Be-Coming Tree 4
A real-time blogged response by Sally Annett moderated by Rob La Frenais to the live streamed, multi-channel performances of Be-Coming Tree 4.

Séance 1.

We gather in the visual auditorium with ambient jangling techno music (slightly).
I am logged in - and logged out as the interweb does its thing.
The music becomes more sci-fi, as I join, multi screens shared with performers and audience as we gather for this multi-channel rite.

And we are off! Following Ali Masoudi through semi-desert - scrub land open savannah. Who knows where O.Pen B leads us to : her red clad back unravelling scarlet twine as she heads down a labyrinth style track - the gallery view (see here) isa living being.

Dimple B Shah stares back at us, bright yellow sari against yellow clothes and curtains

In contrastT.J.Thorne is plaited? melded? Woven? into tree and then cling wrapped like a chrysalis – it is not clear where her hair ends and the trees tubules which could be alien suction tubes (seem to be) ‘force-growing' the plastic wrapped fetus. The Art Couple too bind a tree - round and round - winding green and red striped - whilst just below left Dimple plunges her face into a bowl of what? Paper leaves? Bamboo?

Night is only present in Janaina Morse’s screen - in their world it is night - torch lit tangles and semi urban landscapes, looking slightly grubby half lit – flitting.
Just above Thorne has obscured her performance with a brown paper sign - written in black marker it says ‘Poetry’ and the shadow of her hand plays across it - and falls away - someone else is with her - the illusion of solitude is broken - she winds on.
Just above her head floats Elizabeth Damur - so much to look at - the music I now realize is live - the Talking Trees are playing the sound track - seamlessly - bringing a very different quality to all the performances - and creating a unity - not present in the previous ‘Be-Coming Trees: it is an aural curation.

Oh! I see a naked bottom - it just caught my eye - and is gone again - no there it is Kajoli Ilojak is crawling through an endless green corridor - I can’t tell with the screen size if it is real or CGI ? It is a beautiful shot - and perhaps why the audience is asking for individual screens - intriguing.
Dimple throws her bamboo - white with drought across her yellow space.

I want to see it all - I can’t.
I sit back and try to take in a bit more - a bit more slowly - it is a lovely thing.
It is absolutely ritual - and the music carries it for the viewer in an unwavering way.
I am not aware that the performers can hear it - are all very separate - but they too are joined by the same platform - so they must. Is it affecting what they are doing - the rhythm of the work - which ones can hear it? I need to know!

JasmineCederquist’s hand slowly strokes the tree, dragging fingers lightly down its trunk - how would this look without the music? This audio contemplation has me. The hand appears gentle, eerie - and the steady sky scape perfect against the spinning blue sky.
I watch Andrea Isa - the screen so small - barely and inch by 2 - I cannot see a figure - a form - through the briars, through the brambles to the beheaded tree .The sound fairytale continues.(Talking Trees). O.Pen raises her hands aloof in the well-trodden circular land work she is traveling - invoking (to/with) the single tree in front of her - I think I know where she is - to the right of the A6 - facing west - I may be wrong - in the sheep meadows. Damour is dancing - in clearing legs apart, black skirt flowing as she bends and twirls - it looks like the dance of a warrior. A child is spraying Ali Masoudi in the desert - with a blue aerosol. Is it blue for water? Thistles sticks and twigs are planted in his hair - is it a plea for water in this tree less place?

Damour commences or continues to bind her tree - it is reminiscent of a Barbara Hepworth. Blue and white yarn - Baba Yaga, Hansel and Gretel . The threads in the woods - Anancy or witch. Weaving.

I am completely tricked - he is the beheaded tree! Well played (Andrea Isa) - the costume/sculpture seemed entirely natural through the gallery screen.

O Pen. B is back and she is seated under the tree - I pin her - she is weeping into the red yarn - it is pressed to her face - she stands and gathers - and again I am wrong - it is not yarn at the root - it is a red cloth, a sail, a tent, a tabernacle in the bark chips. Now I know where she is .The peace pagoda. By the lakes. She leans back - like TJ Thorne - the tree is connected to but bears her weight.

