With thanks to Kate Sargent.
For millennia, storytellers, musicians, artists and indigenous thinkers have engaged with the sensitive nature of our planet, exploring the complex relationship ecologies, economies and cosmologies have with people and all matter.
At the core of all this is a concern for the environment and obtaining peace.
The White Wood Forum is a continuation of thinking about art and ecology began by Joseph Beuys, whose practice both literally, with acorns from his 7000 Oaks, and conceptually sowed the seeds for The White Wood.
As a living monument to peace, created by the people of Huntly, the wood will grow and change as the oaks mature over the next 300 years. Working as an artist, pacifist and environmentalist, Beuys’ work acts as a confluence between social and cultural perspectives of sustainability: local and global understandings and lived practices around the world.
Our current eco-political system is designed by and for the very few, resulting in unending conflict and ecological decay. What world can we dream of for future generations? And what contributions can art and community make?
Focusing on the nexus between art, peace and ecology the White Wood Forum will ask how art can be in harmony with the key principles of sustainability, including next to ecology – social justice, grass roots democracy and non-violence.
By bringing together people from arts, anthropology, ecology, politics, peacemaking and locality, The White Wood Forum will ask how we can foster a culture of complexity, an art and a community that impacts the future, to the benefit of generations to come.
Thurs 26 May 7pm: Ex-Servicemen’s Club, Huntly.
Prof Tim Ingold: The Sustainability of Everything
Screening of 7000 Oaks with Q&A
Fri 27 May 9am-7pm, Stewarts Hall, Huntly.
Chair: Deirdre Heddon, Prof. Contemporary Practice, University of Glasgow;
Keynote: Satish Kumar, long-term peace and environmental activist; Loïc Fel, Philosopher and Cofounder of The Coalition for art and sustainable development; Tim Ingold, Chair of Social Anthropology, University of Aberdeen; Robin McAlpine,Director of Common Weal; Shelley Sacks, Prof. Social Sculpture, Oxford Brooks University; Georges Thierry Handja, Mapping Coordinator at the Rainforest Foundation UK; Rhea Thoenges-Stringaris, 7000 Oaks Society/Kassel; Caroline Wendling, White Wood artist; and others….
7pm Peacemakers’ Ceilidh with the Strathspey Fiddlers, Gordon Arms Hotel
Sat 28 May White Wood Opening Ceremony and Gala day. More info here.
White Wood Froum: £25 Early Bird/£35 regular; £10 Students/AB54 Citizens/White Wood planters (includes ceilidh)
Peacemaker’s Ceildh only: £5
White Wood Gala: free event