sustainability | Maria Korporal

Tree Travelling

“Tree Travelling” is a multidisciplinary project, consisting of the interactive installation “Tree Travelling”, the short video “Corona Tree Travelling”, the online interactive platform “Tree Travelling: Boom the Boom!” (which will soon be shown at the Festival Nuvola Creativa, Villa di Massenzio, Rome, from 2nd to 16th December 2023) and the print series “Tree Travelling Journal”.

The interactive installation includes a video of the world map with all airplanes that are currently flying, generated from a real-time radar. In front of the monitor there is a small tree trunk. When you move it, you fill the world with growing trees, while the airplanes slowly disappear.

Worldwide, more than 1.4 billion people now travel internationally every year, up from 500 million trips in 1995. The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) predicts that figure will reach or exceed 1.8 billion by 2030.
The tourism boom brings economic growth, but the damages are severe, especially from an ecological point of view. Almost all cheap international mass travels are flights. It is alarming when you realize how many airplanes are in the air right now and how much CO2 is emitted every moment.

With my little tree trunk I invite the spectators to stand stil for just a while and reflect about this boom. When they move the trunk, they let trees travel all over the world, interrupt the constant air traffic and make the air brighter. It’s time we become aware of what trees mean to our earthly life. We can hardly do anything better than planting trees to help to save the future of this planet.

Tree Travelling, 3 fine art prints mounted on forex

When this project was conceived, we were in the middle of a global tourism boom. But then the corona virus came. The tourism boom collapsed in no time. The real-time radar view of the aircraft has changed drastically. I created a new video work, “Corona Tree Travelling”, which is not interactive – the corona crisis make the trees grow without human intervention. The video première was on August 23 in the exhibition Die Sehnsucht nach dem Grünen.

Two stills from the video “Corona Tree Travelling”

An excerpt from the video in the exhibition
Die Sehnsucht nach dem Grünen.

The Tree Travelling Journal, digital prints on A3, follows the development of the project in times of coronavirus and climate change. It is a work in progress – what the future holds…

Exhibitions and screenings:
• The online version of the project, Tree Travelling: Boom the Boom! was shown in the 5° Festival Ecrã, which took place online on July 15-25, 2021, and from 19th to 21st June 2020 as part of the festival 48 Stunden Neukölln in Berlin
• The video “Corona Tree Travelling” was screened in the exhibitions “Green iDeal” (2020), Biennale della Tecnologia, Politecnico, Turin (Italy) and “Corona and Climate Crisis” (2020), Group Global 3000, Berlin.
• The entire multidisciplinary installation was shown in the exhibition Die Sehnsucht nach dem Grünen, Kulturmühle Perwenitz, August 23 – September 27, 2020.

Tree Travelling on the Motorway

First installation in the Tree Travelling project.
Exhibition: November 1 – December 13, 2019: Artists for Future, Group Global 3000, Berlin.

On the screen we see images of intense car and air traffic. In front of the monitor a small tree trunk stands on a world map. Moving it slowly over the map you replace the traffic with trees that grow all over the screen.

The images were taken from a bridge over the Berlin motorway, an accidental moment on a casual day. It could be anywhere in our industrialized world in which automobiles and airplanes always move, the faster the better, the more disastrous for the environment. The clock in the picture shows the progress of time: we are rushing blindly into the future.
With my little tree trunk I invite the spectator to stand stil for just a while and reflect. Then move the trunk and let trees travel all over the world… It’s time we become aware of what trees mean to our earthly life. We can hardly do anything better than planting trees to help to save the future of this planet.