Breviario sonoro 6: Way of the Forest

This episode departs from the forest as a space of continuous noise and mutual growth, inducing conflictive plays between sustenance and decay. It has been produced together with Syma Tariq, and broadcasted together with " A Thousand Channels", commissioned by Colomboscope 2024, a biannual exhibition that takes place in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
It starts from the ongoing process we are carrying at the Inland Village. With experiments and interventions through theoretical reflection and action, this living project sees the transformation of six hectares of woodland covered with eucalyptus. Within this process of forest design, we have developed a series of drawings, pottery pieces , digitally rendered models of biomorphic architectures, distillation vessels, and a sound landscape of the interspecies relations within the forest. The resulting sound piece combines field recordings in the forest across the seasons and various moments, such as a storm, a wildfire, and the summer breeze, combined with ethnomusicology materials, for example local accordion melodies, and re-interpreted recordings of the gamelan.
In an expansion of this research, we became acquainted with systems ecologist, Dr Ranil Senanayake, who specialised in forest restoration in Sri Lanka. Senanayake’s pioneering endeavours in analog forestry since the 1980s are foregrounded as a pivotal foray to grapple with the unsustainable monoculture of eucalyptus and pine tree species.
Dr. Ranil has been developing the principles of Analogue Forestry over the last 40 years, not only in theory, but also into the patient and sustained practice of cultivating a forest. Amongst the different projects carried out with small landowners around Sri Lanka and in other parts of the world, there is the learning site and analogue forest which he started in Belipola, in the central mountains of Sri Lanka. Belipola functions as a central part of the International Analogue Forestry Network that he promotes, offering courses, research residencies, and the model experimental forest itself. The recordings part of this podcast were taken in mid January 2024, on diverse walks through the forest, during which we were kindly hosted by Lorena Gamboa and Dr Ranil Senanayake.