Lessons from the Forest 3

Lessons from the Forest Part 3, 2018. Lichen imagery provided by Oregon State University, Department of Botany and Plant Pathology. All words and music by Sasha Petrenko.

The multiple languages used throughout Lessons from the Forest, namely German, English and Czech are meant to reflect the diversity inherent in a healthy ecosystem and were chosen for reasons of familiarity and convenience. Czech is artist’s mother tongue and as the work began in Germany, german speakers were willing and close at hand. Additionally, the German people and their culturally significant relationship to the forest provided additional source material and context for the ecologically grounded project. The layered quality of the soundtrack, where words are spoken repeatedly, with different languages comprising a single sentence, pushes the individual words towards becoming more sound and emotion, than symbol and idea. Whats left is relationships, between selves, between species. And as the relationships become more essential, the self dissolves into the network and becomes part of the ecological community.