Caitlin Dear will be working both on and off site, with her project that exists two fold:

1. Tree Time is practice. It is not necessarily an artistic practice, but it uses artistic methods and paradigms to contribute to research within the sciences. It uses choreographic thinking and investigative bodily approaches to find out how we could socially engage with trees, and what this might mean for current sociological and ecological paradigms.

Tree Time stems from the close relationship Caitlin has always had with trees, seeing them as individual creatures. All of whom exhibit behaviours, make decisions and actively respond to – and communicate with – the world around them. (A view that some sciences have long believed and that mainstream Western science is progressively coming to support, as evident in the establishment of fields such as Plant Neurobiology).

Influenced by Object Oriented Ontology, Romanticism, Anti-Anthropocentrism and Post-Humanism, it can serve as a format to rethink human conceptualisations of – and relationships to – ‘nature’. Bringing these large-scale questionings into the smaller scale of a personal connection between two creatures.

Tree Time calls for the creation of a clearly defined area of science where ecology and sociology coalesce. And it asserts that artistic methods and philosophical consideration are necessary tools for working in this area. Believing that if we are to reassess the position(s) of humans within ‘natural systems’, then we will need the unbound freedom, self-determination, creativity and sensitivity that art can afford us.

Caitlin will be continuing her work in this realm using physical and sensory research methods, as well as through more traditionally academic reading and writing.

2. Tree Time has also been developed into a participatory, live work with the help of collaborator Thomas Schmocker. This will be presented by Inter Arts Center, for more information and bookings please see: https://iac.lu.se/events/tree-time/