This is a copy (slightly edited) of a letter of support I included in the grant application, on behalf of key participants
(who cannot write).
The Bainbridge Trees project as an artistic (and
humanistic) challenge.
Choosing trees as a subject is an ambitious challenge.
Trees don’t talk: can people be eloquent about trees?
As far as we know
this is the first attempt of this type for a web-radio (and traditional
radio?) program. I think it is about time we have such a TreeTalk
program.
Although trees are highly valued in almost every opinion
poll taken in this community there has been no collective, organized and
sustained effort to make them part of the public discourse.
There have been many crises, moments when the community gathered to
protest especially outrageous and in our face clear-cuts but such
uproars have all slowly faded out of our collective memory without any
significant changes in the books (or fines for the perpetrators).
From a cultural and artistic point of view I think trees are
very important artists within our community.
They are brilliant performing artists who provide us
along the year with different shows of colors and shape.
This esthetic approach is not dominant: it is most often
superseded by a materialistic and utilitarian perspective that -for instance-
does not hesitate to mutilate the artists if/when they are in the way of a
power line or a building or a parking lot or a sidewalk.
I think it is important to facilitate a dialog between the
human community and the tree artists that live among us.
Bainbridge Trees wants
to try establishing, recording and archiving such a dialog on the internet.
While trees shape our esthetic collective landscape and are
widely appreciated (see the above mentioned polls) they are also highly
vulnerable and their status as very special and precious artworks and artists
is precarious.
I have registered this project as an individual project (in the context of the grant application to the BIAH) but
this morning I realize how wrong I am.
Bainbridge Trees is very much a collaborative project bringing together a large number of performing artists who are among the tallest and most beautiful on our island.
It is obviously (although I did not specify it in my
description) a project that addresses the need of a special population of
beings/people “who would not ordinarily have an opportunity to participate in
cultural events”.
That is in cultural events as we imagine them: trees have been staging the most impressive cultural events for the longest time but I feel one of the additional key challenge of the project is to make the community realize how important tree/artists are in our collective and artistic life.
Hopefully this project can bring a better appreciation for
their art and better protection and acceptance.
A footnote about the challenge of using New Media
The media chosen (internet-based radio and blog) are new: the authors will have to bring the community into them. Listening to radio via pc and ipods is not mainstream yet although there is a strong generational movement among the youth to use ipods to listen to music.
Can they listen to something else than music, can the adults
join the youth in using ipods and master the rss technique that makes it easy
to download programs?
The technical barriers for accessing the new media are significant while the potential benefit is big.