Catalonia, unlike other territories, is a region where the forests are young, occupy a large area and are very vulnerable to fires. This vulnerability is due to the economic disconnection with these pine, oak, and holm oak. These forests are no longer wild but rather the product of a human-nature relationship.

Thanks to thinkers like Bruno Latour, we are beginning to accept that the nature that surrounds us is more of a space produced by human beings than wild nature typical of a pre-agricultural stage. Since they are not self-regulating, the forests of Catalonia depend on their relationship with man.

The removal of fallen or felled trees to favor slow-growing species are normally used as biomass. Singular Wood tries to claim the value of this wood beyond biomass. To support this project, I bought a stone pine from Montnegre that cost me around €500.

After some research of the bark, resin, leaves and branches, I began to work with the trunk. The wood was full of holes from woodworms and other yellow, blue, and pink animals and fungi had invaded the wood. It was a non-homogeneous, non-normative piece of wood, dissenting from the aesthetics of industrial wood, with irregularities due to growth within the forest.

My predisposition and methodology, through a dialogue with the material, made me question the idea of ​​quality and led me to the need to create new definitions. To create a new definition one had to create a new relationship with matter, land and the processes, both natural and synthetic, that make matter possible. The idea of ​​quality requires indigenous and eco-feminist influences in which human-non-human relationships are more fluid and allow for nuances and new approaches. To consider wood as living matter, especially wood that is in constant transformation due to the relationship with the fungi that dye it pink and blue, and other elements that accelerate its degradation, does not seem too radical, however, generating new kinds of relationships with objects made from this wood seems more complicated.

A project made for and with L’Afluent, a cultural cooperative.
Exhibited at Il·lacions Gallery
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