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Wednesday, September 11, 2019
A Forest Grows on an Austrian Soccer Pitch
kottke.org: For Forest — The Unending Attraction of Nature is an art installation from Klaus Littmann that features a forest made up of 300 trees in the middle of a soccer stadium in Klagenfurt, Austria.
I love this. I love this so very much. This installation reminds me of images of nature crawling their way up and taking over abandoned brutalist architecture. Manmade structures and nature don't typically seem like things that go hand in hand, but when combined produce some of the most profound and ineffable imagery I've ever witnessed. It brings me indescribable peace to see swaths of nature amidst the concrete and steel rigidity of a soccer stadium—equal in grandeur but totally opposite in energy; where the soccer stadium communicates traffic, human presence, and technology, the trees connote tranquility, stability, and tacit strength. I wish I could be at this stadium and switch off sitting up close and far up the tiers, I wish I could be amongst those trees. (Side note: I think it would smell great). I think I could sit by that tiny forest for days.
Wow. I agree with Kathleen in that I absolutely love this installation. The semiotics of this piece of art are so incredibly strong. I love how closely the realized forest grove in the Austrian stadium and Max Peintner’s illustration from 1970. Peinter’s illustration foreshadows the complete destruction of nature and needing to pay and visit a venue to observe and experience nature as a form of entertainment or relaxation. I think this is interesting because in present day many people often will take a weekend or a vacation out into a less industrialized or urbanized areas to relax – we are not so far removed from forestry traveling show as perhaps the absurdity of this illustration implies. I also think that the imagery of a forest in a stadium makes you question the permanence of the forest. Stadium events usually do not last more than a night, or a day or two, which implies that this forest gets uprooted and moved to different cities. The irony of that message and the damage humans inflict on the environment is loud. I wish I had the chance to experience the strange isolation of being a sort of voyeur of the forest with this installation.
I find this entire project so amusing and really incredible. There is so much to be said about the message and the execution, but more than anything I just really enjoy seeing how people react to it. The expressions of wonder on people's faces in the video looking at a bunch of trees put in the middle of a soccer field is just humorous. By taking over a stadium I think it makes a commentary on the concept of being a spectator, which ties pretty directly into our current environmental issues. There is also an element of commentary on the fact that we have difficulty looking at the climate as a whole so we break it into smaller sections and fixate on one particular issue, while in reality we can't help the Earth as a whole until everything gets the attention it needs. Finally, I want to say that when I opened this article I expected it to be a project similar to the paper rainforest that there was an article about some time in the past couple weeks, but I find this project just as playful and maybe even more impactful because it attracts a more mature audience and carries a stronger message.
I would be absolutely fascinated to hear more about the logistics of putting 300 living trees in the middle of a soccer stadium. That aside, this is one of the most compelling installations that I have heard about in quite some time. The elegance of the interaction between these objects that we associate with rich, flourishing natural environments being placed on display in a structure that exists as a symbol of dominating human energy. The whole idea of having nature exist as something that we will eventually have to make efforts to go see. What we were taught in school about nature existing as the encompassing space around us will no longer be the case. I would be so curious to see how people interact with this space as the enter it. Whether it is a solemn and quiet energy in which people reflect on what this is truly saying, or, if it is treated as another park or open space, that we continue to take advantage of.
4 comments:
I love this. I love this so very much. This installation reminds me of images of nature crawling their way up and taking over abandoned brutalist architecture. Manmade structures and nature don't typically seem like things that go hand in hand, but when combined produce some of the most profound and ineffable imagery I've ever witnessed. It brings me indescribable peace to see swaths of nature amidst the concrete and steel rigidity of a soccer stadium—equal in grandeur but totally opposite in energy; where the soccer stadium communicates traffic, human presence, and technology, the trees connote tranquility, stability, and tacit strength. I wish I could be at this stadium and switch off sitting up close and far up the tiers, I wish I could be amongst those trees. (Side note: I think it would smell great). I think I could sit by that tiny forest for days.
Wow. I agree with Kathleen in that I absolutely love this installation. The semiotics of this piece of art are so incredibly strong. I love how closely the realized forest grove in the Austrian stadium and Max Peintner’s illustration from 1970. Peinter’s illustration foreshadows the complete destruction of nature and needing to pay and visit a venue to observe and experience nature as a form of entertainment or relaxation. I think this is interesting because in present day many people often will take a weekend or a vacation out into a less industrialized or urbanized areas to relax – we are not so far removed from forestry traveling show as perhaps the absurdity of this illustration implies. I also think that the imagery of a forest in a stadium makes you question the permanence of the forest. Stadium events usually do not last more than a night, or a day or two, which implies that this forest gets uprooted and moved to different cities. The irony of that message and the damage humans inflict on the environment is loud. I wish I had the chance to experience the strange isolation of being a sort of voyeur of the forest with this installation.
I find this entire project so amusing and really incredible. There is so much to be said about the message and the execution, but more than anything I just really enjoy seeing how people react to it. The expressions of wonder on people's faces in the video looking at a bunch of trees put in the middle of a soccer field is just humorous. By taking over a stadium I think it makes a commentary on the concept of being a spectator, which ties pretty directly into our current environmental issues. There is also an element of commentary on the fact that we have difficulty looking at the climate as a whole so we break it into smaller sections and fixate on one particular issue, while in reality we can't help the Earth as a whole until everything gets the attention it needs. Finally, I want to say that when I opened this article I expected it to be a project similar to the paper rainforest that there was an article about some time in the past couple weeks, but I find this project just as playful and maybe even more impactful because it attracts a more mature audience and carries a stronger message.
I would be absolutely fascinated to hear more about the logistics of putting 300 living trees in the middle of a soccer stadium. That aside, this is one of the most compelling installations that I have heard about in quite some time. The elegance of the interaction between these objects that we associate with rich, flourishing natural environments being placed on display in a structure that exists as a symbol of dominating human energy. The whole idea of having nature exist as something that we will eventually have to make efforts to go see. What we were taught in school about nature existing as the encompassing space around us will no longer be the case. I would be so curious to see how people interact with this space as the enter it. Whether it is a solemn and quiet energy in which people reflect on what this is truly saying, or, if it is treated as another park or open space, that we continue to take advantage of.
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