Signe Pelne

The first intervention is a seed bank, which would be distributed across identified biodiversity hotspots in the nearby area and stand in the landscape as a bank to place seeds. As they mature they would gather in the processional pot which will later be used in the ritual.

Meanwhile, on-site a process of selective cutting of 10 dying pine trees takes place, where after they are placed in the pre-erected drying facility on site. Within a year, these trees are used to make the scaffold that would guide the processional walk and later shape the pavilion.

Designed to connect the participants to the forest, the procession would take place during the enxinoux and be a gathering open to the public to experience a ritual of seeding the pavilion. This walk is organised through 2 meeting points in the landscape where it culminates in the middle.

The procession has a specific choreography of seeding seeds from the mixed seed banks. The front participant makes the layout of the seeding and wears ritualistic shoes that can permeate the ground. The people behind then place the seeds in and the last person covers them with soil.

The choreography of the procession corresponds to the scaffolding infrastructure that is pre-placed in the landscape and is to support the creation and the shape of the forest pavilion. As the trees and plants would develop they would be tied to the scaffold, each year coming back to fix and change the ties and their location.

This as a practice is inspired by the ancient art of tree shaping. When bent and regularly secured to the scaffold the trees would create an independently standing architecture. For the stage, the tree seeds are selected and combined to compliment each other whilst the surrounding landscape is planted unselectively letting nature do its course.

Within this scenario, the performance is the stage that shapes into place as the trees develop and the scaffolding disintegrates over the years. In the 50th year, it is removed fully, letting the structure stand and evolve further independently.

Through centuries of Silviculture practices, forests were cut in managed patches. As one develops it is clearcut, the ground is harrored and planted with tree seedlings, after they are thinned and then clear cut again. The majority of the Baltic forests have been treated to such practices leaving only around 1% as primary forestland. Once covered in a mix of different tree species around 75% of the territories are now covered by just the 2 most profitable - Scots Pine and Spruce.

The site of the project is a clearcut. An eco-assemblage where most of the carbon and fungi have been uprooted by violent practices of timber logging, leaving the soil bare and without any of its intended purpose of the Forest. Left to either slowly regenerate through long processes of recovery or most commonly quickly replanted with pine saplings, in neat rows forming what will soon be another monoculture to be extracted, the site of a clearcut is a place of potential - a man-made tabula rasa. A space in time to break a perpetual circle of extraction.

Over the last decade, there has been an almost twofold increase in logging within the Baltics. This is not circumstantial and can be explained by Europe’s insatiable appetite for biomass, which accounts for ¼ of the total extractions.

Biomass has somehow created an idea that there is a greener kind of carbon - one that’s emission is less harmful to the environment. Carbon neutrality is a fairytale. It is a fictional way of streamlining nature’s solutions for the gain of not changing existing human practices. Humans have gained the imaginary perspective of simply continuing exploiting the forest for energy without understanding the complexities and the stable nature of naturally occurring eco assemblages. Classified as renewable energy, in reality, these landscapes are burned.

Through my personal attraction to the area as well as the realities of the rapidly declining biodiversity, I based my research on the Baltics.  Although the proposal is meant to be condition not site-specific to be able to replicate across all clearcuts, I found a site near Veclaicene that is both protected by Natura 2000, classified as under threat of biodiversity decline and has had major and recent clear-cutting interventions.

Left to either slowly regenerate through long processes of recovery or most commonly quickly replanted with pine saplings, in neat rows forming what will soon be another monoculture to be extracted, the site of a clearcut is a place of potential - a man-made tabula rasa. A space in time to break a perpetual circle of extraction.