Whispers in the Grove, by Kathy Creutzburg, Natalia Lesniak, and Mirabai Kwan Yin
Artists’ Statement:
Did you know trees communicate through underground networks of roots and fungus? This woman-made forest of interconnected, neuron-like, steel forms rises to support bulbs, the leaf canopy. Each bulb is enveloped in found materials and illuminated, like fireflies who express through their flicker.
We are inspired by the phenomenon known as mycorrhiza, whereby trees and plants communicate and share resources through a symbiotic relationship between roots and fungus. Our budding understanding of this phenomenon makes humans and plants seem more similar. This network is reminiscent of human neurons, the internet, even our network of roads connecting cities. We all live in symbiosis.
To represent these ideas, we built steel trees topped by cell-like bulbs made of upcycled material from different cities around the USA. Internal lights pulse and shimmer between bulbs. The forest-like structure invites people to wander through or sit beneath it, and voice tubes invite people to whisper to each other from different parts of the sculpture. The poem and soundscape by Nicole Celeste Anderson draw together the concepts that inspired this piece so you too can hear Whispers in the Grove. We seek to pique the public’s interest in science and nature, as well as fostering a sense of interconnectedness of humans and plants, leading to responsible conservation efforts and sustainable practices.
Artists Kathy Creutzburg, Mirabai Kwan Yin, and Natalia Lesniak have been developing Whispers in the Grove for several years, exploring different ways of presenting and engaging with the community. The installation has traveled to many different locations around the New York metropolitan area, disseminating ecological understanding to diverse populations. With each installation the project has developed and has been accompanied by unique programming. At 6BC Botanical Garden, in the Lower East Side, an expert from Trees New York shed light on how trees communicate and work together. The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council sponsored a community event at the Lower East Side Ecology Center’s East River Park Compost Yard, which included a BioBus display of fungi under a high-powered microscope, a composting demonstration, and a planting workshop. In Yonkers, ArtsWestchester enabled us to exhibit at Phillips Manor Hall and give an art workshop for local children. With each new location, the scope of the project and its audience quite literally grew.
Video by Kris Enos
Whispers in Circles
A Poem by Nicole Celeste Anderson:
Do you ever speak in circles, write in circles, take your hand, and with it, pull the pen in smooth, smooth circles?
Do your stories branch out, reach up, reach down, turn in, turn up, turn to the sky? Who do you tell your stories to? Do you whisper, do you shake, do you giggle, do you wake the others on the floor below?
Do you ever take your hand, and reaching in coastal sand, pull your fingers in smooth, smooth circles?
How do stories travel? Do they travel out of need? Do they travel in a song? Do you write them on the back of a postcard with an old stamp you pulled from the back of the drawer?
Do you find things on the ground, at the foot of trees, in their roots, bottle caps and discarded grocery lists, acorn hats and yellow plastic trash? Do you fish the bottle cap up into your palm, squeeze it until it makes dents in your grip? Do you wonder who left it there? Who lost their shopping list? Whose hand wrote in cursive letters juice boxes, paper towels, sliced cheese, pickles, sunblock, strawberries, hard cider? Did they drop it on the way to the store or lose it after? Do you ever sit still and feel the pulse of all the stories coming to you? - the narratives, faster and lighter than words, darting like reflections at the duck pond on the underside of the bridge.
Do you ever sit still and listen to the hum of humans moving their feet in a train station; tune into one conversation and then the next and then the next, hopping your attention, zooming in, zooming out again? Do you notice the people walking rigidly, the ones who are not talking to each other at all, their silence in the clatter of all the feet? Do you notice the people who lean into each other? And all the ones walking with phone in their hand, looking up and down again, up and down again, to read and to walk forward, texting which gate are we meeting at, again? Texting about dinner, texting about the man they just saw two seats over, playing tag with text messages across the sky, from satellite to smart phone to satellite, the way children would run until dusk, we run at each other with these constructed networks, internet networks, footpaths, subway stations, and the networks of memory, diving into the branches, getting lost.
All of our storylines fall in and out of each other, tie together, tangle, snap, twist, weave. Human life and animal life and plant life, this carbon earthy life, the story of The Where Did You Come From always goes further back to… The day you were born? The day your parent immigrated here? The day your grandfather returned from the war? The day the Spaniards set foot on the continent they later advertised as a new world? But when is a story really new? Generations of cycles, transforming? Deforested strip malls… put up a parking lot.
Who do you tell your stories to? Do you tell them to the tree, who you sat down beneath when you found the grocery list, tired from your walking or maybe from your life? When do you let yourself rest?
How do you ask for what you need? How do you offer what you have to share?
What needs do you omit? What kind of communications do you understand? Is it in their eyes, is it their tone of voice? Is it when they reach out and touch you gently? Is it the way a person carries their words?
The tonal quality of our inflections is an inheritance of birth language and culture – the way we tongue our sentences, the way they leave our mouths, curly, smooth, crackling, dry, percussive, terse, damp, sharp, tart, languid, proud, quiet, forceful, watercolor.
