THE BREATHING FOREST
(A meditation on an imaginary landscape)
by Wolfgang Lehmann & Bára Gísladóttir
Film: Wolfgang Lehmann
Music: Bára Gísladóttir, double bass and electronics
Sweden / Danmark
Duration: About an hour.
THE BREATHING FOREST is a poetic film meditation, without plot and narrative development – an imaginative state of being.
A black and white film performance with live music, an event that only exists in your perception and takes place at the moment.
Teaser: https://vimeo.com/642697745
World premiere: 12. November 2021 Inkonst, Malmö / Sweden.
Live performance for double bass, electronics and film projection.
(Performance duration around an hour).
Second live performance: 16. April 2022 Rote Fabrik, Zürich / Switzerland.
Third live performance (premiere of the revised version 2023): March 15, 2023, Die Pumpe / Frequenz_ Festival, Kiel / Germany.
Fourth live performance: 2024 Kommunale Kino Freiburg im Bresigau
The works of Bára Gísladóttir are characterized by a deep and self-reflective calm, at times producing an almost meditative state in the music. In her pieces, time is as likely to move in circles as it is moving forwards towards a distinct goal. Gísladóttir intertwines her work as a composer and a double bassist. She has worked with orchestras and ensembles all over the world and is an active performer herself - both as a soloist and with her long-time collaborator Skúli Sverrisson.
Bára Gísladóttir is a graduate of the Iceland Academy of Fine Arts, the Conservatorio di musica „Giuseppe Verdi“ in Milan and the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen.
Her works have been performed by DR Symphony Orchestra, DR Vocal Ensemble, Copenhagen Phil, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, Radio-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, Ensemble InterContemporain, Riot Ensemble and Ensemble Adapter, among others.
She is currently nominated for the Nordisk Råds musikpris and the Danish Carl Prize as composer of the year (2022).
https://www.baragisladottir.com/
https://soundcloud.com/baragisla
About the work:
THE BREATHING FOREST is a kaleidoscopic black and white film with live music, an event that only exists in your perception and takes place at the moment.
THE BREATHING FOREST is one hour long.
The work negation the dramaturgy of storytelling and the suggestion of development.
The basic idea is an animistic or pantheistic imaginary meditation.
The forest is the lungs of our world. According to mythology, the forest also has a soul, we know little about the fact, but we know that trees have live and communicate with each other, this is scientifically proven.
The film works with kaleidoscopic ornament-like images. Ornaments are one of the oldest artistic expressions in the history of mankind and occur in almost all cultures. Symmetries and ornaments often automatically trigger a feeling of beauty, something that the film both works with and against.
Space and time play a major role in the performance.
The concept of the film is inspired by non-European music, where the length of the work in combination with the varying repetitions of the images and music triggers different sensations in the audience.
If the work succeeds, which requires the audience's participation and openness, the goal is to evoke a feeling of timelessness. A state of being.
The starting point to the work:
Intellectually, the work is inspired by Stefano Mancuso research on the communication of plants he introduces in his book "Verde brillante - Sensibility e Intelligence del mondo vegetale" (2013), written together with Alessandra Viola, and Julien Offray de La Mettrie's essay "L'homme plus que maschine“ (1747) as well as thoughts from pantheistic and animistic worldviews.
Essential for THE BREATHING FOREST is Mancuso's research results that prove that plants have intelligence, can communicate with other plants and animals, are equipped with senses, and can be described as intelligent in every respect. The roots represent the command center and the “brain”. The way plants communicate is so dissimilar to humans that it is beyond our common imagination.
In the philosophy of history, La Mettrie is considered as a representative of materialism and the Enlightenment. His essay has become famous for its assertion that humans, animals and plants are like living machines. But the more interesting point in his essay, and why his text included for the inspiration of THE BREATHING FOREST, is the following. La Mettrie believed that humans, animals, and plants are all built in the same "mechanical" way. Then by logic there must also be such a thing like a soul (should there be one against his expectation) in every plant and animal, in a less developed form, but presumably just as existent (or non-existent) as in humans. What La Mettrie established as early as 1747, long before Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, is that all life on earth originated from the same "building blocks" and is connected to them. Perhaps La Mettrie's comparison with the machine was unfortunate; nowadays, he would have chosen a different metaphor.
Plants share a large part of the evolutionary history, such as cell structure, environment, and needs with animals and humans, this is, e.g. for Mancuso & Viola, today scientifically proven knowledge.
Technical requirements:
Double bass (basic 4-string and not a jazz double bass)
Double bass chair
PA (min. 2 speakers + all cables)
Mic stand (with a low option)
Xlr cable (from mic to AI)
2 Jacks (long) from AI to mixer
Large projection screen
Projector
HDMI cable long enough to connect the projector to a Mac.
15. March 2023 Die Pumpe, Kiel / Germany
