Forest!

a body of work on the old-growth Walbran forest, 2016-2025

Over a 9-year duration, 2016-2025, with an artistic approach, and experimentation with custom builds both for the production as well as the exhibition presentation, along with an interdisciplinary team with research on the forest itself (presented in the forest documents reading room), the large format video experiment evolved.

In 2016, Leila Sujir began working on what has become a body of work, with the working title, Forest!, an acknowledgment of the very special old-growth forest in the south Walbran on Vancouver Island with an invitation from curator Haema Sivanesan, then at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (AGGV) and cinematographer Chris Kroitor who was working with Sujir with a research team, Elastic 3D Spaces.

Chris Kroitor’s custom-built a set-up with two Concordia University’s Sony F65 cameras with an IMAX mirror rig in June 2016, with Jorge Zavango joining as technical director later that summer.

image of piles of equipment — Elastic Spaces: arrival of extensive amount of 3D used equipment, Concordia University, May 2016

forest! images of truck and map — Scouting + custom build 3D equipment arrival via rail from Montreal, on a pallet, to Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, June 2016

forest! image of camp and gear — Forest! shoot with custom-built and re-furbished 3D production equipment
Walbran & surrounding areas, June 2016

In Spring 2017, Sujir met Sarah Turner, primatologist, ethnobotanist Nancy Turner, and forest ecologist Suzanne Simard–they began to have conversations and started to shape projects for Elastic 3D Spaces.

forest! image of artist and writer and book jacket — Meeting Sarah Turner (Feb 2017, Concordia University), Nancy Turner (Feb 2017, University of Victoria), XL Canada Council for the Arts grant confirmed (Spring 2017), Suzanne Simard (July 2017, University of British Columbia, Mother Tree project, Harrop Creek)

By 2018, with an invitation from curator Haema Sivanesan, for the group exhibition, Supernatural: Art, Technology, and the Forest, Sujir was able to take a vertical slice of the large format Forest! video frame, into an exhibition custom-built stereoscopic lightbox with the Elastic 3D Spaces and the AGGV curatorial team (Forest Breath [2018].

forest! Image of installation view — Forest Breath, in Supernatural: Art, Technology and the Forest, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, (May – September 2018), curated by Haema Sivanesan.

They met Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones, May 2018 on a bio-blitz with the Friends of the Walbran. For the Supernatural group exhibition, Haema Sivanesan curated an off-site activity: with a forest walk, a community lunch and screening of the Aerial rushes in Port Renfrew for the Pacheedaht First Nation and towns-people of the Aerial project’s rushes after the production shoot.

images of community programming and screening — Community Lunch & Screening /Forest Walk, Port Renfrew/Pacheedaht First Nation, August 2018 (Part of community outreach for Art Gallery of Greater Victoria’s Supernatural exhibition, curated by Haema Sivanesan).