DESIGN

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FOREST ⇌ FIRE

Click HERE to visit the FOREST⇌FIRE project website.

FOREST ⇌ FIRE is a creative place-making project, developed in partnership with Truckee-Donner Recreation and Parks District, U.C. Berkeley’s Sagehen Creek Field Station, and Nevada County Arts Council. It will be an interdisciplinary, multi-sensory, interpretive installation designed and curated by artist Michael Llewellyn. Flowing thematically through past, present and future, the works of multiple artists will tell the story of the Forest and its relationship with Fire. Of how, since the Ice Age, Native American people, using low intensity fire, created and maintained the biologically rich, old growth forest. Of why our forests are currently in ecological collapse.  Of what can be done immediately to bring our forest back into equilibrium (⇌) with fire in order to prevent its loss altogether and to exponentially increase its benefit to each of us individually.  FOREST ⇌ FIRE includes two public engagement platforms, the first connecting citizens to the changing landscape of future forests and the second giving children in the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District the opportunity to participate in the exhibit and express their feelings about living in a fire prone forest.  FOREST ⇌ FIRE is supported by a host of collaborators— including loggers, environmentalists, wildlife specialists, regional native tribes, land managers, and artists. It debuts on October 22, 2021, in Truckee, California.

Western US forests are in ecological collapse. Wildfire is sweeping through at unprecedented scale and intensity while native bark beetles destroy entire stands. Climate change is only making things worse. The good news is that the problem was largely created by our short-sighted management policies, so we can fix it. But we need to act soon, and at scale, to preserve our forests and our water supply.

We believe that artists illuminate truth, offer transcendent experience in a literal world, create raw material for science, challenge us to see and feel, and connect us to the most critical issues known today. They connect us to our common humanity.

The combined challenge of climate change awareness, forest fire education and cultural adaptation is central to the future of all inhabitants in the western United States.