ARBORETUM is a collaboration between poet Mónica de la Torre and sound artist Hans Tammen. A series of poems written by de la Torre, inspired by some of the trees of Governors Island, are in turn processed and spatialized by Tammen. De la Torre considered the botanical and historical specificities of species of the island’s trees.
If we could hear trees talk to each other through the fungal networks connecting them, what would they say about their deployment by city officials and park authorities, about the humans around them? If we could hear the carbon they store, as well as the records they keep, how would they sound? What memories do they carry of their respective migrations; how do they perceive their surroundings? Questions such as these informed the poems, their electronic processing and their location in a multichannel sound environment. The piece weaves word play, lyric meditations, and documentary fragments that produce an ambient poetics and ecology of sounds when joined with their sonic counterparts.