Slow down, slow down. So much to see and the time is flying. T.J.Thorne - sat facing and in silent dialogue with the tree she is becoming - the ivy sweeping her into it . Elizabeth Damour - her blue fringe not quite brighter than the blue twine resting under her chin, dangling off the fallen tree which she has draped herself along - becoming one with its limbs in the sunlight, her skirt, now I see it is sparkled with stars - she is in repose.
Gallery view back - and Dimple – is now completely submerged embraces the pile of leaves which she is currently inhabiting - in her yellow nest - imbibing also contemplating, I wonder how it smells? The musical tone has changed - it is sharper, has an Indonesian, Gamelan feel to it - Kajoli Ilijok at the waterside is shaking visibly. Shuddering with cold - a plastic bottle and a bowl containing the eggs she has broken - trailed with ivy - how cold she must be - my spine feels it - the green slime walls make the stone or concrete seem softer than they surely are. She trembles - her right leg is bound or cut - I cannot quite see - she stands painfully and walks - then we cut to the sea - or shore - where are we? Fascinating and beautiful. Above and equally dramatically Thorne has pulled forward away from the trunk of her tree and the Ivy braided into it streams out behind her - taken her full weight as she leans forward - she is tree. She has become one with tree.

Illojak is now kneeling - extending arms forward as if in benediction to the damp green walls and floor in front of her - an image of penance. The sound track keeps inserting sounds similar to my phone and computer, and fire - I keep having micro second anxieties that something is ‘going off’ an alarm a call. Pen and the Art Couple have/are binding their trees in red thread - O.Pen’s is at the root - the place where above and below ground join.

Art Couple’s is a waist band, a birthing belt .The Afroceltic rhythm has me now - heart beat drum carrying me along, hypnotic. The camera has turned - Ilojak is by the sea.
Or a lake. In my mind a sea. She has become a siren - barefoot in this liminal, space - a Melusine.
The active contemplation continues, the winding, the kneeling the weaving, the burying the petitioning - can we all make a petition now? Can we petition collectively - mimetically for …what? For the trees. Dimple is buried like a panda - stripping. Her nest. Thorne is prone like dryad, Masoudi and his adept continue across their wilderness with crowns of thistles - searching for water. And the band plays on.

Seance 2

In the waiting room (again) - feeling almost greedy - certainly that this is a luxury communion.A triple part programme - of live theatre - of eco-artistry - of global ritual - in your own home, performance artists from 22 countries gather together, to form a vessel of arboreal performance - it is a great pleasure.
The becoming tree band is back.
My soul soars - the sound now a welcome / necessary element I approach the gallery - the movement of Lucy Stockton Smiths tiny screen draws my attention, then the flicker of light on Gina Ben David as she performs a series of body movements, Qi Gong or Tai Chi - I am unsure - perhaps some Gurdjieff in there too (or the other way around). For art to be Art it has to be…????? The screen is rushing over ground, to tree roots and pine cones, candles and feet - ever moving.

Monica Tobel and Peter Purg are both bending over, palms down in yoga positions, each on their screens hands and feet in close proximity to the earth , Purg is chopping wood, Tobel is scraping and then listening to the ground, with an especially fashioned ‘eartube’ (ear trumpet), an expression of bliss on her face.

The sound is gone. Maria Bitnik applies scarlet lipstick and firmly kisses the trunk of the tree - my screen connection is gone - and glitching - I watch the circle spin. Caroline Gregory’s screen has captured my thoughts whilst I am locked out of the performance - her body against the body of the tree with a bright light behind, making it almost impossible to separate spatially, the two forms.

In the distance Lauren Lewis has the appearance of a flower fairy, gracefully dancing barefoot with a tree, matching Ben Davies more intimate, camera close gestures.

Beech tree bark sticks to the red lips of Bitkin as she religiously applies layer after layer and imprints it on to the tree - her direct eye contact with the camera disturbing and disassociated The music throbs forward…

Suraya Tüchler is embedded into the muddy roots of a tree - covered in earth and leaves, part camouflaged, part ready to plant, she squeezes into an impossibly small place and then is rejected by the structure of the be-ing and lies face down and rolls in angst or sorrow at the refusal.
Tobel remains still - listening absorbing.
Ben David has a companion, (she) recommences the movements - stretching and interlocking fingers and thought patterns together - whilst Stockton Smith whirls unceasingly.

It is powerful ritual - the music takes it up - accelerating bringing sudden joy and energy to the ‘place’. My pin takes me to Corbett who like Thorne in the earlier seance has become physically as well as energetically one with the tree - costumed in bark and moss with a lichen and leaf hat - she again evokes the 19thC Rackham like images but with a 21st sensibility - this work is not romantic. It is perhaps nostalgic, futuristic and pragmatic - but it is magic and tragic elements (loss of environment) - seem unavoidable.

Purg continues to hack out the roots of his dead tree - so many metaphors are possible with this work - the soundtrack is doing something amazing again - never letting your inner ear settle. Ben David waves heart flags and can be seen speaking an invocation - to what we don’t know - the hum over the sound makes it feel like old movies footage - perhaps taken by explorers from another century - anthropologists coming across a new cultural artefact. Tüchler carries tree, Tobel too commences to kiss the tree root long and hard - (there is a devotion and perhaps even an eroticism in this gesture - as her hands writhe and caress as she continues her blessing,) Corbet is tree, as is Gregory - Bitten has been lost to the internet. Purg puts on black gloves - I wonder how much the soundtrack is influencing my impressions as it has turned darker.

