La forêt noire

With Jordi Martínez Vilalta, Iván Pérez Lorenzo and Paula Bruna.

Our idyllic imaginary of the forest is colonised by images typical of central and northern Europe, such as the great deciduous forests through which it is easy to walk. In the Mediterranean, on the other hand, shrubby ecosystems and forests with dense undergrowth abound, where lianas and thorny plants make it difficult to pass through. Here nature prickles and the green is dark, brown and ochre, and the forest feels more uncomfortable than the ideal of colonised nature.

In this artistic-scientific encounter we will talk about the anthropocentric morality that we place on the forest and the European ideal that colonises us, about the "rebellious" plants, and about the possibility of claiming their being-in-the-world independently of their assembly with human moral norms.

Activity promoted by Paula Bruna in the framework of the artistic research "La forêt noire" developed thanks to the CREA and OSIC 2022 grants.

With the participation of:
Iván Pérez Lorenzo, PhD research botanist at the Institut Botànic de Barcelona-CSIC.
Jordi Martínez Vilalta, professor of ecology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Paula Bruna, postdoctoral artistic researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Paula Bruna holds a PhD in fine arts and is an environmentalist. She researches on perspectives different from anthropocentrism through a combination of scientific basis, speculative fiction and artistic practice. She is currently a postdoctoral artistic researcher in the Department of Animal Biology, Plant Biology and Ecology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB).

Jordi Martínez Vilalta holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences at the UAB. He is a professor of ecology at the UAB and a researcher at CREAF. His research focuses on the functioning of forest systems and, in particular, on how the mechanism of water transport to trees determines their response to drought and climate change.

Iván Pérez Lorenzo is a pre-doctoral research biologist at the Institut Botànic de Barcelona-CSIC. He specialises in botany, particularly asteraceous plants. He is currently researching flower structure and reproduction mechanisms, such as plant-insect interactions.