Can touch sense the sentience of trees? Does the fallen forest resonate? How do we practice the rites and rights of Nature?
Styx Lament is a performance ritual that took place in clear-felled and old-growth forest in the Styx Valley, lutruwita / Tasmania, in November 2019.
Together with a group of 17 people, between tall trees and a logging coup, we explored an embodied approach to environmental grief, listening and rendering the senses receptive to place.
A collaborative artistic process led by Julia Adzuki and Patrick Dallard, together with Amy Barrows, Luke John Campbell, Pema Choo, Tresa Briscoe-Hough, Rodrigo Diaz-Icasuriaga, Lisa Flack, Warwick Lloyd Mauger 'daynu', Amalia Patourakis, Clare Pitt, Raku Pitt, Katrina Schlunke, Sue Stack, Sara Wright and Anna Wylie.
Filmed and recorded by Tomas Björkdal in the Styx Valley.
Co-edited by Tomas Björkdal and Julia Adzuki.
Forest lament song by Julia Adzuki
With special thanks to Ruth Langford and LongHouse for supporting the process and singing an invitation to the ancestors.
And to Pauline Oliveros, Joan Skinner and Tuomas Rounakari for inspiring us with their listening, movement and lament practices
We acknowledge the Tasmanian Aboriginal community as the Traditional Owners and ongoing custodians of lutruwita / Tasmania. We pay respects to palawa and pakana Elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded.
Produced by Symbiolab.
In partnership with Moonah Arts Center.
With support of Viriditas Foundation
and Konstnärsnämden / The Swedish Arts Grants Committee.
An exhibition showing the outcomes of this project and tactile sound installations was scheduled to show at Moonah Arts Center (MAC) in lutruwita / Tasmania, Australia in April 2020. Due to COVID-19, the Styx Lament exhibition at MAC has been postponed until April 2021.
