By Helle Jorgensen
Small objects made by hand

‘The Forest Floor’ is an immersive installation, that uses the complexity of this ecosystem to investigate the entanglement of time, worlding, and sensory storytelling. The specialised ecological processes of the detrivores within the forest floor demonstrate the perpetual cycle of death, regeneration and life; the basis of all life on earth. Can human beings perhaps learn from this?

The process of making ‘The Forest Floor’, is both repetitive and laborious, during which I enter my Paracosm, an imaginary pocket universe of abstract thought and storytelling. I feel my body breaking down into tiny transient elements that mix with the detrivores and I can envisage how they busily work tirelessly as a team. It's a state of mind where I slow down, the spirits of the place appear and the linear passage of time doesn’t exist; an example of circular time, embodied mindfulness and an animist worldview.

The shadows of ‘The Forest Floor’ reveal a hidden layer of the existence of the detrivores, akin to their natural spirits. They provide the viewer with a sense of the genius loci/animism of the ecosystem as an active and experiential state of sensory ecology.

I have used discarded tapestry wool found in Op Shops because it has an embedded history. Whilst making ‘The Forest Floor’ my thoughts turn to the many women who might have previously owned the wool, their lives and families and their care for them. I also think of the enormous amount of energy, time and resources that went into the making of these fibres. Utilising them is an act of repair and care; a form of storytelling.

The umwelt of the detrivores, their communal sensory experiences, and their specialised ways of communication provide a powerful metaphor for how human specialists, in different areas of knowledge, could reach new understandings and insights and allow new relations to emerge to find solutions to the crises of the Anthropocene.’ Helle Jorgensen