ”making kin” with 3 forest beings: fungi, lichens and ferns and aims to develop and test sensory, perceptual and body-based tools to come into poetic engagement/ entanglement with these “hidden” reproducers (cryptogams). 

The residency is awarded a grant from Culture moves Europe. Funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union and implemented by the Goethe-Institut. 

[guiding process]

“For centuries upon centuries, people were surrounded by forests. The forest covered Europe completely, stretched from France to Sweden, to Siberia. The forest was the source, the place of food. A green animate kaleidoscope of plants, medicines and poisons, of allies and devouring forces, of mischief dancers and moon that circle dances, the place of both danger and wonder. The place where one could be liberated and transformed.” (Joshua Strei, The Emerald Podcast)

………………………….living multi-organism vs. landscape / background / scenery ………

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////    How to enter the forest? /////////////

…………delicate relationships …………………………………………..protocols of animacy

ask and listen………………………………………….

Among the oldest living beings, lichens invite us into a different relationship with time. The kind of slowness that grows as less as 0.5mm per year.

We fear what we do not understand, and we fear what we can’t control, and fungi very much embody this capacity for subversive materialities.(Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez – “Let’s Become Fungal!”)
 

C R Y P T O – GAMS

………………………………………………………..hidden in plain sight…….ubiquitous……

secret reproductors……………………………….

………………………………What secret should the forest keep for you?…………………………..

SYMBIO – 

……………………….mutualistic partners …………………………………………………………

…the human body as a holobiont……………..  ………………………

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////    Where one thing ends and another begins?

Tools and practices

1. PROTOCOLS OF ANIMACY (how to enter the forest; breath as continual exchange; reciprocity/ giving something back)
2. SENSORIAL OPENING (expansion of visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile senses in layers – from micro to macro, from near to far, testing different qualities)
3. OBSERVATION PRACTICES (mushrooms)
4. EMBODYMENT PRACTICES (moss and bark surface; lichen time and invisibility; spores)

Vision, principles of our work 

Our methodologies and the practices proposed during the journey stem from the feeling and the knowing that there is a sensory reciprocity between body and earth – a relational continuum, which can be re-activated given sufficient time and openness. Our thinking stems from visions and concepts such as: ecosophia, ecosentience, relational animism and deep ecology principles, as well as critical theories of the anthropocene.

Forêt de Soignes

The Sonian Forest is much more than the most important green space in the Brussels Region, the largest deciduous forest in Flanders and the most extraordinary beech forest in Belgium. It is an ancient woodland, with an exceptional and very well-documented history.

In the course of its history, the forest has undergone major changes as a result of social developments. Still remaining today are some parts of the original ‘Charcoal Forest’ (Silva Carbonaria) dating from the time of the Romans: these include the actual Sonian Forest, Hallerbos and Meerdaalwoud. In order to avoid a further shrinkage of the area, since 1959 the Sonian Forest has been given legal protection as a “Preserved Landscape”.

As a uniquely preserved landscape dating back to the end of the last Ice Age, it has an exceptional ecosystem with a fauna and flora that is miraculously rich for an urban forest. Partly located within the Brussels-Capital Region, home to over one million inhabitants, this green oasis suffers from intensive recreational pressures, but air and water pollution and the effects of climate change also threaten the ecological balance of the forest.

The Sonian Forest covers a total area of around 5,000 hectares! One very significant feature are the plentiful beech trees, which cover about 2,650 hectares – more than half the forest.

There are three integral forest reserves in the Sonian Forest: Grippensdelle (83 ha) in the Brussels Region, Joseph Zwaenepoel (232 ha) in the Flemish Region and Ticton (23,5 ha) in the Walloon Region. Within these reserves, nature is allowed to simply take its course, with no human intervention. Since 7 July 2017, UNESCO has recognised these forest reserves as a world heritage site.

Source: site map

List of species observations:

ALL SPECIES

FUNGI 

LICHEN & MOSS

List of readings and references

GLOSSARY

[ This work was produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union.]