Forest/ry is a film strand from my larger body of work called Fractals and Jay Birds. It responds to the ongoing restoration of 37 acres of spruce forestry to native woodland at Interface in the Inagh Valley, Connemara. Forest/ry premiered at Earth Rising Eco Art Festival at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in October 2022. It has since screened at DCEFF in Washington DC, Docs ireland, Belfast Rural FilmFest, Spain and at the Galway Film Fleadh.

The felling of sitka trees is dramatic, and though seeming to represent a death knell to the landscape, this particular deforestation will be the precursor to new life. The shallow rooted sitka blanket the ground with acidic needles and eclipse the sunlight so the woodland becomes a dead zone. A visit to the nearby ancient oak forest at Derryclare Nature Reserve gives a sense of what it is like to step from the silence and darkness of a commercial plantation into the light-filled green space of ancient woodland. My work observes how complex natural habitats develop, and how sound-rich spaces can replace the torpor of monoculture. It captures the industrialisation of forestry and presents my hope for a more eco-friendly future.

The experience of filming the harvesting of sitka spruce at night was unforgettable - the sounds and images were a chilling reminder of the efficiency of human destruction. The action was mesmerising, trees that took 50 years to reach maturity were felled in a matter of seconds. During a previous night-harvesting session worried residents had called up the local radio station fearing they might have spotted UFOs such is the otherworldly impression of these giant brightly-lit harvesters chopping down trees late into the night. 

We made field recordings early one morning in May, tracking the variations in volume and diversity of the dawn chorus at Derryclare as we moved from native woodland to sitka spruce plantations. The birds with the largest eyes begin the chorus and those with smaller eyes join in as the dawn progresses. Those birds with smaller eyes need to wait until the sky is brighter before they can see their predators and safely sing. The sonic output reflects the number and variety of nesting birds at the sites and gives an aural indication of the richness, or absence, of biodiversity at the two types of woodland.  I did further site visits with Natalia Beylis and Eimear Reidy, the composers of the score of Forest/ry, and they composed music in cello and organ to the images of my film and to their sense of the two woodland spaces.

One element of my Fractals and Jay Birds project is the planting of 1000 trees with my community here in Galway. Native trees were kindly provided by Easy Treesie. Local schoolchildren, sports clubs, and my community of artists at Interface planted 1000 native trees last April in an effort to support biodiversity and combat climate anxiety. It will create a meaningful legacy for the local community here in the west of Ireland, for humans and for wildlife.