Becoming the Forest
Together with her companion, Una Hamilton Helle makes art that brings new light to the nature versus culture symbiosis. Being a contemporary artist with such an intriguing field of interest, Hinsides had to contact Una to find out more. Meet a remarkable mind that explores the worlds of art and sciense and who generously shares her findings within the pages of the beautiful Art-zine ”Becoming the Forest”.
Caspar David Friedrich like photo by Theresa Widjeskog.
Hello and welcome to Hinsides mag! Please explain where you are and what brought you there? It would also be nice to get to know the persona behind those clarifications a little bit.
- Thank you! I am currently in Oslo, Norway, which is where I (mostly) grew up. Although I’ve worked here sporadically over the years, I’ve been based in London since I was 18 so it’s been interesting returning here to live again. I work as a freelance artist, which I supplement by working in the museum sector so I moved back here to help move the Munch Museum collection to a new museum. Edvard Munch was a big influence on me when I was younger so it is a real privilege being so close to his works - and getting to see the lesser known works that I wasn’t familiar with. I am also enjoying being closer to the forest, which Oslo is surrounded by. This proximity to nature is something I’ve been missing, a longing that was probably one of the catalysts for the Becoming the Forest project.
How would you describe BTF for someone unaware of its existence?
- Becoming the Forest is the title of an arts project that has been a sporadic but constant part of my art practice for a while. Under the BTF banner I have made art works (collages, photography, film, performance and sound works) and organised gigs, film screenings and public discussions. It is also the name of a publication I edit with Belgian writer Lotte Brown, of which there have been three issues so far. The first issue was a small zine I made to accompany an exhibition I had at the sound art gallery Le Bon Accueil in Rennes, France, and was an attempt at giving some context and bringing in more voices to a solo exhibition about what could be seen as quite obscure topics; black metal’s approach to ecology. The two last issues have been more ambitious in scope but are essentially continuing that approach - discussing place, belonging, landscape, ecology, folklore, climate crisis, nationalism, myth, art history and more - all through the lens of black metal’s relationship to nature.
Art by BTF.
I think the project originally started with being interested in what “home” meant, or the sense of belonging to somewhere, particularly in a geographical and topographical sense. I was also curious about how and if the natural world effects us. What does it do to the human psyche to grow up in a hot, open desert versus a cold and densely forested territory, for example? What does the darkness of the winter in the Northern hemisphere do to us? The result of this is perhaps particularly expressed through more emotive art, like music, so to take a starting point in my own experience I looked to Norwegian black metal, a genre which really is born from a particular landscape. Although that silent presence of nature, -in album covers, band photos, lyrics and so on-, has since been exported and appropriated across the globe by bands from very different geographical places, the impact of topography on the genre never seemed like it was talked about much, so exploring what this relationship means and using that as a catalyst to address wider societal topics is the underlying purpose of Becoming the Forest.
Second and third issue of Becoming the Forest. Photo by Hinsides.
And if BTF were a tree? What kind of entity would it be?
- It would be a Norway Spruce without a doubt! The Norway Spruce is an amazingly hardy tree that spreads quickly and grows in close proximity to other trees - it’s an arboreal army. The spiky, dark outline of a spruce forest is of course a staple visual in early Norwegian black metal, and to me mirrors the genre’s image and outlook; It looks dark, foreboding and impenetrable from the outside but once you enter it it is a magical moss-grown kingdom which holds a very particular atmosphere filled with references to old religion, plant knowledge and folklore. I always think of the spruce forest has always acted as a threshold to another realm, - or headspace if you will-, and I would like to think that the cover of BTF acts as that too.
There’s also a lot of references to the Norway Spruce in BTF. BTF#1 contains a story called Picea Abies, the latin name for the species. The story describes how black metallers worship the Spruce - you could almost call it their altar, or totem pole. It describes how their veneration of the tree turns to mimicking and eventually they become the tree, going from human to plant, a transformational process which has been described many times in world mythology and literature. For BTF#2 I interviewed a molecular biologist whose research focuses on memory in Norway Spruce seedlings. The Norway Spruce is (at the time at least) one of the only trees that has had its genome sequenced - and there was a lot of material there! There is seven times as much information as the human genome. It also turns out they hold a “memory” of the weather conditions from when they were seedlings, which they bring with them into their life as an adult tree. This seemed like a scientific parallel to many older myths that already speak of trees as harbingers of knowledge and remembering.
“True Norwegian Spruce”
In terms of where the project grew from, probably from some sort of distance to the landscape it is inspired by - the term “landscape” dictates that you are never in it, you are always looking at it. When you spend your daily life in a place it is hard to take a step back and appreciate its qualities. It took me moving to another country to look back at the topography and music I had grown up around to look at them from a different angle. In terms of the project’s “nutrition”, it comes in the form of listening to good music, art and films, reading interesting articles and also allowing time for the subconscious to conjure up imagery, so walking in more remote places, or just daydreaming, works. And of course the conversations I have with Lotte around the project. Submersion is key for us and much of the work for BTF#3 was done when we isolated ourselves for a week last summer at a cabin in the Norwegian mountainside and just read, wrote and explored the surrounding forest.
Is it fair to look upon BTF as something like a bridge between the academic world of art and science and the sometimes anti-intellectual/anti-establishment world of folklore and blackened metal music? How do you view your artistic position between those worlds and what can you tell us about the reactions and responses you´ve got from making art out of it?
- I guess I answered this a bit already, but that is for sure my intention. One field reflects more “immediate” responses to situations, feelings, disasters, nature etc, whereas the other is the more critical and in depth exploration of these occurrences - and I think both are important approaches in how to deal and process life. BTF is an exercise in intermingling these different approaches and seeing what comes out. As with all subcultures and “thought environments” (like academia) there always seem to be rules about what you should and shouldn’t do and situating BTF on the outside of both worlds I find it’s easier to disregard self policing codes of conduct and just do what I think is interesting.
