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- As UmArts postdoctoral Research Fellow in Art and Architecture, what is your research about?

I am primarily concerned with decolonising reforestation and its critical role in land and climate remediation. As an artist, I aim for my research with forests to study and test how re-mediation, at small scales, may play various roles. It is about ideas and actions regarding nursing and caring for landscapes mainly in relation to colonial legacies. And it is also about amplifying and diversifying voices from different species, ancestries, practices, and hemispheres. It involves rethinking and changing how land and forests are ‘seen’, communicated-with, imagined, and thus mediated. Those imaginaries — as the thoughts and preconceptions we have of forests — are the media I am investigating, mainly from my perspective as a Puerto Rican and now as a resident in Northern Sweden.

- Where does your connection to forests come from?

My strongest connection to forests comes from witnessing the devastation of Puerto Rico by the two Category 5 Hurricanes Irma and Maria that made landfall within 14 days of each other in September of 2017. Beyond the manifold of human suffering the storms brought - a trauma that is still being processed to this day - it was our forests, their fauna and flora which became the next immediate concern. Hurricanes have long shaped Puerto Rico’s meteorological and cultural history, and we had always seen our beaches, rivers, and forests regenerate. But what happened in 2017 marked the beginning of an unprecedented era, clearly connected to global warming and the warming of the tropical Atlantic waters: the destruction was deep and unseen by any living or documented generation.

My research on their tree nurseries opened up a new relationship to forests and biodiversity

One of the most important post-hurricane initiatives was the active expansion of Puerto Rico’s reforestation infrastructure. In 2020, I had the honour of being invited to an art and science research residency at the NGO Para La Naturaleza, who already had a conservation network of forests with tree nurseries across the Island. My research on their tree nurseries opened up a new relationship to forests and biodiversity. Reforestation as the primary, proportionate and culturally responsible practice that nurtures damaged landscapes and acknowledges their colonial and industrial trauma, became the obvious alternative to speculative, disproportionate geoengineering strategies.

This is my connection to forests. As I now become part of the Umeå community, I hope it will guide me in sensing the forests of Sápmi, Västerbotten and Norrland and their ecological and cultural significance, all while recognising the realities of public economic needs.

- What made the Phenotyping Platform at UPSC interesting for you?

Professor Lars Östlund mentioned the phenotyping platform to me and suggested contacting Professor Ove Nilsson, who was beyond generous to receive me and introduce me to the platform manager Ioana Gaboreanu. The first, and subsequent visits were all fascinating to me, and it became clear that the Platform would be an important space to learn from, and experiment with from my arts perspective. As a type of tree nursery, it is an exceptional space. For me, it is a space where I can sense the extent to which we are relying on technology in order to stem the rising tide of global warming problems - in this case, the need to test and monitor the genetic modification of trees as a human survival resource.

The singing was an act of nurturing, in dialogue with these trees in Swedish Norrland.

While I understand the logic behind this critically important development, I am also concerned about how we objectify trees as specimens, and I thought that, in the highly technologized context of the Platform, we (all of those who were part of the performance) might sense both the urgency as well as the broad contradictions in the choices we face with global warming. By taking a moment to be and sing with the treelings, we could perhaps sense the problems of that objectification, and a small cultural shift in perception – not as modern masters - but to see forests and their myriad inhabitants as persons too. Investigating such perceptual shifts towards caring and interdependent attitudes may transform our consumer / resource culture into one better geared towards co-inhabitancy.

- What was the purpose of your performance at the UPSC Phenotyping Platform?

‘Ensayando un canto de cuna a Guataúba / Rehearsing a lullaby for the herald of woe’ was an unrehearsed, improvised performance where caring songs are sung with the treelings being monitored on the phenotyping platform. The singing was an act of nurturing, in dialogue with these trees in Swedish Norrland. It was also a heartfelt expression of respect and appeasement towards Guataubá, the divinity of lightning and thunder, and thus the herald and foreteller of storms (of Juracán, considered the source of the word hurricane) in the Caribbean Indigenous Taíno ancestry of my homeland, Puerto Rico.

The performance and its contents stem from my methods as an artist that lean less on purpose or quantifiable data, and more on questioning perceptions that give form to the environment. In the case of ‘Lullaby’, I aimed to activate the phenotyping platform at UPSC as a support structure or pedestal to display an improvised and sincere act of dialogue, of nurturing and praise with the treelings.

- What are your thoughts on the outcome? Did everything go as planned?

Although it took over six months of scheduling with the platform and the players, and several weeks of technical coordination with Ioana and Jan Karlsson, the performance was genuinely unrehearsed. There were just two phone conversations with my collaborators – one with Félix Becker in Copenhagen and one with Esther von Schoenberg, director of the Barockkör in Umeå - and we did not meet until one hour before the start. I had created a ‘provisional score’ which was just a very loose guide, and I needed the audience to be sitting in darkness for at least ten minutes before the platform’s automated process began exactly at 13:00, so that their eyesight, the pupils could dilate.

By changing the context and environment of the laboratory, we shifted and inverted the personhood of the trees

That period of darkness and silence had the desired effect of inducing a slight entrancing state, ideal preparation of the senses for the performance. Thereon, the performance far exceeded my aspirations, particularly in how the visual effects came together improvisationally, and how Esther and the thirteen choir singers not only delivered a fearless, sincere and stunning performance, but they also supported me in guiding the audience in darkness to their seats as a caring act of trust. The comprehensive soundscape we laid out — the choir, Felix and I with our percussive work along with recordings of extinct birds, and the mechanism of the platform — and our appearance with Randi Kjær’s masks as forest animals embodying more-than-human voices, helped us all ‘see’ the treelings in a very different light. By changing the context and environment of the laboratory, we shifted and inverted the personhood of the trees, repositioning them as the protagonists and observers, while raising a common voice as an offering, asking for patience from an ancestral divinity.

- You are currently planning another performance at Arboretum Norr. What will this be about?

Yes. While I will continue working with tree nurseries long-term, I will conclude my postdoc this autumn with a few more actions. In late June, I produced an installation within the context of the ongoing exhibition titled ‘Hosting Lands’ in Denmark. On the 6th of September I will then produce another performance/installation, this time at Arboretum Norr here in Umeå. And finally, I will release a print publication in collaboration with Bildmuseet that will be distributed to the attending public on a final event at the museum (date TBA). From there on, I intend to take this art research as a foundation to broaden more engagements about personhood, listening to the Land through more actions and dialogues with forests.