Forest School is a project focusing on the climate emergency, more specifically, it focuses on the agency of the forest.
Carnival of Crisis
Throughout the Carnival of crisis we explored the semiotics of the forest in order to understand how we could unify the selves of our planes. To see nature and humanity as one to care for nature as we do humans. These explorations took place in various forms such as graphic communication, forest hikes, watercolor interpretations of the organisms in the forest and in depth readings of care for the forest through indigenous cultures.
Semiotics
The project leads up to the end result of a ‘carnival of crisis’ – a climate emergency protest held by Central St. Martins.
The Neighbourhood
The show revolved around 3 main concpets: Movements in a public space, From disruption to controlled chaos and Zero waste. The first, public space evolved around the analysis of public movements on the King’s Cross Estate, moments of collision, negotiation, and resolution. Working within these highly regulated spaces, we sought to loosen up the rigidity and disrupt the ordered nature to better reflect the spirit of CSM. The second being, Disruption, we were guided by the sequel “Designing Disorder’ by Richard Sennett and Paolo Sendra, and inspired to loosen up the rigidity of our surroundings through designing moments of disruption.
Lastly, we revolved around the parameter of a zero waste show; our approach to production was underpinned by the college’s stance on the climate emergency and our desire to alleviate the wasteful tendencies associated with temporary events. Everything within the show was re-used from either waste materials, such as the hangings, or borrowed from the university campus, such as the seating. Early research around the campus yielded an opportunity to source raw materials for the show. In the fashion design department, team members identified as a part of the studio’s creative process bins of offcuts were produced daily. Seeing an opportunity to re-use these waste materials through techniques of braiding and draping, the offcuts.
This graphic depiction features various instances of translation between the human and non-human.
The forest, my friend |
A short film
We proceeded to create a short film to emulate this child-like lens, acknowledging the forest as more than just a commodity but as our friend. I wrote a poem on the train home from Epping Forest. I then read it to my 8 year old niece who thoroughly enjoyed it. I asked if she would like to be a part of this film and she was overjoyed. She ended up performing a reading of this poem for the film.
Semiotics |
We are not the only we
We wanted to embody this child-like perspective and find a means of representation we share with nonhuman beings. So we looked at semiotics. All beings are fundamentally semiotic. Life and thought are one and the same: life thinks; thoughts are alive. So this pulls into question who ‘we’ are.Where there are living thoughts, there is a self and this idea of ‘self’ is typically a product of semiosis. The fact that we are all products of sense-making, signs and semiotics unify us, so why do we distance ourselves so thoroughly from natural organisms? Beings are able to interpret semiotics, so the world is in fact animate… we are not the only kind of we!
Life is not just the product of the past on the present, but also the ways the future comes to bear on the present. So all semiotic processes are organised around the fact that signs represent a future possible state of affairs. The American philosopher, Charles Pierce, saw this to characterise selves as a “being in futuro” or “living futures”. I selected lichen, it’s a composite organism made up of fungi and algae being in a mutualistic relationship.
Through this film we wanted to understand our organisms through their own lenses without objectifying them and assuming their characters; we felt an empathetic way of doing this was to become translators. So we made a foreign film for our organisms trying to capture a moment of transparency and intimacy, a real moment. The kind that typically goes unappreciated in everyday life.
The Carnival Of Crisis
We wanted to embody this child-like perspective and find a means of representation we share with nonhuman beings. So we looked at semiotics. All beings are fundamentally semiotic. Life and thought are one and the same: life thinks; thoughts are alive. So this pulls into question who ‘we’ are.
Louise Owen wears Professor Helen Storey’s garment, titled “Dress for Our Time.” Upcycled from a tent found at a refugee camp in Jordan, Storey created the piece as a call to “act upon climate change and global displacement.” Photographed by Christina Fragkou.
A student holds a placard made by Central Saint Martins letterpress technician Helen InghamPhotographed by Christina Fragkou. Photographed by Christina Fragkou.
Central Saint Martins students in “Plastic Wearables”Photographed by Christina Fragkou
Central Saint Martins M: ARCH Architecture studentsPhotographed by Christina Fragkou