The responses I’ve been getting for BTF, both as a zine and when presented as art works, have been mostly positive and the project seems to speak to people from very different paths of life. At the end of the day many people have strong connections to the natural world, or the themes that black metal deals with, such as darkness, extremity, opposition, religion, death and so on even if they aren’t drawn in by the music.
Photo of art-performance from the BTF archives. Used under kind permission.
Since it seems like you´re drawn to expressions that have their own rituals and spiritual spaces, and no outspoken interest in galleries and academic recognition, it would be interesting to know your thoughts about the difficult question of cultural exploitation? Is this something you´ve taken into concern, and if so, how did it affect your work?
- Absolutely. There’s a difference between appropriation and interpretation and I think at the end of the day the “appropriateness” of both approaches comes down to intent and execution. Appropriation of other people’s work or culture as a tool for financial gain or gaining cred within the art world is commonplace but there’s a difference between bringing something new to the conversation by using appropriation as a method and just rehashing someone else’s creative expression. Capitalism will eventually coopt any culture, whether it be a subculture or an indigenous culture, but I think the least you can do as an artist is to resist what is essentially a colonial approach - if you don’t have a direct involvement with your subject matter then at least gain a deeper understanding about it, which will lead to a more respectful approach. I don’t mean here that one shouldn’t make irreverent or critical art but I believe that if you do, you should also be able to stand for that view in relation to the community whose work you’ve used - and in person. Speaking of, it’s been interesting bringing BTF into a live format, for example through panel discussions, book stands or film screenings. I always thought the questions from the audience would be a bit more challenging, even hostile, considering the vitriol you can witness within the genre’s web spaces at times, but I’ve always been surprised by the polite, friendly and open discussion in a genre that is built on controversy and hostility.
I think, like a lot of people, many artists’ entry point and fascination with black metal is through the sensationalist origin story and the distinct and extreme aesthetics tied to the genre. When people don’t dig past this I think it becomes clear quite quickly when someone is just interested in a real surface level approach. I guess it’s about the level of investment you bring to the table, whether that be emotional or even financial, and being aware of what power hierarchies you are operating within as they can be invisible at first.
Photo of art-performance from the BTF archives. Used under kind permission.
Becoming the Forest is a name that suggests the possibility to transcend the present state and transform into something else. Since this theme is of such great interest to BTF I´m curious of how you relate to the inevitable division of opinions that follows change and if you too do experience a current polarization within both the Black-Metal scene and society as a whole? (On the one hand you have a progressive movement that embraces new possibilities, like adjustments of biological gender etc, and on the other a regressive anti-pole that are more or less in opposition to the whole modern/post-modern construction.) Is it possible for you to point out where you find your own comfort, both as a person and artist, on the scale from pro to anti actual literal transformations of ourselves and our surroundings?
- I can try, but I would say that that point of “comfort” is not really a fixed position, but one that changes as I’m constantly learning, trying to understand other’s positions and in the process positing my own. I’ve never been a fan of absolutisms and that is in some way implicit in the suggestion of being able to transform into something else, like the Forest. It’s always harder to understand those (and that) that are different but that shouldn’t stop us from trying right? And this is where plant life comes into the picture. We’ve become so removed from our fellow species that we ‘other’ and degrade them into non-thinking and non-feeling beings. We have developed this system where humans are on top of the hierarchical pyramid with capital with a big C floating somewhere in the heavens above it as the ultimate omnipresence. And for all its protestations of being apolitical I think much of the extremity and anger of black metal is borne out of a discontent with the alienation, suffering and inhumanity that comes from this situation. But because of this overall resistance to being political it often puts it down to humans being the ill, rather than conditioned by the system we exist within.
It is perhaps because of this tendency towards misanthropy that black metal has focused a lot on the non-human elements and landscapes around us. This less anthropocentric worldview can offer a way to become more knowledgeable about, and tuned into, the natural world on its own terms. But there is always the human tendency to use “nature” to benefit whatever narratives we want to tell, something which has of course been abused by political ideologies - as ways to justify nationalism, ethnocentricism and borders, for example. So when black metal says it’s not political I think that is exactly how it gets coopted by political ideologies, because it doesn’t have the toolkit to necessarily recognise and resist it.
Photo of art-performance from the BTF archives. Used under kind permission.
So now that the coronavirus is spreading and more and more people are saying things like ‘humans are the virus’ and ‘mother earth is resetting itself’, basically directly quoting eco-fascist rhetoric, it’s almost like seeing a repeat of what is voiced often in black metal circles. But if you say humans are the virus, you’re not recognising the differences implicit in this outcome, like which humans are being disposed of within this supposed natural vengeance - it’s the most vulnerable, the less privileged that are being thrown under the bus, because at the end of the day capital rules over life in our society. And this isn’t misanthropy, it’s just the sort of distorted logic that NSBM uses when they say they hate humans, but there are certain humans they hate more than others. Of course we are wreaking havoc on the earth, but it is a lot more creative and challenging to think of how we can mitigate this in other ways than resorting to lazy eco-fascist rhetoric. So in short, my personal opinion is that you can be critical but still meet someone with respect and a willingness to understand, which includes really listening to what they have to say - and this should be afforded to all people and species. Why someone without a particular experience would feel the right to decide on what someone should or shouldn’t do (for example, in relation to your mention of changing biological gender) is completely beyond me.
You´ve just read an excerpt from a (much) longer interview with Una Hamilton Helle made by Hinsides Magazine. The conversation as a whole are soon to be published on paper in the first issue of this Magazine together with a lot of other exclusive and interesting content.
Pre-Orders of the limited (200ex) edition are being made here: