people: Luis Berrios-Negron

‘Ensayo de cuna a Guataúba // Rehearsing a lullaby to the herald of woe’ (TBD) by Luis Berríos Negrón with Félix Becker, Randi Kjær, and the Umeå Barockkör.

The event is limited to 30 guests and will start punctually at 12:30. Please register at: https://forms.office.com/e/2NWVUY2mYd

This performance is an unrehearsed, experimental work that is part of the postdoctoral research project ‘Of tree nurseries remediating the colonial memory of landscapes’ (2023-24) by UmArts Research Fellow, Luis Berríos Negrón. Leaning on his arts and decolonial research, Luis has invited his previous Copenhagen-based collaborators Félix Becker and Randi Kjær to contribute their sound art and activist practices. Additionally, Luis has invited the Umeå Barockkör to perform in this novel collaboration. The choir, directed by Esther von Schoenberg, describe their participation as “an immersive, experimental choir performance along Luis Berríos Negrón.”  This performance will augment perspectival agencies and turns, to address the form and force of contradictions that characterize global warming, as well as the broadening chasm between plantations and forests. In all, and stemming from the recent colloquium at Bildmuseet, Luis aims to further explore modes of research representation through the performance.

The performance is the first of two public events supported by Future Forests’ seed funding, both complementing his postdoctoral work as UmArts Research Fellow in Art and Architecture in partnership with UMA and Bildmuseet.

Umeå Barockkör is a diverse and energetic choir of singers with a passion for exploring baroque music. They perform music from the Renaissance to the Romantic period, often with theatrical elements. Choir director Esther von Schoenberg is a classical singer and vocal pedagogue specialising in the baroque.

Randi Kjær, Copenhagen-based artist – mask maker, performer and author, evolving the project Creatures and Messengers – working in the field of activism, rituals, shadows, visual rhetoric, the non-human world and planetary awareness. Holds a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric.

Felix Becker, Copenhagen based cross disciplinary developer of context customised projects. He works on ngo curated interventions and processes, evolving (un)sustainable local cultures. Holder of MA in edu. Psychology in addition to music & performance studies.

Luis Berríos Negrón is a Puerto Rican environmental artist and experimental architect working with decolonising forms and forces of global warming. He is Associate Professor at the School of Architecture, as well as Research Fellow and chair of the Geopolitics of the Forests Group at UmArts.

Colloquium on Research Representations of Forests

with Malin Arnell, Dimitris Athanassiadis, Gerd Aurell, Luis Berríos Negrón, Francesco Camilli, Sofia Johansson, Toms Kokins, Eliza Maher Hasselquist, Irma Olofsson, Lars Östlund, Janina Priebe, Per Sandström, Jundan Jasmine Zhang, and invited guest Eva la Cour.

PROGRAMME

9:00 Gather in Bildmuseet reception. Lockers for coats and large bags on level 0.

9:15 – 9:45 Exhibition Walk of Eight Degrees/Contemporary Art on the Forest, with museum curator Sofia Johansson

9:45 Coffee & Tea

10:00 Welcome remarks by Ele Carpenter and Luis Berríos Negrón

10:10 – 10:30 Session 1

Svalbard, a live-narrated montage (Umeå, 2024), by Eva la Cour.

10:30 – 11:00 Session 1.5

Geo-aesthetics and Post-Future Essayism, Eva la Cour in conversation with Jundan Jasmine Zhang.

11:00 – 11:15 Pause

11:15 – 12:00 Session 2

Forests and Urbanity (presentations) moderated by Janina Priebe

With Dimitris Athanassiadis (Urban forestscapes), Francesco Camilli (Practising Wood in Architecture), and Toms Kokins (Sweden’s Timber Empire)

LUNCH

13:00 – 13:30 Session 2.5

Forests and Urbanity (conversation) moderated by Janina Priebe

With Dimitris Athanassiadis (Urban forestscapes), Francesco Camilli (Practising Wood in Architecture), and Toms Kokins (Sweden’s Timber Empire)

13:30 – 14:45 Session 3

Sensing Forests, moderated by Janina Priebe

With Eliza Maher Hasselquist (Capillaries of forests), Irma Olofsson (Peripheral Labour Geographies), and Per Sandström (Building bridges for reindeer! or ignoring them completely: the Svea Hovrätt court case).

14:45-15:00 Coffee and tea with fika

15:00 – 16:15 Session 4

Performing Forests with Gerd Aurell (Tree holes), Lars Östlund (Sámi sacred trees: X-marks and stones in trees), Luis Berríos Negrón (Tree nursing), concluding with “Breathing-with, an exploration through the breath of the forest” by Malin Arnell.

16:15 – 16:30 Open-ended remarks with Eva la Cour

This forest colloquium is organized alongside the exhibition Eight Degrees / Contemporary Art on the Forest in collaboration with UmArts.

As part of the UmArts community, the Geopolitics of the Forests group hosts artist and filmmaker Eva la Cour as guest presenter and respondent. Considering la Cour’s work with geoaesthetics and her “fundamental dissatisfaction with the representational discourse, and its historical and colonial legacy”, the working group will present and contrast mediations of research from our respective disciplines and perspectives in regards to forests.

The day will begin with a walk through the current Eight Degrees/Contemporary Art on the Forest exhibition at Bildmuseet as context, and an initial live narrated screening of la Cour’s recent film work. Then the group members will present in various formats, with research representation and environmental remediation as loose common concerns.

Geopolitics of the Forests is a group of scholars at UmArts who study the forest from different disciplinary perspectives. The day’s moderator and organizer is Luis Berríos Negrón, chair of the Group, Associate Professor at Umeå School of Architecture, and a Research Fellow at UmArts Research Center for Architecture, Design, and the Arts at Umeå University.

For this session we will follow up the interesting conversations that started at the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts’ research seminar a couple of weeks ago where Dr. Malin Arnell did a super enlightening presentation of her Phd on the topic of Why do we engage with artistic research. That same day a debate article Statstrogna konstnärer utan publik- Statens växande satsning på högskoleanknuten konstnärlig forskning riskerar att beröva konsten både dess lockelse och dess frihet came out in the journal Respons by Lyra Ekström Lindbäck taking the lead in the questione whether artistic research is important at all? 

Let´s get together and talk more about this burning topic. UmArts Deputy Director Ylva Fernaeus, Associate Professor at Umeå Institute of Design will lead the conversation.  

Um…Crits is open to everyone in the UmArts community- Researchers, teachers and freelance artists. Interested in joining this session? Let us know if you are coming by sending an email to clara.west@umu.se 

The upcoming meeting of the Geopolitics of the Forest Group will host artist and researcher Ignacio Acosta along with forest ecologist and historian Lars Östlund to discuss fires and land stewardship in the forests of Swedish Norrland. Ignacio will make a presentation based on his research focusing on “understanding Indigenous land stewardship” and “the negative impacts of the nation state disrupting traditional Indigenous ways of managing the land, where burning is one important aspect.” As expert respondent, Lars will co-moderate a follow-up conversation with Ignacio and the attending public along with group’s coordinator Clara West and chair Luis Berríos-Negrón.

Lars Östlund is Professor at SLU’s Department of Forest Ecology and Management. He is focusing on “forest history” where he works to try and understand the relationship between people and the forests from a long time perspective. https://www.slu.se/en/ew-cv/lars-ostlund/

Ignacio Acosta is an artist and researcher based at Uppsala University’s Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism, working in territories under pressure from extractive industries. He leads a FORMAS funded project ‘Indigenous perspectives on forest fires, drought and climate change: Sápmi’ based at CEMFOR, Uppsala University. He is part of Traces of Nitrate, a UK AHRC funded collaborative visual research project based at the Royal College of Arts and the University of Brighton. Please see more on Ignacio’s project on forest and fires in Sápmi at: http://ignacioacosta.com/forest-fires

More info on Ignacio’s research:

http://ignacioacosta.com/drones-drums

http://ignacioacosta.com/from-mars-to-venus 

The Geopolitics of the Forest working group meets regularly to share their research on the geopolitics of the forest across art, architecture, political science and landscape ecology. The group are exploring how to develop holistic and interdisciplinary understandings of the human / forest relationship that can represent multiple, overlapping and conflicting interests. They aim to develop a shared critical space for new collaborative artistic research projects which deal with the ethical complexities of forestry in relation to the climate crisis, to reconsider the language and aesthetics of sustainability.

The meetings investigate multidisciplinary approaches to the human and nonhuman entanglements of the forest in Northern Sweden. Research questions investigate the ethical aesthetics of different kinds of woodlands and their material and geopolitical networks.

The Geopolitics of the Forest Working Group is chaired by Luis Berrios-Negron, UmArts Research Fellow in Art and Architecture. Members include: Gerd Aurell, artist; James B. Brown, architect; Sofia Johansson, curator; Toms Kokins, architect; Lars Östlund, forest historian; Edith Marie Pasquier, artist; Janina Priebe, political science; Moa Sandström, Sámi studies; Per Sandström, landscape ecologist, and many others who come to share their research, practices and ideas.