TRANSLATING
TREES
Commissioned for Floating Land 2025
Date: 28 June – 27 July 2025
Location: Three locations (Tewantin Park (outside Noosa Regional Gallery), Weyba Creek Park, Boreen Point
Details: 6 x one-hour tour
Developed in response to Floating Land 2025: Escape Making, this performance takes the form of an hour-long, site-responsive tour across three locations. Structured as both a guided walk and a participatory event, the work centres on prior conversations between the artist and trees.
The hand-crafted costume and its incorporation of psychedelic symbols, seek to reference altered communal states. Framed by the theme of escape, the work proposes that trees (beings that emerged hundreds of millions of years ago, that have adapted, survived, and collaborated, and will possibly endure far beyond the lifespan of humanity) might offer insights for surviving/escaping our own age of unraveling.
Artist disclaimer, read at the beginning of the tour:
It’s ethically questionable to translate for a being when the way of translating has no scientific backing. For this project I sat down with each tree and translated conversations between us. From my perspective and for a myriad of reasons I believe I’m recording the trees responses but every response comes filtered through my brain, through my language centre. My arts practice is not rooted in science but an examination of consciousness. Talking to trees has changed my life and I hope to convey a small sense of that today with utmost sincerity.
