TREE TV starts at 8pm
WELCOME! WITH TOMMY EARLEY OF MOUNTALLEN ECOFARM, LEITRIM
'For many years Tommy has consistently come up with and sought out ideas and ways to protect, promote and enhance the biodiversity, habitats and environmental awareness on the farm, in his local community and the region.' - John Matthews
You can find out more about Tommy's Mountallen Eco Tours here.
NATASHA BOURKE
'Spoors & Spores'
Short Film
Spoors & Spores invites the viewer into a private world to witness a dreamlike quest with archetypal resonances. Homage to a personally significant native Irish Oak tree and 5-year anniversary nod to Spoor (2015), it is a meditation on themes of transience, longing, loss, isolation, polarity, perception, identity, legacy, memory and myth. Interweaving newly produced and familial archival material, fragments of the past and present are linked to open a dialogue, exploring distance as well as connection. Whilst the lives and works continue to evolve in form and meaning, some things remain consistent, in this instance the stoic Oak by the sea, providing counterpoint. The opening scene layers the artist’s mother, Inge, at 14 whilst camping in a much loved wood in the Netherlands overlaid by her 2 years later on her first voyage to Ireland (shortly before her father passed away at only 44). The artist’s Dutch grandfather remains present through memory and his poetic moving imagery. The maternal Oak remains present in its strength, morale, resistance and knowledge.
You can find more information about Natasha's film here.
JONNY DILLON
Between Heaven and Earth: Sacred Trees in Irish Folk Tradition
Talk & Presentation
Jonny Dillon, archivist at the National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin outlines some of the folk customs and beliefs pertaining to trees in Irish tradition. Drawing on traditional sources held at the archives of the National Folklore Collection, this short video examines the sacred 'Bile' under which kings of Ireland were inaugurated in times long ago, before considering the holy woods inhabited by both madmen and saints in tradition.
NEIL FITZGIBBON
Tunes beside the Fairy Tree, St. Brigid's Well
Musical Vignette
'Two jigs, finishing with Nead na Lochainn, cold December afternoon.'
Based in Co Clare, Neil is a regular on the session scene on the west coast known as both a fiddle player and guitarist. He plays in the band Driftwood Manor. You'll find more information here.
DAN WALSH
'Farrest' Tenor Saxophone in Cork City 08.12.0
Musical Vignette
'Recorded in Cork City Centre in a disused area that is temporarily reclaimed by buddleia trees and city birds. 'Farrest' is a song about what is between us and our natural state.'
Dan Walsh is multi-instrumental musician and producer. He runs the Cork Improvised Music Club and plays in the bands FIXITY, Senior Infant, The Great Balloon Race, NOT EARTH and The Bonk.
KATIE HOLTEN
Arboreal Arts Reading Group
'Artist Katie Holten seeks to decolonize language and rewild the imagination by transforming letters into trees. Combining the ancient script Ogham with Irish and English, her Irish Tree Alphabet transforms words into an arboreal language of place and belonging.' - Emergence Magazine
For the Arboreal Arts Reading Group, we invited an artist to choose a text for us to read as a starting point for discussing their work. Join Eimear and Natalia in conversation with the artist Katie Holten. Katie has selected "Learning the Grammar of Animacy" a chapter from the book "Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants" by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Irish Tree Alphabet can be viewed here.
For more information about Katie and the Arboreal Arts Reading Group you can check here ...
Katie is a visual artist and environmental activist based in New York City and Ardee. For over twenty years Katie has made unconventional works, pushing the boundaries of ecological art. She represented Ireland at the 50th Venice Biennale. At the root of her practice is a commitment to study the inextricable relationship between Humans and Nature. A few years ago she created a Tree Alphabet, offering a language beyond the human. During lockdown she made an Irish Tree Alphabet for a solo exhibition at VISUAL Carlow.
In 'Learning the Grammar of Animacy' Robin Wall Kimmerer writes; "In English, you are either a human or a thing. Our grammar boxes us in by the choice of reducing a nonhuman being to an it. Where are our words for the simple existence of another living being?" In Speaking of Nature, which furthers her thoughts on Learning the Grammar of Animacy, Robin proposes a new pronoun for nonhumans, replacing "it" with "ki." This ecological thinking helped inspire Katie Holten's Tree Alphabets.
Here's a link to read the chapter, Learning the Grammar of Animacy
Katie also works with Friends of Ardee Bog. You can learn more about their petition Save The Ardee Bog and their website here.
You can find Katie's 'Trees breathe out. We breathe in' here.
MAIJA SOFIA
Dock Commissions
Musical Vignette
Maija Sofia Makela is an Irish folk singer-songwriter from County Galway and she has been specially commissioned by The Dock to write a new song for 'Whose Woods These Are' Festival.
Link to maija Sofia's Bandcamp here.
As an artist Maija Sofia works through music, text, performance, and archival research. She is a graduate of Trinity College and a recipient of the 2020 Next Generation Award from the Arts Council of Ireland.
THE REST OF THE WEEK:
TREE TV EPISODE 3
Saturday 19 DEC 8 PM
Niall Miller, Jennifer Walshe, Kim Ruffin, Tola Custy, Nick Roth, David Smith
TREE TV EPISODE 4
Sunday 20 DEC 8 PM
Edwina Guckian, Cathy Jordan & Eleanor Shanley, Colette O'Neill, Sarah Lundy, Vanya Lambrecht-Ward, Cathy Fitzgerald
