Artist Lorna Rees of Gobbledegook Theatre turns her attention to trees, tree-gazing and the future of our forests in her new immersive sound-work CANOPY coming to Inside Out Dorset festival this September…
- Lorna, what was the first spark that set CANOPY in motion?
When people ask me about why I wanted to make CANOPY, I point out that my surname (Rees) is just one letter away from spelling ‘Trees’. Like most people, I love trees. They are my neighbours and my non-human friends. They are my constant companions, but, like most people I often don’t make the time to fully notice or celebrate them.
The other problem when thinking about trees is there is so much to say… and I am not a botanist or any kind of arboreal expert. So for for the past 7 years I’ve been thinking about making a piece where I invite my own small forest of voices. I wanted to invite other collaborators to make sound art about trees, as well creating my own responsese to my interviews with experts. I’ve been very intuitive in how I’ve curated the voices – what am I interested in? What delights me about our canopy? What am I scared about losing?
- You’ve said your philosophy is that “our culture forms our future.” How has that belief shaped your creative decisions over the years – and particularly in CANOPY?
One of the things which most resonated with me was in conversation with Professor Adrian Newton, who is an Endangered Tree Expert and artist. He thinks we should celebrate our trees far more than we do now. And I agree with him thoroughly.
For many years, for example, I have celebrated apple trees – in schools and with commuities. I’ve led wassails in rural villages and on small holdings, when my chidlren were small I was even Mrs Apples in their school teaching the children all about seeds. I’ve increasingly been participating in and sometimes creating my own seasonal folk rituals which are all inextricably linked to trees. Earlier this year I created a new ceremony in Birmingham for the National Trust to celebrate the Spring Equinox, The Blossom Queens – I even call disco maypole (after all, a maypole an old respresentation of a big tree). In the winter time, my partner Adam and I are sometimes the Ivy Queen and the Holly King of our town. So I’m really interesed in our seasons and our treescape.
And then there is the eco-system surrounding trees – the mushrooms, slime mold, fruiting spores, the mycleium and the bird life. I quickly realised that there was too much to say about British Forests, but rather I could have lots of ideas represented – not just my own. A compendium. A piece which can change with site and place but still offer perspectives and ideas about what trees really mean to us as humans.
So, in terms of the culture I want to form – I want to shout about copses and tree planting and of celebrating our ancient and veteran trees. I want to be thrilled by our street trees, our syacmores, horse chestnuts, our yews and our oaks. Here’s to petrified forests and temperate British rainforests: our ancient woodlands. Here’s to a different time scale, of seeds of future forests and to the children who will plant them. For our family trees and connection. Here’s to the Magnolias on top of mountains living in cloud forests. And here’s to Apple Trees and recovering Ash Groves. Here’s to thinking about trees more. Remembering their place in our lives and their importance.
- You’re often inspired by earth sciences. Were you always someone who felt connected to the natural world, or did that relationship grow over time?
I grew up next to spinney in the concrete of Harlow New Town (a spinney is a patch of land more unruly than a copse). In Harlow, trees were planned in by brilliant landscape architect and town planner Sylvia Crowe. This early patch of woodland captivated me. Then, when I was about 7, my family moved to Dorset to a house opposite an Edwardian park planted with pine trees in a town situated on the edge of the New Forest. Just a couple of years after we moved Moors Valley Country Park (where CANOPY will be presented in September) opened. As a child I was always being Robin Hood, or I would make spells and potions out of muddy water and pine cones and I’d climb trees with scratched knees. As an artist who makes work for landscapes and the outdoors it felt natural that one day I would turn my attention to these amazing living beings.
- CANOPY invites people to slow down, look up, and listen. What do you hope visitors walk away with?
There are some core messages which I’ve embedded in our piece, firstly that we should venerate and celebrate our ancient and veteran trees – especially those in our communities, secondly that we should all strive to be good ancestors and thirdly, that trees are people too – by which I really mean that we should consider them much more carefully.
