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Open Forest is an experimental practice-based inquiry into more-than-human forest ecologies and dataflows.
The project explores how forests and forest data can be produced, thought of and engaged with otherwise: in situated, co-creative ways that consider perspectives of diverse forest creatures and reach beyond extractivist renderings of forests as resources to serve colonialist, neo-liberal agendas.
The Open Forest activities – experimental walking, storytelling, dérive drifting, and co-creation of feral forest datasets – bring together artists, citizens, policymakers, Indigenous forest guardians, scientists as well as dogs
and trees in experiential exchange of their diverse forest experiences and knowledge.
The project was initiated in autumn 2020 by the Open Forest Collective (Andrea Botero, Markéta Dolejšová,
Jaz Hee-jeong Choi and Chewie).
Jaz Hee-jeong Choi and Chewie).
Role:
Open Forest Collective co-founder and researcher.
Year: 2020-Ongoing
Project Links:
Open Forest Catalogue
Feral Map
Exhibitions
Events
Publications
Talks
Open Forest Collective co-founder and researcher.
Year: 2020-Ongoing
Project Links:
Open Forest Catalogue
Feral Map
Exhibitions
Events
Publications
Talks
Central to the Open Forest project is a series of experimental walks with various forests around the world, where participants come together to observe their forest surroundings and share their experiences in the form of stories. Walking is embraced as a way of becoming responsive to a place, a performative practice that can activate modes of situated, relational participation and facilitate imaginative knowledge production.
The forest walks are centred around the elements of surprise and curiosity, inviting participants to walk with each other as well as with the local forest ecologies. Trees, moss, wind, dogs, and other forest creatures are considered active participants in both the walking experience and the larger eco-social phenomena happening in and around forests, such as biodiversity loss and climate change. The walks are always guided by a local navigator with good knowledge or sense of local landscape – so far, we've walked under the guideance of Indigenous forest guardians and healers, forest scientists and data managers, dogs and rivers, as well as prompts co-generated with living & artifical agents.
We've walked with various forest locations. For example, in Finland, the walks are situated in the highly instrumentalized Hyytiälä forestry field station that is full of sensors collecting measurements of gas exchanges between the forest and the atmosphere. These walks are guided by the station's data managers and researchers who share stories of the local technological (forest) infrastructure.
In Australia, the walkers have explored Melbourne’s Urban Forest and its associated open data maintained by the municipality. The local Urban Forest offers a complex ecosystem of more than 70,000 trees each with unique IDs that provides a peculiar context for inquiry into open and alternative forest data.
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In Colombia, we've walked with forest patches in three different locations, including the Bëngbe Uáman Tabanoc – an ancestral territory of the Kamëntŝa people located in southern Colombian Andes, the Reserva El Palmar – an ecological reserve located in the buffer zone of the Chingaza National Park in the Andean Mountains, and the Cerro Seco – an informal housing neighborhood located at the southern urban limits of Bogota.
In the Czech Republic, the walks take place in Central Bohemia, in the protected landscape area Křivoklátsko and are guided by Chewie – an Open Forest Collective's member of a canine origin who holds extensive sensorial knowledge of the local forest landscape and provides a unique other-than-human perspective. Chewie’s sense of orientation and interests define what is worth exploring and his sensory capacities become key in the walk navigation.
While walking, we try to observe and listen carefully to our surroundings. We record our experiences in text and audiovisual notes, and talk with fellow walkers about eco-social issues in forest ecosystems and beyond. These conversations, experiences and observations become an inspiration for forest stories. In the context of our inquiry, these stories capturing diverse more-than-human forest knowledges and experiences are considered as a kind of data – data that is messy, eclectic, sensory-rich, and more-than-human. Or, as we call it, feral data.
The feral forest data resulting from the walks – whether data inspired by a dog’s forest interests, shaped as wowen pictograms, or generated by sensors – might help challenge dominant epistemological framings of forests and cultivate an acknowledgment of diversely situated understandings of what a forest might be and to whom. Through the feral stories and data, we invite conversations about what can constitute a forest dataset, how it can be produced, and by whom. Thereby, we aim to raise questions about power, values, and structural inequalities that shape forests and their futures.
The feral forest data resulting from the walks – whether data inspired by a dog’s forest interests, shaped as wowen pictograms, or generated by sensors – might help challenge dominant epistemological framings of forests and cultivate an acknowledgment of diversely situated understandings of what a forest might be and to whom. Through the feral stories and data, we invite conversations about what can constitute a forest dataset, how it can be produced, and by whom. Thereby, we aim to raise questions about power, values, and structural inequalities that shape forests and their futures.
To enable the sharing of diverse, personally situated forest stories, we experiment with speculative material practices and devices, including the online Feral Map – a collaborative dataset of diverse, more-than-human forest experiences and knowledge (with over 150 stories so far). Through the Feral Map, the project aims to entangle the currently available – mostly quantitative – forest datasets and extractivist understandings of forests with more messy, colourful, eclectic, and feral data. The map makes the collected forest stories available for further reflection and asynchronous engagement outside of the walks’ scope, to reach broader audiences.
Some Open Forest walks have been guided by a set of More-than-Human Dérives, or drifts. Inspired by Situationists International’s artistic strategy with the same name, the dérives invite walkers to take an unplanned journey through a landscape, drop their everyday relations and let themselves be drawn by chance encounters. We've also designed a More-than-Human Dérive online portal that contains a set of drifting prompts to help guide the walkers in their explorations. The portal was developed in parallel with the Feral Map through three co-creative workshops with scientists, designers, artists, researchers, and policy actors from Melbourne.
Our recent drifting event, The Feral Drifting with Lonja Wetlands involved a 4-day performative investigation of multispecies relations and spatio-temporalities of care that shape the flow of life and death in Lonjsko Polje, the largest protected wetlands in Croatia. The processes and outcomes of our wetlands drift were shaped as Feral Fragments of Lonjsko Pojle – an audiovisual installation exhibited at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, as part of the Croatian Pavilion – Same as it Ever Was.
Our recent drifting event, The Feral Drifting with Lonja Wetlands involved a 4-day performative investigation of multispecies relations and spatio-temporalities of care that shape the flow of life and death in Lonjsko Polje, the largest protected wetlands in Croatia. The processes and outcomes of our wetlands drift were shaped as Feral Fragments of Lonjsko Pojle – an audiovisual installation exhibited at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, as part of the Croatian Pavilion – Same as it Ever Was.
Beyond organising walks, maintaining the Feral Map, and publishing research texts, we regularly share our Open Forest processes as an interactive installation at exhibitions and festivals. For a full list of places and spaces where our installation has been planted, see our Exhibitions.