The fifth session of the Forest School with Daniela Peltz and Alisa Koffin from the forest near Helsinki in Rastila

The fifth session of the Forest School will be conducted online by Daniel Peltz and Alisa Coffin from the forest in a Helsinki neighborhood called Rastila on March 9 from 16:30 to 18:00.

Attention! During this session you will need to lie down and listen with your eyes closed now and then. Please plan to be in a location during the live session that allows these activities.

Daniel Peltz is an artist and Professor of Time and Space Art specializing in site-specific art at the Art Academy in Helsinki, Finland. Pelcs will take online participants on a tour of a work of art in the making (work-in-progress) by Alyssa Coffin, MA student at the Helsinki Academy of Arts. Her master’s thesis “Room of Silence” (_The silence chamber_) takes place in a small patch of forest in the vicinity of Helsinki called Rastila.

Coffin writes about her work: “Chamber of Silence” in Rastila Forest is a project that arose as my response to the land near where I live and my relationship with it. Since last summer in the forests of Reymira, Sweden, I have been deeply interested in what it means to narrow an area down to a small patch of forest while being aware of its constant contextual expansion and lack of boundaries. I wanted to continue this practice of returning regularly to the same place and offering my presence to the same rocks and trees. How can a state of peace create perceptual reciprocity with the earth? The chamber is woven from birch branches that have fallen from the trees there. It merges with the rocks and its shape was determined by the pre-existing forms. Its condition is constantly changing with the influence of the seasons. A room evolves because of the people who inhabit it. It can be found by getting lost in the woods and looking for something you imagine. It is a place to crawl back into the earth, to rest the eyes from visual stimulation and the mind from noises, as well as a place to cultivate inner silence. The camera becomes the frame. Sometimes this is a place for imagining, or for memories to surface, or a darkness from which images can emerge. It is an eternal space as we detach from tracking and allow ourselves to sink.

Photo: Alyssa Coffin

To join the sessions, use this Zoom link – ej.uz/mezaskola

Makers of the forest school
Rebecca Birch (NO) is an artist who works with the entanglements of people and their local landscapes. Her long-term research project “Lichen Covered Stick” traced the history of human-lichen encounters. She is currently a visiting lecturer at Oslo School of Environmental Humanities.
Beka Bergere (LV) is an artist and the artistic director of the Latvian New Theater Institute. In her personal practice, she has worked in the forests and swamps of Germany, Italy and Latvia, researching and looking for mechanisms to create art for nature, not for people.
Daniels Pelcs (SE) is an artist, Rejmyre Art Lab co-founder and professor of the Academy of Fine Arts in Finland.
Sisius Westerberg (SE) is an artist, Rejmyre Art Lab co-founder and senior lecturer at Konstfak University of Art, Craft and Design in Sweden.

The event is implemented by the project “ACT: art, climate, change”, supported by the EU program “Creative Europe” and the Nordic and Baltic mobility program “Culture”

“ACT: Art, Climate and Change” is a European-level cooperation project focusing on ecology, climate and social change. In a time of climate crisis, mass extinction and growing inequality, project partners work together with artists, scientists and activists to search for hope, combine a broad global perspective with specific local opportunities and call for action. 10 partners from 10 European countries operate in the “ACT” network. Additional info: artclimatetransition.eu