Actions Supporting Forests, an Island Mountain AIR Eco-Arts Residency, August, 2025
The Broken Forest Eco-Artist Group and interested invited Artists will organize, with Island Mountain Air in Wells, British Columbia, a 10-day artistic residency in the last weeks of August, 2025. This residency would focus on artistic and performance art discussions and Eco-Art processes without the pressure of completing specific works for exhibition during the residency. The aim will be to explore our art, ideals, and notions around activism, and how these help us to form connections with the forest.
The emphasis of the planned programs, workshops, discussions and site visits would be on:
- the process of creating art in nature;
- how to convey our messages for awareness-building and to promote meaningful dialogue leading to change and better practices in forestry, mining and other extraction industries that affect the forest;
- how to form lasting (and helpful) relationships with the surrounding communities;
- ways and means of supporting eachother in our efforts to explore artistic themes and possibilities.
We will, over the course of these ten days, explore what our messages could be, can be and cannot be. We will question whether there is space for poetry, open-endedness, or interpretation in the art we create. The Clearcut Reanimated Project in August, 2024 allowed our group to understand the “realities” of creating work in the public domain (that is also not “possessed” by landowners or businesses) and “sharing” these somertimes endangered spaces with other users. We learned so much from this week-lomg action in a clearcut logging patch near Jordan River, B.C.. This residency will allow us to evaluate and really think about how we did the project; we can look at what worked and what didn’t, and record elements of the process to help us in future endeavours. The Actions Supporting Forests Residency will give us time to evaluate and learn from what we did in 2024 and from other Broken Forests Eco-Artists projects like: Escarpment/Erasure (2023) and Endangered Boreal (2022).
From the series, Treelines – here and there, Johannes Zits
Baekdudaegun to Boreal – Canada-Korea Eco-Art Installation Exchange Project
The Nipissing Region Curatorial Collective (North Bay, Ontario, Canada) and the Yatoo Collective in South Korea are sending three BF Eco-Artists Group artists from Canada to forest sites in Korea starting May 10th, 2025. The Canadian artists will create works with three chosen Korean artists. In June, the same three Korean artists will travel to Northern Ontario and create Eco-artworks in designated sites in the White Bear Old Growth forest near Temagami.
As the BFG expands to include a strong group of Korean Eco-Artists and to interact with forests in Greece, Germany and Australia, we are certain that this project will lead to expanded Broken Forests Projects in Korea and that Korean artists will be participating in our projects in forests around the world. Since 2018, the BFG have been studying the SIMILARITIES between cultures, artists and forests. We see art and culture and language, not as barriers or isolating factors, but as new ways of seeing, understanding and perceiving our environments. With these new perspectives all of our artist participants can create art that inspires us all to value forest and to connect spiritually and personally with the outdoors.
Please stay tuned to this website and to our Instagram and Facebook sites:
https://www.instagram.com/brokenforests22/
The Broken Forests Group has led projects in forests in Ontario, British Columbia, Poland, and Brazil. We feel that these experiences will directly benefit the Baekdudaegun Meets Boreal Project and will ensure several high quality outdoor exhibitions that will help our two countries in our efforts to sustain and regenerate our forests. We have also created publications, videos, and social media forums that have helped us to connect with environmental groups around the world (Tree of Life Committee, and the Global Nomadic Art Project) and to reach a wide audience here in Canada and around the world.
The Old Growth site in Temagami is the fifth largest stand of Old Growth trees in the world and although it contains over 50 kilometres of trails is only about 15% accessible. We believe that Korean artists will be learning about Old Growth trees and that Canadian artists will be learning about how Korean society has been successful in replanting and regenerating healthy forests after the devastation of the Korean Civil War of the 1950’s.
The Boat Project: an installation by Ernest Daetwyler
The Project will result in the creation of six new artworks by participating artists in both Korea and Canada. It will also result in multiple artistic forums and discussions. Artists will create performance artworks as well as sculptural works that will be left at the sites for a limited time.
The Project will begin with Project Planning, Confirmation of travel arrangements and accomm- odations for both countries, and the gathering of promotional materials from participating artists.
Clearcut Re-Animator Project – August, 2024 – Jordan River
We are currently working with nine Broken Forest Eco-Artist Group members to complete a site-specific installation and performance project in a clearcut logging patch near this village on the Salish Coast.
Otherwise known by our intrepid crew of Eco-Artists as the Broken Forests West Recon Trip, for this event a contingent of Eco-Artists from Ontario traveled to Vancouver Island to meet BF Eco-Artists Group members there and to plan out (with galleries and groups in Victoria) our NEXT Eco-Arts Action and Intervention, which we are calling: Clearcut Re-Animator.
Here’s a shot of the most famous Old Growth Douglas Fir on the island…the one that got away from the “clearcutters” and which is now protected by the community.