About

Idea

TRE TRE TRE is conceptualised as a curatorial format that brings together a series of processes and experiments situated in different forest regions. The two forests of Pasvik and Temminki-Markkatieva are located at a distance of approximately 700 km from each other. Together with any third forest they would form a triangle.

To return to the forest with our bodies, tools, methods and gestures is to contribute towards weaving vessels of sensual knowledge resting in forest-human relationships and founded on the basis of each contributor's particular practice and affinities. As the processes gradually ground the work, they also make physical and imaginary connections between forest localities. They perform multiple triangulations.

Triangulation is a term used in various fields of knowledge, as a methodology in sociology and geometry, and more recently in art to advocate a non-binary worldview¹. The number of three is considered auspicious in most mystical traditions. In physics, the number is too large (see the so-called three-body problem). In some indigenous languages, only the numbers one and two are used, with the number after two indicating 'more'. Many words with the prefix tri- also have the meaning of more than two (e.g. the word tribe).

In cartography, triangulation is an outdated method from the days when the land surveyors physically measured and staked out heights and distances using optical devices and physical measuring sticks (today replaced by GPS and trilateration). Perhaps this could reflect the acts of TRE TRE TRE, where bodies and other sensing instruments are physically placed and in motion in the forest.

One can only partially contribute to the simple principle of triangulation and that of TRE TRE TRE: that observation from more than two points provides a richer opportunity to understand phenomena. The line between the two forests of Pasvik and Temminiki-Markkatieva invites a third point of triangulation: In TRE TRE TRE the third could be any and many unspecified.

1. Malin Arnell and Åsa Elzén have explored the triangle and triangulation in a number of works in opposition to binarity, most recently in Skogen kallar, a public artwork that links the history of the Fogelstad group, a feminist initiative formed in Sweden in 1921, to the artists' act of preserving a triangular forest in southern Sweden for the next 50 years

Background, formats & partners

TRE TRE TRE is being formed through conversations (since 2022) with a loosely knit network of local and visiting art-knowledge constellations working in parallel and crossing paths in specific Northeastern forests localities.

The engagements involve (so far):

- Neal Cahoon (University of Oulu), Ursula Münster, Nora S. Vaage, Susanne Bauer, Annike Flo and Marianne Lien (in the research project 'Anthropogenic Soils' of the University of Oslo) and Cornelya Klutsch & other staff-members at the NIBIO Svanhovd

- Mar Fjell & Marlin Anhell, Rusto Myllylahti, Kristin Taarnesvik, Remi Vesala and Sallamari Rantala (in Sentient Soils Study, Mustarinda-residency, Paljakka forest)

- Espen Sommer Eide, Kajsa Møllersen, Jade Kallio, BJ Nilsen and Lena Ylipää (through various Fieldwork, Pasvik)

TRE TRE TRE is set up as an artistic-curatorial exploratory between two forest regions as a starting point. Temminki-Markkatieva is a forest informative of the practice of the artist Lena Ylipää, who lives in the nearby village of Lainio. In the curatorial work of the TRE TRE TRE initiator, curator Hilde Methi living in Kirkenes, the Pasvik forest has a similar relevance and concern.

TRE TRE TRE consists of fieldwork, workshops, research residencies, events and presentations. Through artistic emphasis on particular ecologies of soil substrate, forest and rural communities, we seek to negotiate the positions of 'rurality' and 'periphery', and disrupt those value systems that see these places as mere extractable "resource areas".

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