From Ayse Balko

04 - 30 Nov 2017

Trelex Amazon Residency Reflections..

I could write two posts to describe the amazing space that Trelex Amazon and Rainforest Expeditions provided for us, one for Refugio and one for TRC (Tambopata Research Centre.) The lodges are incredible. Being in a jungle and far away from the world is an exhilarating experience. Having a whole month in the rainforest and in this environment allowed me to relax and absorb the space, the people, the jungle and myself. The art of exploration could not get any more comfortable and luxurious.Was I spoiled? Yes, very much so and I love the memory that stays with me.

I developed two major bodies of work during my residency in the Amazon at the Rainforest Expedition Lodges. One of them is a photography series and the other one is experimental electronic soundscapes.

Experimental Soundscapes: Rat on the Tree; A Flat Death
Photography Gallery Spaces Once Hold Memories: Trelex Amazon - Tambopata

Displacement - Memory - Re-designing Identity
My Inspiration:  I explore identity and memory.

A month in the lodges allowed me to absorb and reflect. Allowing the materials to form their identity in my perception.  Early in the morning waking up with a thunderstorm, macaw calls and the sound of howling monkeys. Watching Hummingbirds, listening to frogs, walking through the trails, laughing with spider monkeys, amazed by Peccaries, being thrilled by the sounds coming from the deep darkness at night became part of the daily living.

The cohesion/focus for the project came from the ordinary pieces laying on the ground level of the forest. The shapes formed by leaves, barks became the abstract sculptures. They were the invisible force drawing me to a clarity. Each piece had its own lifespan. The displacement of a seed holds the hopes of a tree for a new start, a continuation of its memories.   A leaf has the same memory as the bark it was once connected to.  The smell of caramelised fresh fruits, some dried, nutritious, poisonous textures of the ground arises. This is the story of the Amazonian Basin.

A bark fallen from the hight of a palm tree holds the same memory as the palm tree. It remembers a spider monkey passing by and the heavy storms of last month.

During my walks around the trails, I started to record sounds and collect pieces from the ground. By bringing them into my space, I re-define the forms.  Bark used to support a fruits, seeds, leaves became the symbol of my exploration of identity. A new life form was about to wake up through the act of displacement. My space was re-defining the form.

The new life is a concept and it only exists in the conceptual world.

Each object I picked up has a relationship with me and my walk on the day we met in the jungle. A collection of memories, piling up objects until the light in my heart is ready to release what it holds.

During the residency, I learned to confront my anomalies. My loss of memory, my anxieties are part of my work. The relationship formed between me and some of the people I met during my residency enabled me to remodel my work. I ferret out the core themes of my artistic practice through immersed conversations with some of the guides, artists, biologists, neurologists, doctors and many more friends at the lodges. I would like to thank them for the invaluable insight which they have generously granted me.

What happens to the space held by a memory after it is removed, displaced or forgotten?


aysebalko.blogspot.pe

Sketchbook pages by Abi Box

Sketchbook pages by one of our Trelex Amazonas residents, Abi Box, made during her time in the Peruvian Rainforest.

Sketchbook 1 / Sketchbook 2 / Sketchbook 3

From Miriam Sedaca

1 Nov - 1 Dec 2017

Finding a way to express my experience of spending a month in the Amazon rainforest, either in words or through my work, has been a difficult task. The distance between the jungle and the home to which I returned felt like a vast gulf over which I had to leap in order to relay my experience in a meaningful way. So I brought the role of transmitting that experience back to my body and its senses – the vessel which crossed from there to here, an archive in which the sounds and smells of the rainforest still echo.

I bring myself back to the feeling of humidity condensing on my skin, of the pressure in the air before thunder and rain rolled through the forest. I remember the noise, constant yet always changing, of the multitude of insects, birds, frogs, monkeys and other creatures which surrounded me, many of which I began to recognise by ear without ever seeing. My eyes recall the sensation of adjusting to the twilight as I walked below the forest canopy. Of suddenly seeing a point of light out of the corner of my eye and realising that a firefly had landed in my hair and was helping to light my way through the dusk. The sweet and heavy smells of flowers, earth, and rotting fruit still seem to linger in my nostrils. The textures of bark, root, fungus and leaves still hold a dialogue with my fingertips. And through all of my senses, a feeling of life intensified, of everything alive and everything vibrating, and me vibrating with it, joining in the frequency of everything around me. 

