| Abstrakt: |
In 1982, Tree Mountain was an idea, or a proposal, for a monumental work of art by Agnes Denes, consisting of 10,000 trees to be planted in an area 1.5 miles long and 0.5 miles wide. The trees were planned to have 10,000 human custodians appointed for them. Like most of Denes’ utopian plans the concept remained unrealized until the small community of Pinsiö in Southern Finland commissioned Tree Mountain. The work would serve to rehabilitate a disused gravel pit as was required by the law. Between 1992 and 1996 an artificial mountain was built and 11,000 fir trees were planted on it in a spiralling fractal pattern as Denes had indicated in her original concept. In the article, I focus on the discrepancy between the concept-plan and the contingent quality of the living material world where it was realized. The plan exists in an atemporal, ahistorical dimension where human rationality believes itself to be omnipotent, whereas the ontological reality revealed by the agency of the fir trees is completely different. As they grow on the artificial mountain built on the remains of an esker dating from the last ice age, the fir trees become witnesses to geological time and its sedimentations. In Scandinavia, the history of fir trees predates human habitation: they bring testimony from the time before the ice age. I propose to look at Tree Mountain as a palimpsest of geological sedimentations and of earthly temporalities, where human action counts for much less than that of the fir trees and the living material world they both reveal and inhabit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
