This short live mix of text, sound and vocal loops is a creative response to the abstract submitted by Bruce Barton to the PSi Artistic Research Working Group for the online meeting in June 2025 (see below for a transcript of the text and list of references).
I was particularly taken in the abstract by Bruce’s interdisciplinary performance, Dragon, exploring and celebrating ‘the power of maturity and the adaptive strength of mature artists’ bodies’. This was the starting point for the ‘re-framing and re-articulation’ of Bruce’s offering as part of the working group’s process and in preparation for the online meeting.
I re-positioned the ‘adaptive strength of maturity’ in relation to my current creative fieldwork practices in forest plantations in Portugal. In this work, I am using creative methods to explore the complexities and precarities of these ‘adolescent’ landscapes, where trees rarely grow to maturity because they are harvested for their wood or destroyed in wildfires.
In these spaces, ageing and mature trees are special and distinct. The cork oak, the national tree of Portugal, is one of the trees that is often allowed to remain and grow to maturity. This is because the trees are both protected by law from being felled and have developed resistance to fire through their thick outer bark. They are also trees that humans have worked with for centuries and can be harvested of their bark without being destroyed. Cork oaks are often grown in ‘montado’ landscapes, where the trees are mixed with crops and areas for livestock grazing. This contrasts with the crowded spaces of industrially planted Eucalyptus and Pine.
These ageing trees in adolescent landscapes then, represent more balanced and sustainable relations between humans and trees, while the trees themselves stand as markers of ‘maturity’ and ‘adaptive strength’. I attempted to reflect these ideas and feelings in the soundscape above which was mixed live from texts, vocal loops and digital sounds.
Jo Scott: artist-researcher 