It was around these sensory experiences that I constructed my work while at the residency and after my return. However I also found myself compelled to consider the gap between my experience in the Amazon, and specifically in the Madre de Dios region, and the lives of its inhabitants. Before arriving in Puerto Maldonado, when I flying over the forest, I saw large patches of empty exposed brown cut into the green below. I had heard about the illegal gold mining in the area which was destroying habitats, wildlife and local communities, and releasing mercury into the rivers, but seeing these swathes cut out of the rainforest brought the reality to me with a jolt. While staying in the beautiful jungle lodges it could be easy to forget this destruction and threat, which seemed a world away but was in fact happening at an alarmingly close proximity. 

Reading Astrida Neimanis’ essay “Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water” gave me a key to considering these disparities in relation to the all-encompassing unity of liquid. The unifying pervasiveness of water became the theme which preoccupied my work in the residency, and through which I sought to reconcile the apparent distance and actual proximity of the destruction and pollution in the area. It flows through the rivers and streams which I passed every day, rises with rainforest’s humidity, and moves through the internal channels of animals and plants. It is ever-present as the life source of the Amazon’s millions of species of animals and plants, and also as an archive which carries toxic pollutants into and through all of those species. Through the mercury which is released into the rivers as a waste product of the mining process, the waterways which run through the forest become channels of pollution as well as sources of life. If we consider ourselves as bodies of water, made up of two thirds liquid, we cannot help but feel that the boundaries between ourselves and others are less absolute, more fluid. Water, like the body, is an archive and communicator. As it flows in and out of ourselves and others, it dissolves the boundaries between us, carrying both sustenance and toxicity through and between us. 

My work from the residency, “Water’s Breath”, (a performance combining movement, film, and spoken word) was performed at the Opera House in Jersey in January 2018 and at Bow Arts in London in February 2018 as part of their Art for the Environment programme.  

www.miriamsedacca.comhe 

From Melanie Ward

02 Feb - 31 Mar 2017

And when I wake in the middle of the night I see small lights, they flicker and come and go. Or they’re larger and they linger like that of a fairy, floating, gliding through the air. Or they creep and stalk something, then fade as though they were never there. They could be fireflies, or the eyes of a cat, or a man with a torchlight. The jungle is a magical place, but it can play tricks with your mind. It is hard to see what is real in the darkness.

Morning brings about a different world when the sun rises and the jungle awakens. The low rumbling, alike to a lions roar, echoes through the trees as the Howler monkeys wake and compete with the sounds of the Brown Titi monkeys who call back and forth between the males and females. If you’re lucky and quiet you may even catch a glimpse of them outside your room, which has no windows and no ceiling, only a high shared roof between the rooms. This is freedom. This is getting back to nature.

From the tower you can observe the parrots and macaws flying overhead at a height above the canopy. You can look down on the monkeys playing below, away from the bullet ants and wandering spiders, photographing the sunrises and sunsets. Everyday brings a new creature, even if they’re a different beetle, another bird, the novelty is refreshing and inspiring. Trees are abundant and everywhere, fighting for survival. Some fall down, whilst others grow and replace them. Brazil nut trees, Ceiba trees, strangler figs, all merge with vines, orchids and medicinal plants; the list is endless.
Daily walks to spot the harpy eagle or boat rides to visit lakes give sightings of piranhas and giant otters, or the clay licks where the parrots and macaws noisily gather en mass, but nothing can prepare you for the rare sighting of a jaguar as it disappears along the riverbank into the undergrowth.

One week the river is fast flowing and full of debris, the white caimans are rarely seen at this time, unlike the mosquitoes who will always find me no matter where I am. I feel safe confined within my mosquito net at night. The creepy crawlies can’t reach me here.

It is wet season and some days are just filled with rain. There is a calm and beauty to the sound. Regrowth and regeneration will follow. The present is forever changing.

melanie-ward.co.uk

From Rebecca Molloy

01 Mar - 31 Mar 2017

Image: Video still: ‘Where there are Females there are Flowers” 2017

Text: Where there are Females there are Flowers

Swinging in a hammock in the Amazon Rainforest, within a lacquered wooden lodge, surrounded by mosquitoes, thick swelling heat and lush vegetation... I still have access to the internet. I am inside and outside of nature all at once.

Our devices are absurd objects that have become a part of us, we keep them close to our bodies and yet they encourage us to view ourselves from an external perspective. Perhaps we are more aware of being surveyed than we are of the feelings of our own bodies.

