This Planted Place is a three-channel, 25 minute video installation. It examines the ecological complexities and human and more-than-human relationships in the Heidewald—a small woodland in Maxdorf, Germany. The Heidewald is the largest planted robinia forest north of the Alps. This species is controversial because of its ability to aggressively overtake native species, but it is also an important resource for the region as the annual blossoms attract beekeepers and their colonies from all across Germany each spring. It is a place for recreation, resources, and biodiversity — its’ meadows alone providing rare habitat for at risk grasses and flowers. In many ways, the Heidewald is the perfect representation of the idyllic German woodland. We see this in the slow moving shots of trees, insects, and other species in This Planted Place. But this setting of contemplation is continually disrupted by the human world: chainsaws, airplanes, sirens and a human voice amplified by megaphone. At one point we hear this voice ask, “what is this place?”. The Heidewald is a planted place—a wholly unique landscape, but also a place where questions of global significance can be asked. 

With the support of fifty residents and local experts (ecologists, foresters, historians, landscape planners, educators and more), we were able to collect facts, anecdotes, and local lore that have influenced the video. Local residents collaborated in the process of creating this work by performing in the video, submitting haiku about the Heidewald, and through numerous conversations and walks in the woods.

Video: Benjamin Hotz

Voice: Maira Wiener

Audio Support: Lucas Gauntt

Translation: Alena ButscLer, Lea Gerschwitz, Maira Wiener

With: Alina Rieder (Magpie), Thomas Hebich (Oak), Margareta Fluck (Fleabane), Maira Wiener 

(Fungus), Volker Schlie (Mythical Creature)

This Planted Place was commissioned by Matchbox - the itinerant art and culture project in the Rhine-Neckar Region as part of 3 WOODS.

Accompanying text to the exhibition THIS PLANTED PLACE at Kommandantenhaus Dilsberg

By Lea Gerschwitz

When we invited Canadian artist duo Mia & Eric in the beginning of 2020 to work on the topic of the woods in the Rhine-Neckar region as part of a multi-year residency, it was completely unclear - as is so often the case with process-based artistic research - where this invitation would lead. After two years of research from afar, as well as two months of an on-site residency, the video installation THIS PLANTED PLACE now invites us to look at a place seemingly familiar to us from a different perspective - and to rethink our idea of nature.

The installation at Kommandantenhaus Dilsberg (Neckargemünd) shows footage from the Heidewald and the Silbergrasflur nature reserve on three screens. The Heidewald in the Palatinate municipality of Maxdorf, located a quarter of an hour west of Ludwigshafen, is the largest robinia forest north of the Alps. The black locust was imported to Central Europe from North America about 300 years ago and is as an invasive competitor to native trees – making it one of the most controversial tree species. However, the acacia honey of the robinia, which strictly speaking are ‘false acacias’, is legendary. Beekeepers from all over Germany travel here with their colonies to collect it.

In order to get to know the Heidewald better, Mia & Eric undertook last year’s research from their hometown of Calgary due to the pandemic. With the support of 50 residents and regional experts in ecology, forestry, conservation, history, landscape planning, education, and more, a collection of knowledge and material was created, which can also be found in THIS PLANTED PLACE - for example, with haikus written by these and other collaborators. The digital, site-specific residency was completed in 2021 in Maxdorf with large posters and advertising columns designed by the artists postedin public spaces, bringingthe theme of a forest neighborhood of humans, trees, animals and natural creatures as poetic appeals into the everyday lives of people – whether at the supermarket square or the bus stop.

In just under half an hour, THIS PLANTED PLACE uses slow image movements and long takes to create a visual maelstrom that immerses us deeply in the world of the woods. The exoticism of the Heidewald (at 0.1 percent, the proportion of robinia in German forests is vanishingly small) seems to be the perfect backdrop for myths and fairy tales, or at least an ideal projection surface for our image of the beloved (German) forest: untouched nature for recreation, an idyll that needs to be protected from the consequences of climate change. The green of the trees, the gently waving wildflowers, the brilliant blue of the sky sometimes make the photographs resemble perfectly composed landscape paintings. The light from incoming sunbeams refracts on the bark of tree trunks, close-ups show yellow glittering moss; a snail crawls peacefully through the grass, a spider sits in the middle of its web.

But the calm choreography of these images is disturbed by an increasingly loud audio backdrop, in which the sonorous buzzing of the bees has to compete with man-made sounds. Construction site noise, the squeaking of a saw, an airplane, human voices or sirens accompany the nature shots. Via megaphone a supernatural voice speaks into the forest: "The Heidewald is a cultivated world (...). A confusion on sandy ground." What is this place? What can it be?

The Heidewald - as the title of the installation points out - is a man-made forest. It is, despite its strangeness, like almost all forests today, a resource planned and used by humans. In this way, the local narrative of the Heidewald points to a global challenge in the post-humanist age: if we want to end the negative effects of human activity on the ecosystem of our earth, we must question our relationship to nature. This is what the voice from the megaphone says when it speaks of species extinction and responsibility, and asks us to look closely. The regularly appearing ‘forest creatures’, crossbreeds of human and fungus/bird/leaf/flower, which appear less as intruders than as admonishing observers of the scenes, are irritations in a world view that clearly separates human and non-human. Oak, magpie, fungus and fleabane - everything is connected, there are no separate worlds. We share a world with other species, and we humans are not the only species to lament its impending demise.

Despite the bleak outlook, however, there is also hope in THIS PLANTED PLACE. ‘Stand with the black locust / Protect yourself with the blackberry / Reach for the sun with the native silver grass.’ In solidarity and dialogue lies the potential to save the world. Thus, at the same time, the work reflects Mia & Eric's way of working, which attaches at least as much importance to the social as to the artistic. ‘The art lies in relationships’, say the duo, who made numerous new connections during their residency in the Rhine-Neckar region. It is the declared goal of 3 WOODS that these interdisciplinary, (supra-)regional connections continue over the duration of the project, which is being carried out as a multi-year cooperation together with partners in England and Norway. So the journey continues.

March 2022