Points of Origin

‘Points of Origin’ reveals the internal growth structure of one of the spruce trees affected in the forest planted on WWI battlefields. The tree became hollow as internal decay and erosion gradually enlarged the cavities caused by disease, damage, and weathering.

Inside the hollow tree trunk, a cluster of branches points sharply to the origin of the tree’s growth process. Below, the tree’s branches are mirrored, creating an eerie reflection of a charged historical moment and the threshold between the tree’s birth and death.

‘Points of Origin’ is part of the research project ‘Between the Lines,’ which focuses on the catastrophic effects of drought and climate change in the forests of the 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.

Barren landscape in Verdun on former battlefields, photo Marjolijn Dijkman, 2023

Germany donated spruces to reforest thousands of hectares of the polluted landscape in the Zone Rouge in France as part of post-war restitution. They planted many monocropped Norway spruces in straight rows, following the scientific forest management system invented in Germany. These dense forests were intended to keep people out, creating a ‘Living Sarcophagus.’

In the scorching summers of 2018 and 2019, a hundred years after WWI ended, the bark beetle Ips Typographus invaded these monoculture forests around Verdun. The National Forestry Agency (ONF) has cleared the infected areas in the last few years. This is important to avoid forest fires, but it is a dangerous and slow process because of the estimated 12 – 15 million pieces of unexploded ordnance that are still present in the soil. In the research project ‘Between the Lines,’ the sanitized, barren, and reopened landscape symbolizes the consequences of the war, the industrialization of forest management, and the impact of the current climate crisis.