Everything in nature develops gradually, step by step and organically. Tarmac, television screens, office cubicles and glazed doughnuts are the materials of our time and we are growing with them:

Once upon a time there were bodies that worshipped plants. These plants provided these bodies with sustenance, minerals, nutrients and life. These plants were sacred, they were nurturing, healing, powerful and plentiful. But now instead of growing and anchoring themselves into the ground, these plants are potted and placed next to television screens or on top of refrigerators. They are exotic and homely all at once.

When we put our hands in soil, dopamine is released in the brain. This is so that when we need to go out and gather food, we feel good about the action, ensuring that we will survive another day in the wilds of the world. The same release of chemicals happens when we receive likes on Instagram.

Once upon a time there were bodies that came from Mars and bodies that came from Venus. At times these bodies were unified, seamlessly harmonious and synchronised, but for the most part they were divided by their physical attributes and chemical makeup. It was hard to know whether these bodies behaved differently to each other because they were conditioned to, because they wanted to or because they had to. 

You will never see yourself fully in three dimensions. Only others will. You will only ever know yourself as an image, through the screens, mirrors and reflections of the world. Perhaps it is more important to feel and be in your body than it is to think about it. 

Once upon a time in the future there will be bodies that are able to suck up heat from the tarmac of the ground and modern materials will move through the layers of the skin to give them pleasure and strength. These bodies will spend time worshiping the digital world as if it were the sun and bearer of life. This world is the wildest of them all, it has the greatest calm and the greatest power as for the first time ever bodies are not separated by their physical constraints, instead they merge with each other, themselves and technology freely. 

In this world there is no gratification in having too much. Be it objects or images there is potency in everything. In this world images are protected and sacred, images are made with quietness, dignity and respect.   

Once upon a time in the future there will be bodies that sweep up the garden of the jungle in order to make way for the worship of the screen.

Everything in nature develops gradually, step by step and organically. Tarmac, television screens, office cubicles and glazed doughnuts are the materials of our time and we are growing with them.

Once upon a time in the future, life will be a journey of feeling.

Video and text made in the jungle by Rebecca Molloy, April 2017. 

From Nicole Salcedo

05 - 31 Jan 2017

Nicole Salcedo 28 Days

The anticipation of this trip began as soon as I booked my tickets. It has long since been my dream to come to the Amazon rainforest.I had no idea what to expect besides the accounts I had read online, but I knew I was in for quite a treat.

The jungle is a magical place, even in my exhaustion upon arrival I could immediately sense the energy coming through the thick of the trees.

The trees have such a commanding presence, but it was the ferns, moss, and vines creeping up the barks of lichen covered trees that really caught my attention. And the fungi! These organisms displayed such a variety of shapes and colors.

The color palette of this place doesn’t make itself known at first, seemingly all shades of greens and browns. But the more I walked the trails, the more I saw the gems of color. Coral reds, bright yellows and oranges, so many shades of pink.

Some of the plants have new growth leaves of iridescent purple that you can only see when the sun shines on them at just the right angle. These plants had me hooked. The lichen also has a very subtle palette that revealed itself to me little by little, along with the mosses that accompanied it. I couldn’t get enough of the pale shades of green and grey combined with patches of charcoal black and orange.

Then came the soil, totally lacking in nutrients but beautifully vibrant orange along the banks of the river, sprinkled with green hues of the opportunistic plants. I learned that the roots of the trees are very shallow due to the need to derive their nutrients strictly from the falling and decomposing leaves at the base of the roots.

The forest boasts of shape-shifting insects and leaves, survival through optical illusion, nothing is really what it seems until you take a closer look.

This place is a dream, the passage of time is so apparent, and yet, gets lost. The routine of the meals and activities helps but only to a certain extent, it really depends upon how you decide to spend the time. Hiking can seem to take hours when it has really only been 30 minutes, especially if you stop (like I do) to photograph every little interesting shape or color that crops up.

Hiking was one of my favorite activities, especially when I was accompanied by the resident biologists, Vania Tejeda. Her breadth of knowledge on birds and plants was incredibly captivating.  We quickly became friends on this month long journey. Vania is from Arequipa, Peru and studied biology at the University of Sarajevo in Bosnia. Her biggest passion is ornithology, but we also share a passion for art, Vani loves to paint in her down time.

This time away from my typical reality, has been very clearing for my mind, and the art that came out of it reflected exactly how I have been feeling out here. My body and consciousness covered in plants and other organisms.

My best advice would be to be open to any and every experience in this beautiful place, it has very ancient knowledge to offer.

Nicole Salcedo