There are interesting things for people to learn in the work – for example, did you know that Yew Trees are the oldest continuous living beings in Europe? They can be upwards of 4000 years old. They are extraordinary. With that notion I’ve placed the fact in spoken moments into a song – other pods however are far more abstract – songs and soundscapes which have been created and give more of a feeling or a vibe. There is a huge amount of process underneath the surface of each of the sonic pods (hundreds of people have taken part in the creation of the sound!) and I hope that although the audience might not know all of the context of the piece, some of the depth of what we created will ‘read’ for them. I know some people have found some of the music quite emotional or some of the spoken word has made them shiver, or they have felt sad or contemplative. The sound in each of the pods are around the length of a pop song, but the audience can really take as long or as short a time to listen to each as they like.
I hope the cumulative effect on my audience is that they have a thought-provoking and joyful journey through the sound work, a beautiful outdoor experience in nature, and that they might notice, value, plant and defend trees a little more.
- How do you hold the balance between activism and art – between the urgent messages and the poetic gestures?
Ah – this is such a delicate balance! There have been quite a few people who were hoping I might have the ‘voices of trees’ in the piece. I even had in some of my early copy a thought about “what the trees would tell us if they could talk?’. But I quickly ruled that out. Honestly, right now, I think our trees would be screaming and screaming at us. There are wildfires in Spain and France and Scotland. This summer has been very hot and all the conkers and acorns were out unseasonably early in August. It looks like autumn in my local park the leaves are falling because it’s so dry. We have been cutting down ancient, ancient woodlands. There is a climate crisis….. but despair is sort of too easy to slip into.
My activism is very much about joy and how we can make a change. I want to talk about greening our cities and how we can change our behaviour. I do read out the red list of trees in CANOPY but I’ve made it into a sort of rave piece. We are such an ego-centric species I wanted to make a work about our relationship with trees, asking people to really consider our place in things. It’s deliberately anthropocentric in perspective (although we do drop in our non-human world frequently). So it is urgent but it is also poetic.
It’s also worth noting that I see CANOPY as a piece of eco-feminist work. 80% of the voices you hear in the piece are women’s. I’ve really tried to foreground women who work in the landscape and women artists, makers and writers. Some of my best friends are straight white men, but they are quite over-represented in terms of authors and artists who are published and commissioned to make work about the landscape and our planet so I rather wanted to change that balance in my own work. Some amazing women I feature in the piece are author Lally Macbeth (author of The Lost Folk), clown and philosopher Remi Oriogun-Williams and one of my long-term collaborators, Earth Scientist Dr Anjana Khatwa who is about to publish a new book. The Whispers of Rock.
In making the work, I’ve also tried to be as ethical and as environmentally conscious as possible. We’ve worked hard to repurpose old things and to make good choices in the new things we’ve bought and created. I’ve worked with some amazing makers and craftspeople to create the piece, like product designers and wood turners and architects.
- Is there a particular story or piece of feedback from an audience member that’s stayed with you since the premiere at the National Memorial Arboretum?
I’m very thin-skinned so I cry when I get any sort of feedback. Lots of people have said that they have loved the experience, or that it’s made them think or feel inspired. Many have especially enjoyed the song about Yew Tree, which I recorded in a graveyard with my son Rufus (four generations of my family have had a hand in this work, as the trailer which sits at the centre of it was renovated by myself and my Grandfather). People love sharing stories about their own love of trees, or their own favourite trees. One woman cried about the oak cut down for HS2 near to her house. Another family loved listening to every single part and then singing me the Blossom Queen song. I love that it works on lots of levels for people.
Many people really love Chris Fittock’s epoch-defying dome about the difference in the perception of time between humans and trees, and many adore (and dance along to!) the 90-strong voices of Funky Little Choir singing about trees breathing. Someone told me it changed the way they think about trees and that was literally what I wanted to achieve with this work.
CANOPY is at Moors Valley Country Park and Forest as part of Inside Out Dorset festival from Saturday 13 September to Sunday 21 September from 10am to 4pm. There are evening performances on Thursday 18 September at 7pm, 8pm and 9pm. More information here: https://activateperformingarts.org.uk/whats-on/event/canopy/