USA Projects

We woke up this morning in at Atlanta, en route to Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, with part one of our forest carefully packed into our trunk. Over the next 10 days, we'll scheme, dream and rehearse with students and faculty there and present a 4-hour version of HTBAF next week. We're psyched to be exploring this next phase with these amazing people in the middle of the mountains! Also, supporters, please know that we are already at work assembling all of your special gifts....and we'll be getting them out to you when we return, over the month of March/early April. Thank You! Lisa, Katie and Shawn

To all our supporters: WOW. We wake up this morning feeling so grateful to all of you for your support: your financial contributions brought us to a total of over $9,800 (!), and your warm interest in and curiosity about FOREST has deepened and expanded the scope of the project within our hearts and minds. We hope you will stay in the conversation as the piece develops, and will update you through this site, through our facebook page, and through our website. We will begin sending out rewards in the next couple weeks, and will be contacting some of you for the details we need to make your rewards come true! Thanks again, so much-- you all really made a difference to what this project will be. With appreciation! Katie, Lisa, and Shawn

Lisa is in NYC at the moment, for some meetings with a few of the organizations we are partnering with for our June presentation at The Kitchen. She just got this email from Shawn from the build space in N.O. "a small grove of trees is up!" So much growth...in no small part because you all have helped us get to 111% funded, with still 2 days to go! Amazing. Thanks for helping to spread the word in these final two days of our campaign....we'll update you about our partners soon....Thanks and thanks, Lisa, Katie and Shawn

Silkscreening is quite the focused, meditative activity. Shawn already knew this, Lisa is learning fast. The silkscreened fabric will be part of our forest. We are biting our tongues because we SO WANT TO TELL YOU ALL what it looks like! But secrets are good too. Just know that when Lisa looks at it....one minute she feels like she is looking at a long shot of the cosmos...the next she feels she's examining a micro-close up of the inside of a tree. Vastness. Intimacy. It's all a part of it. Thrilling! And we are so very moved to have 97 project supporters. You all give us so much energy. Thank you, Lisa, Katie and Shawn

AUDACIOUS PROPOSAL FROM PEARLDAMOUR: We are at 66% funded and our goal is to get to 100% by midnight Monday, a week BEFORE our campaign ends!! If we do, we will post awesome celebration dance video featuring N.O. superstar artists. Please spread the word and thank you for following and supporting our work! Thanks, Lisa, Katie and Shawn

Practical yet exciting updates from PearlDamour + Shawn Hall: We are completely moved into our build space! A former movie house in New Orleans called Happy Land. We are very close, funding-wise, to being able to stay in there 'til our June premiere! Friday: Our second performance workshop -- this one in our build space -- to develop our ideas. Great energy all around. Thanks to everyone who is following and supporting our work!

Hello friends and supporters! Today's update is about bio-mimicry, which this project has introduced us to. Bio-mimicry is the examination of nature and its models, systems, processes, and elements to emulate or take inspiration from in order to solve human problems sustainably. In general we are so inspired by this approach (and here is a link to a great TED Talk about it: http://www.youtube.com/v/n77BfxnVlyc?fs=1&hl=en_US).

The following bio-mimicry idea inspired some really useful project-related thoughts in Shawn. She read in a NYT's "What's next in Science" article about folks who are developing bacteria-laced concrete: when cracks form in the concrete, the bacteria wake from dormancy and secrete limestone, in effect healing the concrete. Shawn said: "Bacteria in the concrete makes me think of the ACTIONS OF FIXING things: filling cracks, tying things together, stitching, repairing - which is what we try to do when things are broken. And it's interesting to think of that action as futile, because it is, especially, in a system that is constantly in decay and regeneration. The very notion of FIXING is all wrongheaded. I like how this plays into the FOLLY embedded in our project." Right on, Shawn! Will we show workers trying to 'fix' parts of the installation that get trampled or broken as it is assembled? Will they be able to? Will that attempt at fixing actually initiate the deconstruction phase? Because when you think about concrete getting laced back together by bacteria... what is that really doing? The concrete is cracking in the first place because the life underneath it is not designed to remain smothered beneath it... how long can we force something unnatural, how long can we require something remain static in a system meant to be in flux, before that forcing causes significant damage (like dredging straight canals through wetlands leading to the lack of protective wetlands during Katrina)?

... And we're now 20% funded! Wahoo! THANKS EVERYONE!

Katie here. I've been thinking about this image a lot these past couple days-- it's one of Shawn's paintings. I've been thinking about it because I was at L'Esperance over the weekend (L'Esperance is the family house and property owned by Lisa's family outside of New Orleans where 100 old trees were blown down during Hurricane Katrina, and that event was the first seed of inspiration for this project). Being there makes me aware of layers: There is the top layer of L'Esperance today: calm and beautiful, un-damaged, wide lawns and some gorgeous tall trees. Then there is the middle layer, the trees and structures I never knew but which still stand where they used to for the the family who grew up in this place and remember them. Then there is the very bottom layer, like the drips on Shawn's painting-- the destruction that is inherent in the calm and beauty that is there now. I think what's true about landscapes is that for them, time is not linear but cumulative and I hope our own 8-hour timeline for FOREST will be the same: layers accumulate and hide each other, become ghosts, or reassert themselves and take on new identities as circumstances shift.

We've reached the 5% funding mark! Our first small milestone, and it feels great. Thanks for your interest and support!