Or even the way we chose to share, what we say – is learned, is listened to, is replicated, we are not the inventors of speech, we are not the originators of mother tongues, we simply twist and shift them, toss and kiss them, and all the woven stories of speaking dent into each other, shape each other, regions snatching slang phrases from each other like hard candy, dialects dancing, slicing, singing, fighting, obscuring… some mother tongues are lost, but the print they made on a family line still whispers in their sleep.
The communications that we share are layered with meanings, some see them and some don’t, depending on which social cues we understand, based on where we grew up, what level of immersion in some academic field or subculture, some cult favorite, what trade of work, which demographic specificity, subset, mainstream or deviation, the discreet and the overt, the dominant culture and the survivor, the transformer, the shape shifter.
And with all these variations on perception, on meaning, on experience, funneling into a very specific style of communication, how do we establish and maintain connection, through these layers and layers and layers of translation, these layers and layers and layers of intention?
Do your stories branch out, reach up, reach down, turn in, turn up, turn to the sky? Who do you tell your stories to?
How do stories travel? Do they travel out of need? Do they travel in a song? Do you write them on the back of a postcard with a stamp you pulled from the back of the drawer?
How do you ask for what you need? How do you offer what you have to share? What needs to do omit? And how do you remember? And does it surprise you that trees speak? Or was it not a surprise at all? Who convinced you of an inanimate world?
Do you ever speak in circles, write in circles, take your hand, and with it, pull the pen in smooth, smooth circles?
Do you ever dream in circles? Clouds shifting above you in crescents that resemble the moon? Mountains obscuring the sun that is rising into a mist, a mist that crawls belly down into the valley – crawling through trees that are singing of the moisture clinging to their leaves, that are resting in family tree clans, awaiting the sweet sugar of morning sun.
Scientists discovered that trees talk to each other. Have you heard this story already? Trees send messages through networks of fungus, they share nutrition with one another, they tell of danger. The elders share their nutrients with the young saplings, shaded at the forest floor, the way we hand feed our toddlers who can’t reach the counter yet.
Do you ever sit still and listen to the hum of saplings moving their leaves near a clearing; do you zoom into one narrow tree that is waving in the morning wind, and then the next tree and then the next, hopping your attention, zooming in, zooming out again? Do you notice the trees standing parallel, the ones who are not swaying in the gusts because they are so sturdy? Their silence in the clatter of the glitter leaf saplings swaying over composting earth floor? Do you notice the gnarled curling trees who lean into each other, who grow at angles around each other? And all the ones growing from old trunks, finding their new roots on the rotten fallen log – they grow in abundance, interwoven roots and damp black soil, the way children would run until dusk, they grow up around each other with these constructed networks, fungus networks, footpaths of hunting cats and curling snakes hiding in their branches, diving into soil, getting lost.
All of their storylines fall in and out of each other, tie together, tangle, snap, twist, weave. Human life and animal life and plant life, this carbon earthy life, the story of The Where Did You Come From always goes further back … do trees tell origin stories? Is their language one that goes beyond need? Beyond sharing of solar heat? Do saplings ask questions? Turn the questions over and over to the elders who hold time in the rings of their memory…
Do you ever dream in circles? Dream of a life that holds you in gentle circles, sit against the foot of the tree and notice that your lives are parallel, you and tree, though you live at different paces, our hearts leap with such fervor, we twist and move and angle about, unable to travel at the same speed as rooted trees, we live parallel, different living species. Do you dream of a balance that replenishes that which is consumed? Bodies in balance, oceans in balance, Forests of ancient tree elders free to sing morning songs to their young and offer them the sweet sugar of morning sun? Do you remember the stories of where you came from? Origin stories can be told at dawn or dusk or even in the midday heat, or even in fluorescent light and hospital sheets.
Do your stories spin in circles, swim in circles, arc dive, weep, cry, freeze, fly, freeze dry silent waiting static circles? Do you tell your stories?
We speak in waves, we speak in need, we speak in praise, we speak in grief,
Offering and receiving,
Translation of light, translation of heat
Translation of life, translation of sleep
Every communication is a translation of experience
From one life to another, as we all explore what it is to be, simultaneously,
And oh,
To be…
We speak of water, we speak of night,
We speak of soil, we speak of light,
And oh, and oh, and oh,
to be, to be, to be
my love, my loves, my love,
breathe with me.
In this shimmering awareness, we find intimacy,
In lunar orbits, nebula dust, in solar heat, we place our trust.
Scales of consciousness, octaves of cells and bodies, scaling up and down,
mammalian tissue, and halo of green chlorophyll canopy lace work crown,
We are of the earth
We are the earth.
We are of the universe
We are the universe.
And oh, and oh and oh, to be.
To be.
The space between your electrons and your yawning soul is as infinite as the sleep-talking humor of Milky Way’s black hole.
Fractals of light, fractals of heat, fractals of life, fractals of sleep.
I am broadened by the mystery. I am deepened by the history,
Millennia of life blood, sun sugar, bone calcium, earth carbon, translated inside of me, secret scrolls of deoxyribonucleic acid, ancient text, branching in a floral web of cellular adornments celebrating me, an interconnected life in a circling, cycling mystery.
We are, we speak, my love, we breathe.
Made possible with funds in part with public funds from Creative Engagement, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by LMCC, as well as from the Decentralization Program, the New York State Council on the Arts, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, the New York State Legislature, and ArtsWestchester.