Brakfesten

Brakfesten / La Grande Bouffe by Anne Duk Hee Jordan and Pauline Doutreluingne is an art project in the form of a living sculpture and a film. The work focuses on the nature reserve of Södra Hällarna where elm trees are threatened with extinction. Fallen and felled trees lie around like infected dead bodies and the ecosystem has been disturbed. But in the larger cycle of life, even the dead trees can be of help to restore and maintain the ecological cycle.

The artists use debarked elm tree branches to create a gigantic sculpture with several elements that mimic the pattern the bark beetles leave on the elm tree trunk. Hollowed branches filled with soil are transformed into “tables”, with plants from the area growing from their carved bodies, creating a banquet for insects, beetles, birds and other organisms. Other logs are turned into water basins and insect hotels, surrounded by birdhouses and miniature huts for rabbits. Among them appear a hilarious painting full of colors, an oversized birdhouse and a pair of gigantic listening horns resembling moose ears. We’re invited to come close and use them to sense the surroundings, listen to the sounds of the forest and experience the world from the other species’ perspective.

The sculpture is at the same time an act of acknowledgement and of giving back to the earth, and to the lives that both, sustain it and are sustained by it. It also becomes the stage of the film with the same title, where the small and invisible inhabitants of the area are the main protagonists.