Treeline – a two day study event

Treeline – a two day OCA Study event with Ruth Maclennan: a screening of Treeline and workshop on art and the climate emergency

7 June 2022, 10.00am. Part 1: A screening of Treeline, introduction and Q & A with artist and Photography Tutor, Ruth Maclennan

For this Study event, I will introduce my recent film, Treeline, which is a collectively sourced film, compiled from hundreds of clips of footage of forests submitted by people across the world. It was commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and Forestry England, to coincide with the COP26 Climate conference in Glasgow in November 2021.

In this first session, I will introduce the project Treeline, and discuss how I developed the idea of the Open Call to contribute, from my collectively sourced 'Horizon' films for the Crown Letter (www.crownproject.art). A screening of the film will be followed by a Q & A and discussion of the formal aspects of the film, as well as the ethical, ecological and practical aspects of creating the film, and the different stages and challenges of making a film in the middle of a pandemic, and a global climate emergency.

Treeline

From a patchwork of disparate individual contributions (sent in by scientists, ecologists, artists and members of the public alike), the film traces a sinuous green line that stretches from the wild woods of North America to the rainforests of the Amazon to the copses of middle England and the scrublands of Africa, as well as myriad places in-between

Resembling a continuous horizontal travelling shot, the panorama of trees is a vivid reminder of the swathes of green that continue to encircle and nourish the planet, and a powerful emblem of the shared resources and shared futures that bind people together. A paean to the beauty and majesty of trees, Treeline also echoes something of their form – putting out exploratory feelers, and drawing material from multiple sources to create an enveloping, overarching structure that is considerably more than the sum of its parts.

Treeline was commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and Forestry England, to coincide with the COP26 Climate conference in Glasgow in November 2021.

14 June 2022, 10.00am. Part 2: Art, collective action and the climate emergency:

Drawing on themes raised in the previous session, this workshop is an opportunity to think deeply, imaginatively, and collectively about how art and artists respond to the climate emergency, in all its manifestations, both current and to come.

Drawing on the example of Treeline we will discuss the resources – in broad and specific senses - that go into making art and especially film and photography: material, financial, human, physical, emotional, and ecological. We will also discuss what art can do, and be, in the time of climate emergency, pandemics and other global catastrophes, and the contexts and opportunities for making, showing and distributing work, and how they might have impacts on behaviour and action.

I will show extracts from works and open the discussion with the development of my own thinking on art and ecology and my multidisciplinary and often collaborative practice. I will discuss relations between research, art and activism in Treeline and other works.

There will be an opportunity for students to share and discuss their own work, from tentative ideas, to images and projects that you want to share more widely. It would be especially interesting to bring ideas and works that involve working collectively, or collaboratively, and/or that touch on ecological questions.