The Sovereign Forest

Overview

The Sovereign Forest attempts to reopen discussion and initiate a creative response to our understanding of crime, politics, human rights and ecology. The validity of poetry as evidence in a trial and the discourse on seeing, on understanding, compassion and issues of justice, as well as sovereignty and the determination of the self, come together in a constellation of moving and still images, texts, books, pamphlets, albums, music, objects, seeds, events and processes.

The Sovereign Forest has overlapping identities. It continuously reincarnates as an art installation, an exhibition, a library, a memorial, a public trial, an open call for the collection of more 'evidence', an archive and also a proposition for a space that engages with political issues as well as with art.

The Sovereign Forest attempts to understand multiple languages in our natural and rural landscapes. It is inspired by a search for the possible answers to the following questions: How do we understand the conflict around us? How can we understand crime? Who defines evidence? Is legally valid evidence adequate to understand the meaning and extent of a crime? Can 'poetry' be presented as 'evidence' in a criminal or political trial? What is the validity of such evidence? Can it create a new and valuable perspective on the crime? What is the vocabulary of a language that can talk about a series of simultaneous disappearances occurring across multiple dimensions of our lives? How can we see, know, understand and remember these disappearances? How do we look again?

The central film, The Scene of Crime, offers an experience of landscape just prior to erasure. Almost every image in this film lies within specific territories that are proposed industrial sites and are in the process of being acquired by government and corporations in Orissa, India. Every location, every blade of grass, every water source, every tree that is seen in the film might soon no longer exist. The Scene of Crime is an experience of 'looking' at the terrain of this conflict and the personal lives that exist within this natural landscape.

The Sovereign Forest invites visitors to contribute a photograph, film, document, text, object, seed, cloth, pattern, drawing or any 'evidence' in any form to the constellation presented.


2013

This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 11

Credits

Cinematography by Dilip Varma
Editing by Sameera Jain
Paper, bookmaking and installation designed by Sherna Dastur