Group exhibition
29.05–29.06.2025: Out of Sight, Antwerp, BE
During Antwerp Art Weekend, Out of Sight opens Forest Encounters, a multidisciplinary group exhibition exploring diverse imaginaries, concepts, and practices related to the forest. Central to the exhibition are the questions: What can we learn from and through the forest? What are the actual and potential human encounters with it? How can we coexist more harmoniously with forest ecologies?
Bringing together perspectives from contemporary art, forestry, and the humanities, Forest Encounters approaches the forest as more than a site of ecological inquiry. It is framed as a complex socio-political terrain, shaped by conflicting policies, cultural narratives, and economic interests, while also remaining a vital, living biodiverse space.
Amid escalating climate, environmental, and political crises, the exhibition invites a critical rethinking of our relationship with forests. Acknowledging more than human perspective, Forest Encounters unfolds through artistic research projects, workshops, storytelling, and film screenings. Moving between real and imagined forests, it situates the forest as both a natural entity and a contested cultural landscape.
With: Nayari Castillo & Reni Hofmüller, Marjolijn Dijkman, Polonca Lovšin, It Rains Differently with contributions by: Dušica Dražić, Monika Lang, Siniša Ilić, Ibis Ćerimagić and Jelena Vukićević
__
The sound and film installation ‘Between the Lines’ will be part of the group exhibition ‘Forest Encounters’ at Out of Sight in Antwerp. This installation will include the final sound composition written for the installation by composer Henry Vega.
‘Between the Lines’ is a visual essay film with an orchestra of robotic drummers playing trunks from the protected forest near Verdun.
The sound and film installation focuses on the effects of drought and climate change in this forest located in the Red Zone (Zone Rouge) in the northeast of France. It relates to the ongoing struggle to deal with the aftermath and remnants of the First World War within the global climate crisis, which impacted this particular landscape on a monumental scale.
The film consists of short chapters with black-and-white assemblages of contemporary film and drone images, recent aerial LiDAR images of the craters and trenches in the forest, and historical photographs of the devastated landscape after WWI. These are interspersed with slow panoramic close-ups of bark from fallen trees with bark beetle traces.
The sound installation refers to the military marching bands and Morse code communication during WWI and the sounds bark beetles use to navigate under the bark. Electrotechnician Lukas Pol developed and built the robotic installation, and composer Henry Vega was invited to develop the composition for the robotic drummers in relation to the film.
__
