16/06/2021
There were 57 000 wildfires in 2020, compared with 50 477 in 2019, according to the National Interagency
Fire Center. More than 10.3 million acres were burned in 2020, compared with 4.7 million acres in 2019. Few of these fires are essential for ecological diversity.
The vast majority of them are destructive to our planetary ecosystems: breaking down biodiversity, burning millions of acres of carbon-capturing permafrost, destroying livelihoods, and their smoke
causing a grave public health crisis.
Our relationship to nature has been to view it as a resource to be exploited and extracted. Our forests have become monoculture plantations managed for
high yields and profits. But we can no longer continue down this path. We need to change our relationship to nature, to see ourselves as not separate from it. We are nature. We are all connected and interdependent. Without the mosses and
lichens and bees and wolves—there is no us. With INVOCATION FOR HOPE, Superflux celebrates
the beautiful interdependence we share with all species on the planet, encouraging us to consider ecological reciprocity. Within this complex ecosystem, we all play a part in mutual survival and evolution. Without it, we cease to exist. To generate this evocative resurgent forest at the MAK, Superflux collaborated with the forestry and
fire departments of Austria's Neunkirchen region, salvaging and transporting 400 burnt trees that had been destroyed in a recent wildfire. One of the main contributors to the spread of wildfires is an approach to forestry that prioritizes monoculture as a means of maximizing yield-single-species forests burn faster. As the result of a human attempt to exert
control over nature, the fire-blackened forest serves as a synecdoche for anthropogenic climate change. The trees are arranged in a symmetric grid. As you
pass through them to the resurgent forest at the center of the installation, you advance from an imposed, rigid order to the organic exuberance of nature. A diverse cluster of living trees-oak,
hornbeam, apple, silver birch-surround the pool. Alongside this, moss, grass, lichen, and shrubs will grow symbiotically over the course of the installation.
We combine magic captured on camera together with weird dance moves and silly ideas on undiscovered floors. WWW.WEDOVOODOO.TV
