crear bosques. art science technology & animals nature
Image: courtesy of the artist.
crear bosques [Creating Forests] (Piñera, Asturias,1996...) is a participative art action, representing a monument and at once a society. A living monument and an architectural society coupled with the passing of time which seeks to create a large global forest connecting all those already existing, through the sponsorship of trees.
It all started with a video-installation which, filling the function of a green house, invited people to fill in a form to sponsor a tree. This action produced a transfer from the urban setting to the natural environment, and in so doing fused apparently hostile realities. Following through on those initial parameters, crear bosques has become a far-reaching global action which, by means of networking and activism, wishes to create guidelines for dialogue and action: in short, individual engagement as a form of politics or eco-politics. Another of its principles is to work with a resource economy in order to turn the process into a growing relational node from the technological perspective of networking, outreach and sustainable growth.
The action consists of the compilation of sponsorship applications, while the management of the action —with a key involvement of museums, art centres, collectives and NGOs— and the actual planting returns to objecthood inasmuch as the transformation into a location map that allows sponsors to visit their tree should they so wish. To date, a number of actions have been carried out in Asturias and Galicia in Spain, and in Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, Dominican Republic, Mexico and Germany, among other countries.
Instructions: Use of the crear bosques map in the garden of LABoral Variable piece=168 trees
The artist Carmen Cantón volunteers to plant trees under commission in the garden of LABoral. The seed for the action was a performance, in turn based on a work in progress that began on 21st March 2000 in Monte Deva, Gijon.
Project Management: Carmen Cantón
Coproduction: EMULSA-Empresa Municipal de Servicios de Medio Ambiente Urbano de Gijón S.A.
Organization: Crear bosques & Centro de Arte Ego
Curator: Lucia Antonini
Collaboration: MAV-Mujeres en las Artes Visuales, FAPAS-Fondo para la Protección de los Animales Salvajes, Space Invaders, Guerrilla Girls
www.crearbosques.org