Stockton still spins and Lewis stretches and navigates fallen logs. I have hidden the non-video participants - a little late - the difference is extraordinary - the triple split screen an entirely altered and the result a painterly feel - The sun has moved on and Gregory is now visible, next to Ben David - and their movements and exhalations mirror and complement whilst Tüchler to their right drags herself and a gnarled branch up (camera tilt perhaps?) a grassy bank - Still Stockton Smith spins on - like the world. Tobel pats her arboreal companion she continues her intimate conversation with it. Corbet appears to have found an unequivocal balance with the tree she is working with.
I am missing Bitkin and her flaming mouth.

Corbet exits her tree - so dramatically it shocks me awake - she walks off - Lucy Stockton Smiths trees whorl with the beat. My head is bobbing to the techno which now rolls over us all - and I sit back to watch - and learn.

Seance 3

Reflecting in the intermission on the intention of the work.

What are the intentions of a) the artists and b)the organizers - physically, psychologically, intellectually and spiritually?
In what manner and methodology are these intentions being fulfilled?
As an audience we are watching the manifestation of what?

Off again - led in by sounds from Talking Trees, and happy that ‘For Art to be Art it has to Cure’ are able to join live from South Africa Sitting back and watching the gallery I try to watch the players as a single cast - there is more overall movement - hands and feet in action, Lisa Sang, LRA, Lara Buffard, Miranda Whall , Deej Fabycc and MJ Newell, Veronica Cordova de la Rose, Collective EnHebra all moving together in isolation in my computer screen.

Disconnected again - I wish the scale was different - I want to see this on a screen where all the players/actors are life size, full immersion into the ritual - rather than the tiny voyerism we are enjoying. Whall is crawling around the wooden floor of an empty, old Edwardian timber floored room, with a plant pot containing a tree strapped to her back – (forbidden to leave by COVID-19 restrictions. Talking Trees have reached a contemplative sunny afternoon vibe - sleepy almost. Heavy. Subtly altering the whole nature of the gathered works – again - I zoom in onto the natural elements - they seem more present in this session - or perhaps my perception has shifted as well.

Daisy Black whirls a hoola hoop, Cordova De La Rose is anointing herself cross legged on her floor with candles and markings - another esoteric set of practices being overtly used.

Many of the other performers are literally becoming tree - becoming, earth - either contained or hidden in their environs - ' For art to be Art it has to cure’ are masked and adorned in full shamanic ritual around and within their tree - a blurred bright red and green straw wispy figure peers through glaring light - the sound track once again bringing a different quality to the shared audience percipience - the effects must be so different to each actor and viewer?

EnHebra and Laura Buffard and partner are all using wooden or bark, freeform prosthetics and masks - this union again of human and wood - flesh and spirit.

Scale again - At the macro and micro Lisa Lotte Giebal is swallowed by her wide, many trucked tree, we see a hand flick in and out from behind a branch occasionally, we realize how small we are, then to L4R whose lens zooms into bright chroma - magnified, giving a Kirilian or infra-red close up view - again the scale and the magic is evident.

And as I am led through a grove by Pagganwala I realized I am being hypnotized, lulled.

I do not really understand what is happening.

But it is beautiful.

The time is going too fast - it is hard to do each performer justice in this devotional event, to spend enough time with each, individual gift.

The performers and audiences all constrained by limits.
Whall by being forbidden to go outside to create the piece - confined

Continually, confinement - by COVID, of our bodies, our desires, of the frame, the screen, our audio-visual range and its marvelous digital sibling - which allows this ritual - because ritual it surely is?

I am thinking of varied formats, of wishing to see the pieces individually, as well as collectively. The whirls and static screens of colour and the music, which has flowed through the days' events like and enchanted stream, linking and bringing a sense of coherence - though entirely improvised - and still I want to know - can the actors here the music? And if they can is it in real time - or just slightly behind, slightly out of sync.?

I have the sense again of the inherited traditions and ritual practices we all hold within us - how these come out and how the archetype of the tree is universal.

Not knowing who to watch - I return to EnHebra - the masked figure now seated in darkness in front of a fire - wicker sistrum in hand, encircled in rock or weaving I cannot tell and I decide to spend the final moments, in contemplation, with this figure.

My intention for todays ritual is (without sounding like a Miss World Contestant) is healing.”

Be-Coming Tree 4 : 24/04/21

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